CREATING THE 
ATLANTIC 
COMMUNITY 


GEORGE E. G. CATLIN 

TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE 


GEORGE E. G. CATLIN is author of The Atlantic 
Community and a former member of the Fabian Executive 
Committee. 


FABIAN TRACT 360 



FABIAN SociETY, 

11, Dartmouth Street, S.W.l. 

Note.-This pamphlet, like all publications of 
the F AB/AN SOCIETY, represents not the collective 
view of the Society but only the view of the 
individual who prepared it. The responsibility n(
the Society is limited to approving the publications 
which it issues as worthy of consideration withi11 
the Labour Movement . 

March, 1965. 


1. Planning Peace 
JN all _d_iscussions of i~ternational affairs there are two important pre


requ!Sltes. The first IS to look at the map and to study its strategic 
implications. Such a study often shows the objective limitations to what 
can be done. The other is to consider past policy, whether it be that of a 
nation or of a political movement; and to reflect upon how the principles 
guiding or determining past policy can be adapted to the actual situation 
one confronts, and to people's aspirations for the future. 

Looking back t9 the period in Britain between the wars, one observes 
what may seem at.first glance a paradox. On the one hand there was an 
international approach, a marked confidence in such world-wide agencies 
as the League of Nations, especially in the Labour and Liberal parties ; 
and on the other side, there was a diffidence and, indeed, distrust, not 
unwarranted by the historical events of the 'Thirties, of "the Continent". 
But these two elements are not necessarily contradictory. There is a certain 
British optimism that any sound international structure must, to be stable, 
rest in the last resort upon those same principles of representative democracy, 
of the rule of law and of the maintenance of human rights, which 
are also specially recognised and historically exemplified in the British 
political system. They have ·been among the major British contributions 
to Western civilisation, of which the British have been justifiably proud, 
and which many other countries have made their own. 

Many politically minded people, again particularly Labour and Liberal 
supporters, have transferred their resolute support for the League of 
Nations to the United Nations. It is, however, quite proper to ask whether 
the United Nations can, at the present time, realistically be relied upon to 
maintain and "enforce" peace or, to use the words of the Preamble to the 

U.N. Charter, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war"? 
More, can it assure the conditions of personal security and freedom? 
The logical consequence of these aspirations may be the establishment of 
some kind of World Government or world security authority, to maintain 
the international rule of law. Such a development would involve an improved 
peace-keeping machinery, and effective force to operate it. 
The United Nations Charter 

At the present time, not only is the United Nations Charter in grave 
need of revision, owing to the disparity between voting power and executive 
power, but the Organisation itself faces a serious risk of bankruptcy 
owing to the failure to pay agreed contributions, or to support U.N. 
emergency action, for example, in the Congo, on the part of some members, 
among them the USSR and France. Encouragement in principle of 
the admirable Secretary-General and his staff is one thing ;,1any development 
that might enable them to intervene to settle, other t!Ian by agreed 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

arbitration, any dispute between the major Powers, or even their close 
allies, is quite another. Even the Geneva Protocol's principle of agreed 
compulsory arbitration, for which Arthur Henderson fought between the 
wars, is not yet generally accepted. Although it is in process of erosion, the 
principle of equal national sovereignty among equal states obtains, at least 
in theory, in the United Nations. The Afro-Asian bloc, for instance, while 
willing to discuss in Addis Ababa combined intervention in South Africa, 
and even African continental union, continues to support national sovereignty 
in New York and Geneva. 

We can debate whether an organisation for effectively upholding international 
law can best spring from a revision of the present United 
Nations Charter, or whether the present United Nations can no more turn 
into a world government than a horse and cart can naturally evolve into 
a diesel engine. The pace may be different, but the intended function of the 
UN and of any form of World Authority is the same. The necessarily 
slow evolution of the UN does not stop other Governments, as well as 
the United States, .from co-operating to form an international Peace Corps 
of volunteers, nor does it preclude the first stage in establishing the international 
armed police force contemplated in the United Nations Charter, 
but never implemented. One such stage has been suggested by Lord Attlee: 
a Commonwealth armed police force, composed of seconded units or of 
volunteers. This could be the model for a wider scheme. 

