On June 25, 1945, the representatives of fifty nations approved the Charter of the United Nations Organization at San Francisco, in solemn dedication to the principle of collective security. For the second time within a single generation widespread official recognition was given to a political ideal in the genuine hope of averting or preventing the disaster of another world war.
On June 25, 1950, only five years later to the day, North Korean forces invaded the Republic of South Korea in flagrant violation of the authority of the United Nations and of the provisions of the United Nations Charter. The response of U.N. members was immediate, albeit not yet decisive. As a result the world is presently witnessing the consequences of the first attempt in history to apply collective military sanctions against an aggressor state.
The entire free world heralded the leadership of the United States in repulsing aggression in Korea. After several setbacks at the outset of the fighting, the United Nations forces turned to the task at hand with determination to turn back the Communist attack. It soon showed itself in the type of brilliant military campaign that freed South Korea.
Then adversity struck! The intervention of “hordes of volunteers” from Red China hurled back the U.N. forces when their military objective was virtually within their grasp. We soon found ourselves faced with the ugly alternatives of spreading the war, giving up the attempt to enforce peace as a bad job, or enduring a military stalemate.
Thus was the United States of America— the mighty giant that had turned the tide in two savage world conflicts, the nation that was trained to think in terms of either isolated neutrality or “all-out” war—thus was this well-intentioned people drawn into bitter, factional, internal strife. The traditional kind of war is relatively easy to prosecute because of the imminence and undisguised nature of the threat and the relative simplicity of the objective. Men fight to win. The political and psychological aspects of limited warfare, on the other hand, are difficult to measure and are infinitely complex. Dissension easily arises as to ends and means. The danger becomes obscured, nerves strained, patience exhausted.
The fateful event which engulfed the nation in the shoreless seas of turbulent public debate was, of course, the dismissal of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur from his command. Upon his return to the nation’s capital, the former United Nations commander delivered a masterly address to a joint meeting of Congress on April 19, 1951. It was in this eloquent message that General MacArthur advocated, among other things, the imposition of a naval blockade against the China coast, which he later said should include the Russian-leased base of Port Arthur.
In the dramatic hearings during May and June before the Senate Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations over this conflict in policy, the question of blockade arose frequently. The distinction between a unilateral naval blockade by the United States and a collective blockade by United Nations naval forces, such as the one then in effect against the entire coast of Korea, was not made clear until the late Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, then Chief of Naval Operations, testified. Admiral Sherman stated that a naval blockade only should follow exhaustion of the possibilities of effectiveness of the General Assembly resolution of May 18, 1951, which called for economic sanctions against Red China. He added that, “ if we ever resort to a blockade by force, it must be a United Nations operation unless we are going to get involved in a unilateral war between the United States and China, which in my opinion is extremely undesirable.”
The disadvantage of this course of action, declared Admiral Sherman, was that it could not be a tight blockade without the support of U. S. allies, which up to that time they had been unwilling to give. To try all alone to impose an effective blockade of Red China and intercept contraband destined for Hong Kong or Dairen for reshipment to Red China would (1) rupture friendly relations with the strongest allies of the U. S., particularly Great Britain; (2) set the U. S. apart from the U.N. as engaged in simply a United States war; and (3) risk World War III with Soviet Russia.
It is not the purpose of this paper to present all sides of the controversy over U. S. foreign policy in the Far East, nor to evaluate any of the positions taken by witnesses in the MacArthur hearings. The Great Debate, and especially the testimony of Admiral Sherman cited above, contain the fundamental elements, however, of the problem with which we shall come to grips: namely, the role of sea power under the concept of collective security. Before we can deal directly with this subject, it is necessary first to examine the aims and workability of collective security in the world of today and its prospects for the future in order to reach a full appreciation of the nature of military sanctions and the role that naval forces can play in giving practical meaning to the philosophy underlying the United Nations Organization.