Although the UN is probably capable of evolving into a World 
Authority, and deserves sincere support, it cannot, in its present condition 
and on its own, maintain a stable peace in the world in a way consistent 
with personal freedom. 

A World Authority and its Control 

The real obstacle to world government projects emerges with firm 
opposition to anything like the troika proposals to divide the UN Secretariat 
into three. Any kind of international police force has to be used to 
execute certain decisions and would have to be controlled by some kind 
of authority. Decisions have to be made and control exercised. Hugh 
Gaitskell believed that this could be done by setting up a World Authority, 
which might perhaps gather under its aegis a number of functional international 
organisations, economic, military, legal and political. There would 
yet have to be a locus of final sovereignty to decide, or to act as an arbiter. 

The United Nations is still "a free assembly of sovereign nations". 
Perhaps the formula to be realised is "a sovereign assembly of free nations". 
It is not a final objection that this is a remote ideal which has little bearing 
on the politics of the contemporary world. A ship's captain would be a 
poor seaman if, while rightly taking the advice of his navigation officer 
and his chief engineer while at sea, he had no notion of the port he 
proposed to reach. Men are "choosing animals". It is part of their intelligence 
to know where they are trying to go, and what ideals may be 
realised. 

The obstacle lies not in the remoteness of the world government ideal, 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

but in the profound conflict about the goal to be reached. This was the 
reality behind the troika conflict. This is not to say that the Russians 
and Chinese disapprove in principle of world government. The question 
is: who exercises decisive control? The West may fear, under any system 
of democratic world representation, the millions of China. The Communist 
bloc keeps its eyes fixed on the Afro-Asian bloc as well as on Latin 
America ; and upon the chances of being outvoted in any world assembly 
that is no longer checked by the veto. The world victory of Marxist-
Leninist Communism, it seems to them-or its world defeat---<:ould turn 
on this issue. Here the Peking Government, in some ways so Stalinist at 
home, becomes Trotskyite in its international approach. The realistic advocates 
of world government have to advance with this difficulty in mind. 

Despite the difficulties in the short run, a world goverrtment is the 
logical guarantee of peace and will inevitably come. The so-called "absolute 
sovereign state" was shaped in the Seventeenth Century and is today 
as out of date for maintaining peace as most other pieces of machinery 
from that date for their particular functions ; its place is in the museum 
of history. Used under conditions of twentieth century technical knowledge 
and pressure, the sovereign state will explode. The national states 
must, of course, remain sovereign for specific functions ; but the keeping of 
international peace is not one of these functions. The problem of practical 
politics is to find a really effective instrument for keeping the peace permanently. 
Such an instrument cannot be developed in one stage. 

The Sharing of Power 

Clearly the development of any world structure to enforce peace, and 
even of an effective United Nations, depends upon an extensive measure 
of accord and agreement on policy among the Great Powers, or upon the 
hegemony of one Power or group, a hegemony beyond the prospect of 
effective challenge. An instance of the former was the extraordinarily 
optimistic expectation of harmony among the Great Powers who had 
emerged as victors from the Second World War, an expectation that was 
the basis of the veto-armed Security Council. An instance of the latter 
is the situation envisaged by Communists when they speak of the eventual 
world dominance of their ideology-even although Russian and Eastern 
European Communists may hold that the route to this dominance lies in 
organising the support of a majority among the masses of the peoples of 
the world, so that its achievement beyond possibility of overthrow could 
come about peaceably and even democratically. Hence there can be "peaceful 
co-existence" provisionally-and even peaceful competition leading to 
increased prosperity for all. . 

The Chinese Communist Government, on the contrary, asserts that 
such a peaceful development would be challenged militarily by reactionary 
forces ; and, therefore, one cannot dismiss the probability that military 
domination will also have to be established. However, short of a nuclear 
or conventional weapons breakthrough of a kind that one cannot predict 
(least of all of China), the balance of terror makes such military domina



CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

tion unlikely. The nuclear monopoly which the Americans temporarily held 
lies in the past. 

The realistic alternative to the hegemony of one nation or one group 
is not a perfect harmony between the Great Powers which is hardly likely 
to be attained, but the full development of the concept of "peaceful coexistence". 
Peaceful co-existence-wh1ch does not mean the end of ideological 
warfare but only of military conflict-can be practicable between 
very diverse social systems. This indeed has happened often enough in the 
past. It has happened between Christendom and !slam-although only, be it 
added, after bitter battles such as Lepanto-and between Catholics and 
Protestants. In the present case, can we reach the compromise without a 
direct military confrontation? 

There have indeed even been military alliances between conflicting 
social systems, such as the Triple Entente of 1914, which included Republican 
France and Tsarist Russia. This was a closely organised alliance of 
power, however much some of the states within it hoped that a liberal 
parliamentary ideology would prevail, and however much Tsarist Russia 
hoped for the contrary. Parenthetically it may be pointed out that, nearly 
a century before, the historian Alexis de Tocqueville prophetically declared 
that the United States and Russia would be the two super-Powers of the 
future; but it was yet of a Tsarist Russia that he wrote. 

"The Prevention of War" 
The major theme of John Strachey's book, The Prevention of War, is 
that the stable peace of the world, at least for this century, is likely to 
depend upon a condominium of the two super-Powers, the USA and the 
USSR. Since the days of the San Francisco Conference of 1945 and earlier, 
the Soviet Union has tended to conduct her international relations in 
Great Power terms. Major negotiations or agreements have been reached 
between the Soviet Union and countries she regards as on a level, militarily 
and politically, with herself. At San Francisco Molotov held that only 
the decisions of the Great Powers on the Security Council, holding a veto, 
demanded serious attention. Indeed these Powers were in his view at most 
three, the United States, the USSR and Great Britain. China was given a 
veto as a gesture to Asia's future, and France as a courtesy to the European 
past. 
The same prepossession explained Mr. Khrushchov's periodic anxiety 
to negotiate directly, at the summit, with the US President, and the difficulties 
recent British Prime Ministers have sometimes in the past encountered 
in trying to get themselves accepted as serious negotiators. That 
nuclear power should be held only by two Powers was re-emphasised by 
Mr. Khrushchov in his talks in 1963 with Mr. Harold Wilson in Moscow. 
The same policy explains the chilly reception of the tentative diplomatic 
flirtations and hints about a Europe extending from the Atlantic to the 
Urals which were put forward by General de Gaulle. 
President Roosevelt, thinking in condominium terms, contemplated a 
direct deal with Stalin, about whom he had optimistic views, even at the 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

cost of unshipping the pilot in the shape of the "imperialist" Churchill. The 
view that the USA and the Soviet Union (who have, as was proclaimed 
in 1941, "never yet fought a war") cannot get together, does not square 
with the historical facts, whatever may be the prepossessions of ideological 
doctrainaires. Now that the Prime Minister of the Soviet Union and 
that country's broadcasting system can openly mourn the death of an 
American President, all things are possible. 

The Observer (30th December, 1962) had an editorial on Strachey's 
idea of basing world government on a duopoly of nuclear arms under 
the effective control of the USA and USSR alone, acting through the 
United Nations. 

"Critics have answered that such a system could not be imposed on a 
recalcitrant France, let alone on a determined China. This may prove to 
be so; but in that case, no system of world government with less powerful 
backing would have a hope of obliging such recalcitrants to comply: and 
a government that cannot enforce its edicts is no government at all ... so 
far our own Government has scarcely given a lead." 