Collective Security Versus Political Realities
What is collective security? It is not a new idea. A Frenchman, Pierre Dubois, conceived of such an international system in the 14th century. It is an ancient dream of man that has occupied the consciences of jurists and political theorists intermittently and in various forms for centuries. The theory of collective security as a political ideal is logically a valid one. Its conception is that of a cooperative effort to replace the international anarchy of self-help with the legal pledge of all nations to provide forces to come to the assistance of any state whose territorial integrity or political independence is threatened from without.
The aim of collective security is not the special security of a few nations by means of alliances, but the security of all. It envisions a system for sharing equitably the burdens and obligations of common defense to assure the national security of each individual state. Since aggressive warfare is outlawed under collective security, a lawbreaking state can expect to face the community of nations taking collective action in defense of international law, whether or not each has suffered injury in a particular case. Such a prospect is intended to act as an automatic deterrent to armed attack and to serve as an effective check against the strongest potential aggressor, assurance of which is the sine qua non of any successful system of world-wide peace enforcement.
To overcome the decentralized character of general international law, a system of justice that can develop practical means for identifying and putting down aggression must be substituted for the primitive technique of self-help. Such a system requires an international organization capable of assuring law and order within the society of nations by providing machinery for the pacific settlement of disputes, for determining violations of the law, and for applying sanctions against transgressors of the law. Early jurists, such as Vitoria, Suarez, and Grotius, clearly perceived the duty of nations to render assistance to the just cause under such an arrangement. The disinterestedness, profit, or passiveness that characterize neutrality cannot under this system be tolerated in the presence of international crime. In the face of the Grotian doctrine of bellum justum, the just war, which the principle of collective security revives in a new form, traditional neutrality ostensibly is dead as a legal institution. As President Wilson expressed on April 2, 1917 in an address to Congress, “Neutrality is no longer possible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples . . . .”
The theory of collective security recognizes that the ideal of peace is inextricably bound up with the stubborn fact of the status quo by calling for a state of affairs in which attempts to alter the status quo by violence are unlawful and doomed to failure through crushing opposition. Unfortunately, more than one nation has found itself actively opposed to the order that the system of collective security has tried to uphold. The disdain of the Axis powers for the League of Nations and the Soviet Union’s tongue-in-cheek participation in the United Nations provide abundant testimony to this fact.
It is the purpose of a world security system to resolve differences peaceably through combined political action and, only upon failing in this objective, to thwart the hostile designs of any state that resorts to military action. In that way a state of affairs should be achieved in which attempts to change the status quo by violence are, and are recognized to be, unnecessary, unlawful, and doomed to failure through crushing opposition. Hence, the short run objective of collective security is to provide sufficient combined military power to insure that armed aggression does not pay, while the concomitant long run goal is to abolish the causes of war, to remove the incentives to seek change by military force, and to establish as an accomplished fact that war is both avoidable and hopeless.
Nevertheless, the political facts of life seem to militate against the probabilities of successful concerted action when the occasion for resistance to armed aggression occurs. Collective security demands that individual nations of varying political complexions and attitudes undertake present sacrifices for the distant ideal of ultimate peace through mutual assistance; that they risk or even assume a major conflict as the terrible price of a goal but dimly perceived and often in regions of the world where they have only very remote interests at best. As Walter Lippmann so aptly phrased it, “When the issue is less than the survival of the great nations, the method of collective security will not be used because it is just as terrifying to the policemen as it is to the lawbreakers.” In other words, the medicine is so repugnant and unproven that the patient, even recognizing, the symptoms of a fatal disease, will delay the treatment until the dose of medicine required is so devastating that its reactions cannot be considered an improvement upon the disease itself.
In trying to create a world organization that had a reasonable chance of success as a security agency, the framers of the United Nations Charter recognized political realities. They faced the fact that, whether we like it or not, the great nations, possessing most of the world’s power to break or maintain peace, must agree and act together if peace is to be preserved. The price of this realistic approach was the concomitant recognition of the principle of great power unanimity, i.e., the veto. If the big boys were going to pick up the check, they were determined also to write the ticket.