A main and urgent object of policy must be to prevent a wider distribution 
of thermo-nuclear weapons. The logic of national sovereign independence, 
prestige and glory is opposed to such a policy. The interest of 
humanity is in its favour. By the time Albania has the Bomb, then, by 
accident, irresponsibility or escalation from a conventional war, nuclear 
destruction will not be possible but probable. The "Unthinkable" will have 
happened. This downward slide must be stopped, if necesasry by force 
majeure ; above all, existing nuclear Powers should neither sell nuclear 
arms nor assist in their manufacture by third countries. 

The obvious reply to Strachey would be that the smaller countries of 
the world would never tolerate his proposal. Their leaders and electorates 
would never stand for it. The response here is : does it matter, in power 
terms, what they think, or what they would tolerate? If necessary, they 
will have to be told. They will have to be embargoed. This is a harsh and 
undiplomatic way of putting the matter. But it closely connects with the 
great nuclear conundrum: how many fingers finally on the trigger? 

What, nevertheless, is true, and what diplomatic statesmanship must 
reckon on, is that the legitimate political and military claims of those 
countries which are not Super-Powers must also be taken into account, 
through recognised and organised consultation. An international dictatorship, 
even a diarchy, is not a happy solution. This point we shall have to 
discuss further, as well as whether the Europe of the Six is not itself a 
Super-Power.

The central question is whether there is any serious prospect, in view 
of their ideological differences, of Washington and the Kremlin coming to 
such a dual arrangement. As mentioned above there are historical precedents, 
some of them in very recent history, for believing that this might be 
possible. Turning to the current ideological differences, we must rid our 
minds of cant: a century hence, many of our so-called ideological differences 
will be looked at with wondering incomprehension. To the pure 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

Communism of, say, the Israeli Kibbutzim, few people entertain any objection, 
although they may doubt its general practicability in the industrialised 
modern world. There is much to be said in favour of the idea. As to 
"materialism", there are in the West fully as many "materialists", governed 
by the profit motive and corrupting our culture, as there are in the Soviet 
Union. The same applies to "atheists", whether inside or outside the religion 
of Marxism. It is not only in the Soviet Union, after all, that the 
Lord's Prayer may not be recited in the State schools : it happens in the 
United States. 

In the political sphere, most people in the West prefer the multi-party 
system. But it is not sacred, and whereas some peoples accept it, others 
have freely voted for its rejection. Many countries who are allied to the 
United States or Britain have a one-party or non-party system, or even a 
"benevolent dictatorship". Among the allies of the Soviet Union, restrictions 
on political life and intellectual life have been considerably relaxed ; 
in Poland, Hungary and Russia itself, there is greater freedom of speech, 
if not yet of the Press or of political organisation, than at any time since 
the last war. In economics, both the Soviet bloc and the West are increasingly 
coming to accept the principle of social planning, made dynamic 
by competition. The Soviet Union confronts the problem of meeting con· 
sumer choice, and thus the beginnings of a free market, at a time when 
the Western nations recognise that profits and wages cannot be decided 
entirely by the movements of the market, but must be guided by the 
national interest. Of course, in some doctrinaire quarters on both sides, 
there is a fanatical desire to impose one social and doctrinal blueprint upon 
the world by force, and this must be resisted. The real issue is one of 
power and dominance ; and issnes of power have always been matters for 
possible accommodation. 

On all questions of accommodation, optimism must be tempered by 
prudence. However, if effective power passed to the Soviet Army, it might 
be easier to deal with than any political party of ill-defined but fanatical 
inspiration. This is indeed thought probable in the Pentagon. Alternatively, 
the Soviet people may politically "normalise", becoming primarily concerned 
with their standard of living at home, and with the relaxation of 
restrictions, and less with the forwarding of any revolutionary doctrine. 

In short, far from a Washington-Kremlin agreement being impossible, 
it is frequently argued that, in practice if not in principle, American policy 
today is concerned to reach some wide-ranging agreement on policy with 
the Soviet Union, the partial test-ban being one example. The effort to 
take the tension out of the relationship between the two countries has 
again been demonstrated by their independent decisions to reduce the size 
of their military budgets. All this, however, is quite different from the 
argument, sometimes coupled with it, that Washington, in pursuit of this 
policy, has lost interest in Europe, NATO and the Atlantic Union. This is 
false, nor it is to be supposed that the US will go behind the backs of its 
allies in reaching or seeking agreement. Indeed there is probably too much 
timidity in the US State Department about such a suspicion being awakened. 


CREATING TH~ ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

On the contrary, French policy has recently been assuming the stance that 
all discussions of policy with Washington by "United Europe" must go 
diplomatically through Paris. 

The Pascifists 

It may be argued that the theme that accommodations of power are 
the best guarantee of peace is misguided ; that it is not true to allege that 
all politics is power politics, whether operating through co-operation or 
domination. The right route, it may be said, is very simple. If everybody 
gave up war, there would be no wars. Fighting--even including violence 
on the part of civil authorities, like the police-is morally wrong. 

This is not just impractical nonsense. That an entire nation, led by a 
disciplined corps, might sit down and fold its arms, is an aspect of the 
tactic of civil non-co-operation. It appeared in Socialist circles once, in 
the form of the argument, by Jaures and others, for a General Strike. 
Similar tactics, for example, as used by Norwegians in the period of Nazi 
occupation, can be of considerable embarrassment to the conquering power. 
However, a demand for lasting and total non-co-operation directed against 
a conqueror government is in effect an appeal for permanent anarchy 
among the conquered. It is a difficult policy to sustain, likely, as against 
the Vichy Government of France, to turn to other forms of resistance. 

The doctrine of Gandhi is often given as an instance of successful 
non-co-operation. But that doctrine is now being busily reinterpreted in 
Tndia as one limited to civil disobedience and not designed to cope with 
international conflicts. This almost certainly does the Mahatma an injustice; 
but his spiritual successor, Vinoba Bhave, does not go beyond saying 
that, if rifles have to be used, they will be fired with "reluctance and 
regret". In effect the Indian attitude favours an appeal to public opinion 
and to the world's conscience, and its diplomacy is conducted with great 
self-control; but it is not a full-blown acceptance of the pacifist position. 

There is, however, a permanent value in pacifist opinion. It lies in 
preserving a balance of public attitudes. So long as there are many "unreconstructed" 
people in the world who think that political problems can 
best be solved in primitive traditional terms by "sword and shield", and 
who make no radical attempt to change political patterns and agencies 
now utterly archaic, there is a case for the presence of those holding an 
entirely opposed view, who would rather die, protesting, under the rule 
of a tyrant, than take to war. A sane public opinion can emerge from this 
clash of views. 

Further, a public opinion shaped in part by obstinate peace-mindedness 
can compel statesmen to bestir themselves to vision and moral courage, 
instead of being tempted to behave traditionally, quieting their consciences 
by saying that they have done all that can be expected of them, while 
"backing their machines over the precipice". Such stubborn supporters of 
peace put a brake upon appeals to irrational national passion and jingoism. 
It also encourages a willingness to take some risks for the sake of peace 
on earth, and for the slow growth of mutual trust between peoples. 


CREATfNG THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

An international police force, like a domestic police force, can only 
be successful in maintaining peace if a world public is educated in, and 
accepts, the habit of peace-mindedness, and if, moreover, there is an 
habitual and general confidence in such an institution. 