We should not be fooled into believing that the U.N. Charter confers any power upon any permanent member of the Security Council that it does not already possess in fact. The veto is nothing but the legal symbol of what the nation that uses it believes to be vital interests on which it is not willing to compromise. Remove the veto and the door might be opened to possible progress on some issues, but outvoting a great power bent on aggression will not bring it into line. A major war would result no matter what the membership or voting provisions in the Charter might be.
The tenuous assumption of great power accord, more hoped for than believed in, upon which the success of the Security Council was hinged, proved to be a political snowman that was doomed to melt under the heat of the post-war clash of opposing ideologies. The deep rift between the United States and Soviet Russia has cast an ominous shadow over any hopeful prospects that the United Nations might prove to be an effective agency for peace enforcement. Supreme testimony to this disappointment has been the formation of political and military regional alliances, such as the North Atlantic Treaty and the Anzus security pact between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Identification of these treaties with Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, pertaining to the right of self-defense, establishes their legal propriety in relationship to the United Nations. This cannot disguise the fact, however, that the threat of aggressive forces in the world and the East-West political schism have made necessary the reliance for security at this time upon traditional measures of defensive military alliance.
This course is not necessarily a reprehensible or retrograde one for the free world to follow. On the contrary, it would be somewhat more than reckless to abandon traditional methods of security, despite their acknowledged shortcomings, before new and better methods are established and known to be operable. Regional arrangements, such as the Organization of American States, can buttress the United Nations by helping to build greater collective strength in certain areas of the world and by working out, on a smaller scale, more refined systems for pacific settlement of disputes.
Nevertheless, it is rather apparent that the political ideal of collective security encounters serious difficulties when it is cast into the arena of world politics. Existing international strife and the present anatomy of world political organization make application of the principle of collective security fraught with peril. An international community comprised of nations of more or less equal strength could amass an overwhelming opposition to any single aggressor or small group of imperialistic states. In a world of two rival superpowers, several middle powers, and many small nations, however, the theory of deterrence as a practical principle for peace begins to look in operation very much like the traditional balance of power.
The two notable attempts to create a world organization to express the ideal of collective security have fallen short of the mark. Moreover, actual practice of members of the League and of the U.N. has failed to live up to the obligations imposed upon them even by the Covenant and the Charter. Today, the U.N., inheriting the legacy of an ignoble past, seemingly has become the scapegoat of an inglorious present.
Certainly it is not a complete surprise to anyone except visionaries to discover that the hopes of 1945 are not being fully realized. Nor is it peculiar to this particular concept of collective security to find it imperfect in operation and initially disappointing in its results. It takes a gigantic effort for a society to live up to the demands of an ideal system. Despite the gains made in the United States in the past decades, we are still a long way from realizing the lofty aims of our American Constitution. Man must grow up to the ideal of political democracy. Centuries-old customs of thought and practice do not disappear overnight.
A doctrine that has become deeply entrenched in the mind of man, for example, is that of absolute national sovereignty. It is a curious kind of poetic justice that modern science which has served fanatical totalitarian masters so well should be the instrument that is indirectly chipping at the foundations of this hallowed but fundamentally fraudulent institution. The prospect of unbridled atomic warfare in a world grown small has driven men to recognize even more than they will admit that the principle of unconditional sovereignty has outlived its original usefulness. A theory advanced by Jean Bodin in the 16th Century, absolute sovereignty became, along with the ideas of the Reformation, the supreme philosophical justification for the break away from Papal domination in secular affairs. As practiced by monarchs, national governments, and modern dictators, international anarchy became the intolerable and essentially unworkable result.
Just as man must mature to attain democratic ideals, so must nations evolve into a realization of the promises of collective security. In proportion as international society is transformed into an integrated community of nations, the principle of absolute national sovereignty will be modified —indeed, has been modified—according to the political, economic, and strategic necessities of the times. The brutal experience of two world wars, coupled with the prospect of another more terrible conflict in which all participants would be losers, has already forced broad agreement that organized global cooperation is necessary to restrain the heretofore unlimited freedom of individual nations to embark upon policies that threaten ruin to the peace of the world. The League of Nations, the Pact of Paris in 1928, and particularly the United Nations Organization have been organized steps toward the absorption of a portion of the national sovereignty of states by the community of nations. If this trend continues, as it surely must, international law will become more a matter of judicial authority backed by collective force and less a reconciliation of the attitudes of sovereign states according to their individual power positions.
Mankind’s choice of roads to this inevitable end, according to historian Arnold Toynbee, is between the “crashing and grinding” unification of the world by totalitarian conquest, which would obliterate national autonomy, or the difficult but less disastrous road of collective security. Ultimate success on this latter path, he believes, should result in a relative diminution of national sovereignty, yet preserve traditional cultures and national administrative authority.
Imperfect as it is, in an imperfect world, the U.N. represents the most progressive organized effort in history to bring nations under the rule of law. It was, and still is, the most practicable international organization that the postwar situation will permit to come into being. Several positive steps have been taken to improve it, such as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution of November 3, 1950, which affirms the authority of the General Assembly to recommend collective measures if the Security Council is paralyzed by the veto. The U.N. has proved its political value as an instrument for the pacific settlement of many disputes and as a means by which diplomatic negotiations can be facilitated.
It must be remembered that in his endeavor to make collective security work man is still taking only his first faltering steps toward a distant goal. Less than 35 years ago aggressive war was a perfectly legitimate instrument of national policy. It has been only since the turn of the century that governments have made any concrete efforts to form cooperative institutions for the purpose of maintaining world peace. The U.N. is not an end in itself. It is a framework for the future. The road ahead is not an easy one. Our progress upon this path is slowed down considerably by the noncooperation of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the grave risks that confront us make the journey no less necessary in a world of increasing social and economic interdependence.
In the words of former Secretary-General Trygve Lie, “The United Nations way is a slow and often discouraging way to go about the work of building a peaceful world, but there is no shortcut.” As Professor Toynbee has indicated, there is the shortcut of World Empire, but this is not the road that most of us want to take.
Policing the World
The plain fact of survival, the desire to preserve our lives, our institutions, our civilization, has forced even practical politicians to recognize the need for collective action. This pragmatic justification for collective security, however, ignores the moral Subsoil in which the concept is rooted. As we have seen, it is the fundamental justice of the idea that proves its value to most jurists and political theorists. The question of right and wrong in world affairs has found its most advanced practical expression in the Charter of the United Nations.
An inevitable participant in a system of justice is a police force. Lawbreakers must be apprehended before they can be judged. They must be punished after they are sentenced. A kind of “police force” was to be provided for under the United Nations by Chapter 7 of the Charter which contains the enforcement provisions intended to put teeth in the U.N. arrangement. Under Articles 42, 43, and 47, the Military Staff Committee was made responsible to the Security Council for the strategic direction of air, sea, and land forces contributed by all members of the U.N. in accordance with special agreements between member states and the Security Council.
No such agreements have ever been made. It could hardly be otherwise, conditions being what they are. The immense technical difficulties arising from the problems of who will contribute how much of what type of forces are staggering in themselves. Add to this the acidity of Russian-American relations produced by opposing interests and the lack of results should hardly astonish us. The U. S. wants a U.N. force as strong as possible in relation to the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R., not unnaturally, holds a contrary view.
When the irresistible force meets the immovable object the only possible solution is not to attempt to break the stalemate but to circumvent it. This is what Secretary of State Acheson did when he introduced the “Uniting for Peace” resolution into the vetoless General Assembly. Simply stated, this resolution, passed by a thumping majority of 52-5 with 2 abstentions, is an attempt to do in the Assembly some of the things that the Security Council has been unable to do because of the Soviet veto.
Let not this ray of light create any false illusions about the possibilities of an international police force, however. The oft-cited analogy in this respect between international and domestic society is likely to be misleading. Such a comparison ignores the fundamental differences between national and international society, differences that are not likely to be extinguished for a considerable time to come.