The Renunciation of Nuclear Weapons 

The demand for the total renunciation of nuclear weapons for national 
ends, whether general or unilaterally by Britain, raises issues which cannot 
be adequately discussed here. There is a solid argument for the renunciation 
of a type of weapon which is crushingly expensive (especially if a 
second strike force is taken into account), where, within an alliance, this 
armament can be functionally better maintained by others. It might, of 
course, be necessary to have a counter-balancing expansion of conventional 
arms, pending agreed measures of disarmament. But beyond the technical 
argument, there is of course a crucial political one. It is difficult, to say 
the least, to campaign against the indiscriminate spread of nuclear weapons, 
so likely to end in "accidental" war, if one insists on a privileged position 
for oneself, which other countries of similar standing may well want to 
imitate. It is not by any means certain that a unilateral renunciation of 
nuclear weapons by Britain would be an example that would be followed 
elsewhere, e.g. by France. But it is likely that such a proclaimed readiness 
to make a future renunciation would make it far easier to draw the line 
at the present position, and to prevent any further nuclear dispersion. It is 
deplorable that disarmament, defence and foreign affairs are so often treated 
as segregated subjects. While Geneva labours on disarmament, NATO has 
not even a subsection working on such problems. 

What must be realised, ho·.vever, is that there is no simple solution 
to international tensions. Even those who are prepared to put up no resistance 
of any kind to an attack or bid for domination will not find the 
solution lies there. The slogan "Better Red than dead", for all 'its slickness, 
avoids the technical probability that, in any area of nuclear war, even 
those willing to become opportunistically "Red" will find themselves dead 
also. If such a war took place in Europe, no European country could hope 
to escape completely. Indeed a neutralist policy, which would upset the 
present balance, might encourage a gamble and thereby increase the chances 
of war. 

The conclusion is obvious. Nuclear war has finally to be excluded, 
as an instrument of policy, by effective power. This must mean the development 
of mutual confidence in an agency, first a regional one within the 
United Nations, then taking in a majority of states, and finally global in 
its scope. The escalation to nuclear war from some conflict of "vital 
interests", for instance oil in the Middle East, must be checked at its 
beginning. It is entirely premature, and indeed mistaken, to try abruptly to 
bring the Soviet Union into the Western camp, or even to presume that, 
in a crisis, Russia and China would not act together. Indeed, such strategic 
and economic influence as the Soviet Union may have in Peking is of 
immense importance; for it will enable China to be gradually brought 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

within any world settlement. But, in the first place, the need is to work 
out a modus vivendi, or some measure of habitual co-operation and confidence, 
between the USA and the Soviet Union, who hold the actual requisite 
power between them. 

The task of statesmen is to treat the establishment of a stable peace as 
their prime object in politics, while obtaining, for those of their countrymen 
and their allies who share similar values, the best deal compatible with 
that object. In a negotiation between the giant Powers, the sincerity of 
purpose which generates confidence must be displayed. It is crucial to avoid 
such deplorable and gauche mis-timings as the U.2 incident, and to resist 
pressure from selfish combinations of industrial and military power. It is 
also necessary that the negotiator should have the power that the other 
side respects. A major cause of war is the temptation to take an irresponsible 
gamble. 


2. Regional Arrangements 
AN examination of the documents shows that the honeymoon of the 

West and the Soviet Union, between the end of the Second World 
War and the beginning of the "Cold War", lasted only a few weeks. It 
was soon eclipsed by the ve.(ed issue of free elections in Poland. The 
excessively optimistic supposition of unity among the veto-holding Powers 
in the Security Council evaporated. Increasing disillusionment about what 
the United Nations, no longer "a club of the like-minded" but "a town-
hall of the world", could do in executive terms to enforce peace, led 
many of its members to seek security in another quarter. These were 
Regional Arrangements, authorised under Chapter VIII of the United 
Nations Charter itself. It was hoped that a firm mutual confidence might 
be dP-veloped within these arrangements. 

NATO and OEEC 

Ernest Bevin, in the Brussels Treaty of 1948, made an unprecedented 
commitment on Britain's part to guarantee the security of· continental 
Western Europe, though West Germany was still at this time excluded. 
However, with the formation of the Western European Union in 1954, the 
German Federal Republic was brought within the ambit of the organisation. 
The Brussels Treaty was a stage in the organisation of an effective 
alliance for Western defence, which culminated in the establishment of 
NATO. But the development o~ regional organisation was not exclusively 
military. The Hague Conference, sponsored by six voluntary organisations, 
met in May, 1948, to consider the political implications. Issuing from this, 
the Statute of the Council of Europe was signed in London in May, 1949, 
and the Council first met in Strasburg three months later. George Marshall's 
famous speech at Harvard in 1947 was siezed upon by Ernest Bevin, and 
from that grew OEEC and a parallel regional development on the economic 
side. 