The international community is composed of only about seventy member states in contrast to the millions of citizens in a domestic society. Within any one country the preponderance of power lies with the vast majority of individuals who consent to the law and with the small police organization necessary to maintain the law against the unruly few. In a society of nations of vastly unequal power, the unruly few frequently can muster up sufficient strength to defy the combined forces of the balance of the community. Here again we come face to face with the inescapable conclusion that the forging of collective defenses for the free world today looks less like a new concept than like the old practice of balance of power. It is important to add, however, that to the degree that the nations who are not dominated by the Soviet Union can create an unbalance of power in their favor, the closer the goal of collective security will be approached.
In the sense, then, that military action represents the will of the vast majority of the members of the international community and is taken in accordance with the obligations of a great multilateral treaty like the U.N. Charter, such measures are properly called “police action.” If the law is broken and military sanctions are imposed under the auspices of a world collective security organization, the situation is legally quite different from the waging of a war in the usual sense. Traditional rights of belligerents and neutrals must, as we have seen, be viewed in a different light. It is in this technical sense, not in a descriptive, literary sense, that the Korean conflict is a “police action.” War by any other name is no less barbarous, but advances in men’s thinking take decades, even centuries, to manifest themselves fully in practice. Until a minimum of force can be used to uphold legal authority, hostilities on a large scale, analogous in many respects to our own Civil War fought to preserve the Union, still will be necessary.
In providing for such military measures as might be required to maintain or restore international peace and security, the framers of the U.N. Charter quite rightly specified operations by air, sea, or land forces, including demonstrations and blockade. Further, Article 45 provides, in part, that “In order to enable the United Nations to take urgent military measures, Members shall hold immediately available national air-force contingents for combined international enforcement action.”
Certain delegations at the San Francisco Conference in 1945, notably those of Australia and France, suggested that “mixed contingents” or “forces of all arms” be designated as an interim provision rather than granting a singular position to air forces in this respect. These countries withdrew their draft amendments when it was pointed out to their satisfaction that Article 45 was only supplementary to other articles providing for the readiness of all types of forces when appropriate agreements could be consummated. In his report to the President on the results of the Conference, Secretary of State Stettinius stated in support of this article that “the majority of countries felt that the great and immediate striking power of air forces over long distances, warranted a special provision with respect to that branch of military power and particular emphasis on the immediate availability of air force contingents.”
It can hardly be denied that air power, particularly strategic air strength, acts as a deterrent to any potential aggressor. Land and sea-based air power is an indispensable element of national and international security. It is of pressing importance that we clarify what is meant by “air power,” however, especially in view of the support given to this type of police force by so many distinguished statesmen.
Military air power consists of strategic and tactical combat aircraft, reconnaissance and ground support planes, and troop carrier and other types of transport aircraft operated by the air force, army, or naval forces of a nation. It is important to include these several elements in any discussion of air power because this form of military force is too often mistakenly identified with the strategic air forces of a country and because there is a vast difference in the missions of the various types of aircraft. This erroneous impression is fortified in connection with international armed forces by such statements of public officials as that of former Secretary Stettinius, quoted above, when he stresses “ . . . the great and immediate striking power . . . over long distances.”
There is little question that the flexible, swift, and devastating retaliation that strategic air power confers upon its possessor is a fierce weapon in the event that the situation requires such tactics. The situations which a collective security system must face, however, are not always cases that call for immediate, death-dealing blows against a particular state. Even in cases of surprise attack by a potent aggressor force, retaliatory bombing from the air is an entirely inadequate measure in itself. One of the important lessons of the battle of Korea has been the reaffirmation of the need for adequate ground strength. Even in this atomic age of unbelievable technology it still takes soldiers on the ground to stop invading armies.
Herein we find the key to a concept of air power that holds great promise for the future as a protector of world peace. This would call for more emphasis upon a highly developed and greatly expanded air transport organization within the U. S. military establishment, and this most probably at considerable expense to the dominant accent that has been placed on a strategic bombing force. In the air age it is entirely logical to find strategic air lift capable of partially performing the task that has heretofore been within the exclusive province of naval and maritime forces.
Although the high operating costs and relatively small payload of even the largest transport aircraft preclude possibilities of mass movement of troops and supplies by air, a fleet of modern transports can deliver a sizeable contingent of paratroopers, weapons, and supporting ground elements that could take to the field until airborne or seaborne reinforcements arrive. The combination of fast communications and a mobile air transport fleet to carry ground forces to any area where limited hostilities may flare up would thus constitute the type of joint military effort that could serve well the objectives of collective security.
On the other hand, the use of strategic air power for the purpose of international police action appears to be strictly limited, when strategic air power is construed to mean only the ability to make long range aerial attacks on urban and industrial targets by heavy, high altitude bombers. The armed forces that are made available for use by an international organization to enforce world law should be compatible with the political goals and joint policies that are decided upon. The necessity for coercion presupposes that all attempts at peaceful settlement of a situation have failed. It does not assume, however, that the population of the transgressor state is, ipso facto, an enemy people.
In applying force against a peccant nation it must never be forgotten that it is the very essence of justice to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. Those responsible for flouting the law must be punished without exterminating masses of innocent people. Our peaceful ends will be destroyed by the use of such heartless and devastating means. In practice this aim can seldom, if ever, absolutely be achieved. Hut it is the guiding principle that should govern our every decision, our every act.
It is characteristic of sanctions that they should adhere to the tenets of peace and justice by being applied progressively from the least drastic measures first to more hostile methods if the initial steps do not succeed. This is part of the “chain of events” theory that is so fundamental to any system of peace enforcement. It is reflected in Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter. It is the manner in which reprisals were normally conducted in the 18th and 19th centuries, jointly or individually, by states that sought redress without resort to war for illegal offenses alleged to have been committed against them by another state. It is the method used against Italy in 1935, the much-advertised failure of which from all indications might have been avoided had it not been for the faint-heartedness of leading members of the League of Nations. It was started by the U.N. against Spain in 1946. It is, in many aspects, the method that has been employed against Red China. Most assuredly, this technique has not always proved to be a smashing success. In cases of raw aggression it may be deemed to be inappropriate from the outset, as in the Korean attack. Nevertheless, it is the only approach that is in consonance with the objectives of collective security and that assures the infliction of the fewest lasting scars on the body politic and the greatest conservation of material resources and human lives.
The strategic air weapon, especially when armed with atomic bombs, is a total measure. As such, it will achieve its maximum effectiveness only if it is used as a last resort with the full political and moral support of the vast majority of the nations and peoples of the world for a cause which commands their utmost respect. The temptation to identify the speed of a fleet of military bombers with fast corrective action in world political affairs is an illusion that must be resisted wherever it is found. It is far more likely that such measures would create many more problems than it is contended that they would solve.
The flexibility of strategic bombing strength is more in its place of application than in the degree of force that can be applied at any one location. “Strategic air warfare,” on the other hand, is distinguished from “strategic bombing” by the great flexibility that is offered by the many types of aircraft that can be used in aerial attack against a selected series of vital military targets. It is in this type of aerial warfare that naval and Marine Corps pilots have been known to excel. Conspicuous flexibility in the different kinds and degrees of force that can be administered by naval power is, in fact, its priceless asset. It is sea power, also, that offers political and psychological flexibility, as well as geographic mobility, for the pacific ends that it is the business of an international organization to try to achieve.
It is not considered necessary in this paper to dwell upon the prominent role that sea power has played in the historic development of great nations. The use of the Royal Navy to consolidate and control the vast possessions of Great Britain is a-famous example of police power in action on a global scale. The use of the American Navy and Marine contingents to restore law and order in the Caribbean area is another. The imperialistic designs or economic motives of those who have thus employed naval power in the past should not prevent us from visualizing how effective it can also be for more noble purposes in the future.