ECSC and EEC 
The European Coal and Steel Community, which came into existence 
in 1951, was the outcome of a different kind of approach to regional 
arrangements. The High Aut.,.ority of this community was from the beginning 
supranational; and its status was recognised by the accreditation of 
permanent Government representatives to it, and later to the European 
Economic Community-in effect, ambasasdors. Robert Schuman, briefly 
Premier and for long Minister of Foreign Affairs for France, was largely 
responsible for the creation of ECSC, together with that able civil servant, 
Jean Monnet. Schuman never concealed his belief that the issues of sovereignty 
and political organisation could not be avoided, and that functional 
agencies could not operate for long, efficiently, without some control of 


CREATING THE ATLANTTC COMMUN ITY 

their political direction. The British Government persistently expressed a 
preference for a more modest approach, not going beyond close intergovernmental 
co-operation, until the decision, a decade later, to apply for 
membership of the EEC. 

The first major reverse for this new and hopeful policy, supported by 
Alcide de Gasperi of Italy and Conrad Adenauer of West Germany as 
well as by Schuman, came with the defeat in 1954 of the proposals for a 
European Defence Community (EDC), which has aroused bitter controversy 
in the Fourth Republic. M. Pierre Mendes-France felt that less ambitious 
proposals were more likely to meet with British co-operation ; and the 
scheme was shelved. It was due to disappointment over this failure that the 
late John Foster Dulles spoke of a possible "agonising re-appraisal" of 
US policy towards Europe. In retrospect, it seems possible that a great 
blunder was made, despite Lord Avon's arguments to the contrary. But 
the proposals for a European Economic Community went forward. The 
Messina Conference, in which the British Government did not choose to 
take official part, took place in June, 1955, and. the consequent Treaty of 
Rome was signed in March, 1957, coming into force in the following year. 
As a counterbalance, the British Government set out to organise the seven 
EFTA countries into a free trade area, but without any central authority 
possessing supranational powers. In the view of some authorities, Britain 
had made the wrong choice in staying out of the EEC. Mr. Dean Acheson, 
sometime US Secretary of State, and a good friend of Britain's, declared 
that she had lost, through too much scepticism and too little vision, a 
sense of the historical role that she had to play. 

British entry into EEC 
The more recent developments in the Common Market controversy 
will be fresh in most people's minds and do not need to be recited here. 
Mr. Macmillan swung so far towards the view that entry into the EEC 
was vital, that the Sunday Times was able to write editorially, "there is no 
political alternative, for the Conservative Party, for whom Europe is now 
the central strand of policy" . What one is entitled to say is that, if Britain 
had been a party in the negotiations that led to the Treaty of Rome, the 
leadership of the emerging Community would almost certainly have been 
hers. As it was, the organisation of the Common Market increasingly 
became an arrangement, for their mutual benefit, between French farmers 
and German industrialists. In Mr. Waiter Lippmann's words, the EEC 
tended to become "a closed community under French control with German 
assistance" . This development culminated in the, in many ways, admirable 
Franco-German Treaty of 1962 ; thereafter British entry on tolerable terms 
became increasingly difficult in itself, as well as more clearly involving 
breaches of EFTA and Commonwealth pledges. already given. 

French Policy 
French policy affirms that a European bloc would be economically strong 
enough to become a Third World Power and to afford its own nuclear 


CREAriNG THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

weapons. Its exponents persistently suspect that the US Congress cannot be 
guaranteed to be permanently committed to such a Europe. Since the 
present NATO Treaty permits seccessions in five years' time. they really 
visualise a new kind of NATO-their own. And they hold that the Soviet 
Union can be safely defied, on the hypothesis that it will not in fact go 
to war, because the Americans, here useful, will have no option but to 
check this, should it happen. In brief, they assume an "Anglo-Saxon" shield 
of protection, while feeling free to cock a Gallic snook at the US and 
the UK. It could become a policy of calculated contempt. 