It is instructive to note in this connection a practice that grew up during the 19th century before the international community could resort to legally-constituted, collective measures. This was the institution of pacific blockade, employed principally as a means of reprisal. “Pacific blockade,” just as the term “police action,” must be understood in its technical sense as a method of coercion applied by nations to achieve a specific, limited objective without bringing about the change in legal relations between themselves and the blockaded state, or between themselves and other countries, that the status of belligerency and neutrality entail. Such measures could lead to war and occasionally did, as in the case of the French blockade of Mexico in 1838. Whether war was provoked or not largely depended upon the reaction of the blockaded nation. Usually faced with the prospects of engaging one or more of the great maritime powers, the blockaded country most often found it more politic to come to terms. In this way pacific blockade was found to be quite effective in dealing with international delinquency.
The example of pacific blockade, even if there is doubt as to recognition of the concept in international law, is important for several reasons. First, it demonstrates a method that has been used successfully in the past to apply force without resorting to widespread hostilities. It illustrates one of the most peaceable means of using military force, namely, naval blockade. It shows how naval force can be applied in times of legal peace to the precise degree required to enforce a legal rule or to achieve a specific political aim. In addition, it focuses attention upon the relationship between non-military sanctions, such as economic and financial embargo, and the use of blockade measures.
The interruption of maritime trade with an enemy state is a naval technique proved to be highly effective since the days of the Napoleonic wars. Economic embargo is considered to be an international sanction that offers genuine possibilities for the future. Sea power is an essential requisite for the employment of the economic weapon. No other type of military power is so adapted to the enforcement of economic and financial pressure. Indeed, there is such an integrated relationship between economic warfare and naval force that a group requested by the League of Nations to study economic sanctions in 1921 was called the International Blockade Committee.
Supply by sea is today and in the foreseeable future the primary lifeline of the majority of nations for raw materials, foodstuffs, and finished products. Four-fifths of the world’s international commerce moves over ocean routes. Maritime supremacy is the key to the ability to control this traffic to the degree that the collective political authority deems advisable. Naval blockade is a classic demonstration of maritime supremacy and is one of the most far-reaching in its effects. Patrolling the high seas without restriction, naval squadrons can search, seize, and, if necessary, sink merchant vessels that violate the edicts of the organized community of nations. Suspected blockade runners can be located by naval air patrol, boarded at sea from surface craft, and given appropriate instructions after the vessel, crew, and cargo have been inspected and identified. The new type of long range blockade developed during both world wars includes many techniques that are nonmilitary in origin, are global in scope, and must depend for their enforcement upon a preponderance of naval power not merely in a single restricted area but throughout the entire world.
A merchant fleet to carry people and goods is an essential element of sea power. The importance of control of the seas has assumed added significance with the growing dependence of the United States and many other nations upon foreign sources of supply for many vital raw materials. Naval forces have the dual mission of safeguarding the sea lanes from unlawful obstruction, particularly through anti-submarine warfare operations, and of denying the use of the sea by an aggressor to transport his troops and materials of war. Sea transport is one of the most crucial defensive or offensive factors in almost any conceivable international armed clash of importance in the world of today and tomorrow. As the struggle to halt the invasion of South Korea amply has demonstrated, what sea lift lacks in speed to establish initial contact with the lawbreaker’s forces, it makes up for in payload to deliver a superior counterforce.
The unique suitability of sea power as a weapon of peace leaps to the eye in many other ways. No nation is particularly eager to have foreign troops or aircraft based on its soil. Nor do peoples consider it an act of good will for the military aircraft of a foreign power to cruise in fighting formation over their territory. Ample evidence of these homely truths is found not only in daily newspapers but also in the rules of both customary and conventional international law. Ships of state traditionally have been accorded greater rights to enter foreign ports than have been or are today accorded troops or aircraft. Naval vessels, therefore, have the singular advantage of being emissaries of good will and peace one minute and a formidable striking force the next. Fast carrier task forces can roam the seas with an immense mobility that precludes the necessity for an extensive network of sea and air bases that often must be constructed by a larger power on foreign shores.
Several valuable and necessary tasks of naval police have been accomplished to a considerable degree by great national navies in the past. Chief among these have been the policing of the sea against piracy, prevention of discriminatory or monopolistic use of fishing areas, regulation of maritime traffic, and provision for safety of navigation against perils of the sea.
Today we also find in sea power the ideal qualifications for an instrument of coercion under a system of collective law enforcement. Naval raiding parties or Marine Corps expeditionary forces can be landed speedily to quell small uprisings. Carrier planes can interdict lines of communication or execute pin-point bombing of designated military targets, power plants, etc., as has been so dramatically illustrated by Seventh Fleet planes in North Korea. Rockets, missiles, aircraft, and shells can be. launched or fired from mobile sea-borne platforms. Large forces can be carried quickly and economically to strategic landing sites, as was brilliantly demonstrated at Inchon, with the least possible damage or loss of life among the civilian population. Long lines of communication can be' sustained to carry on limited or extensive operations anywhere in the world.
There is no question that all types of armed forces—land, sea, and air—are needed for the application of military sanctions. Each offers its unique and indispensable contribution. Sea power, in particular, appears to possess the inherent capabilities that are most eminently suitable for policing the world for peace. It is unfortunate that statesmen frequently forget this fact and often ignore the stern lessons of very recent history.
The Lesson for America
During the MacArthur hearings an interesting exchange occurred when Senator Cain asked Admiral Sherman several questions regarding the obligations of U.N. members to be bound by a naval blockade.
Admiral Sherman: “Well, sir, the only precedent that we have to go to is that a United Nations naval blockade of North Korea was established, and as far as I know, it has been respected by all members of the United Nations.”
Senator Cain: “And Russia has not in that instance said that the blockade was an act of war?”
Admiral Sherman: “No, sir. Russian ships have been, as far as I know, meticulous in avoiding the combat area. For instance, they have avoided going through the straits between Korea and Japan.”
The part that naval forces have played in the Korean conflict in amphibious warfare, naval bombardment, air attack, blockade, patrol, evacuation, minesweeping, and sea transport reaffirms the faith of the American people in a strong Navy. It is axiomatic that command of the seas is essential to our national security, that it makes our political, economic, and military influence felt wherever our ships have access to foreign land, and that it provides us with the ability to keep hostilities far away from our own shores.
The battle for Korea is symbolic of the problems involved in stopping aggression through collective military measures in today’s world. It teaches many lessons, several of which have been enumerated earlier. We have seen that not all nations will agree upon the character of the threat. National policies will differ on what measures, if any, to apply, both in kind and degree. Of those nations which agree substantially in principle, the extent to which they will support the operation will differ in accordance with what they are able to do and with their opinions of what they have to do in their own interest. Lastly, we acknowledged that by whatever name it is called, or with whatever ideological ointments it is sanctified, it is still a costly and terrible conflict to those who are fighting in it.
The Korean struggle teaches something else. It demonstrates that the courage, power, vision, and enlightened self-interest necessary to make collective security work exist in sufficient degree to halt a formidable aggressive force. It offers convincing evidence, such as that given by Admiral Sherman above, that collective military measures can be directed against states directly supported by one of the permanent members of the Security Council without precipitating a world war. It is a conspicuous, living example of the pragmatic idea underlying the principle of collective security, i.e., limited warfare waged today to prevent unlimited war tomorrow.
The dominant role of the United States within the U.N. makes the facts of national security freely transmutable into those of international security. The armed forces required to make the idea of collective security viable must be provided for. The United States continues to be the arsenal of democracy. In building common defenses let us never overlook the fact that our ultimate objective is peace and law in the world. If we have to fight for this goal again and again, we must tailor our military policy to the fundamental justice of our political purposes.
We must endeavor with all the wisdom, courage, and patience at our command to employ our military might with judicious restraint as long as we can possibly do so. Mass hysteria and national hatred cannot serve our purposes well. Systematic devastation of an “enemy” population can only sow the seeds of further hatred, economic turmoil, and social poison. In a world gone mad with absolutes, we must measure up to our portentous responsibilities by learning to discriminate between the amount of force required to achieve a specific political aim and that required to win a total military “victory.” Our democratic ideals, our moral principles, our spiritual faith, demand this course. Herein lies the greatest long range hope that today’s aims can be tomorrow’s achievements.