However, it is a very dubious assumption that Dr. Erhard or Willi 
Brandt will play this game. Both of them have reiterated time and time 
again, their loyalty to the Atlantic Alliance, and their support for the idea 
of a partnership, a union of the two great clubs. Certainly, as Lippmann 
has said, "the partnership which we have assumed to be existing has in fact 
been struck a shattering blow"-his comment on the final breakdown of 
the negotiations for British entry in 1963. But, as has been happily said, 
no one yet knows for certain whether President de Gaulle himself is "an 
unconditional Gaullist". 

Breaking up NATO 

One challenging view of the present European situation has been put 
forward by Dr. George Lichtheim in Europe and America: The Future of 
the Atlantic Community. The author believes that the future of the Atlantic 
Community is nil. What Britain should still do is to join the Common 
Market, if possible, on the probable French terms. The Commonwealth is 
not a unit, although it could be "a trading partner". "We are not here concerned," 
says the author, "with the prospects of these countries" . As for 
the British, who lag economically behind their Continental neighbours, they 

"must get over their lingering attachment to the myth of Anglo-American 
partnership". Culturally, this particular partnership, or supposed partnership, 
i~ viewed by the continental Europeans with hostility. What is proposed is a 
third Gaullist force, a new "little giant", brandishing independent sovereignty 
between the two other giants, which "little giant" is here called 
"Europe", though it is, of course, no more than North-western Europe 
plus a dubious Italy. 

In brief, the book advances a plan for breaking up NATO, the 
assumption being that the West in two parts-two mutually suspicious parts 
--can balance the Soviet Union and keep the peace. In the words of M. 
Guy Mollet, "this presupposes the end of an integrated NATO". It is also 
deeply hostile to a USA·USSR rapprochement. What we have instead is a 
profoundly reactionary attempt to replace either One World or a Commonwealth 
of Free Nations by a revived absolute sovereignty, regional 
and exclusive, clad in the imperial cloak of Charlemagne. 

The right kind of Regional Organisation 

The customary argument against all regional arrangements, especially 
of a closed or "community" nature, is that they only conduce bigger and 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

better wars. This argument is unsound because, as with the EEC, they can 
eliminate the very real risk of war between old enemies which are brought 
together within the regional arrangements; and because Russian policy, for 
a generation or more, has been indisposed to serious negotiation except with 
Great Powers. It is quite true that the Soviet Union, while maintaining the 
Warsaw Pact, has denounced NATO as "aggressive", an allegation not 
borne out by the actual military dispositions of NATO. But the probable 
condition of Western Europe today if, in the later days of Stalin, the 
NATO alliance had not been established, it not pleasant to consider. It is 
also unsound because regional arrangements are the only present practical 
steps, concurrently with U.N. development, towards a wider or even worldwide 
organisation in which sovereignties will be "pooled". 

The discussions about NATO, EFTA, and the Common Market in the 
last few years have revolved around the central question of the kind 
of regional organisation we want. 

One fundamental observation can be made at the outset. A regional 
organisation is only desirable in so far as, in policy and structure, it is 
"open-ended" and can be expected to evolve in the general direction of a 
world system, which, as we have said, is alone able to be finally responsible 
for the maintenance of peace. It must have a definite urge towards 
economic understandings, trade links and even administrative co-operation 
with other areas ; and it must not be restrictive and autarchic beyond the 
actual requirements of its own growth. All this is precisely what the 
Common Market of the Six, anyway (under its present dominating influences) 
mainly French, unfortunately is not. 

The European Economic Community 

To agree with what is said above is not to condemn the European 
Economic Community as such. It is rather to say that the policy of the 
Community as at present shaped by Paris, despite the vigorous protests of 
many Frenchmen, has taken an unfortunate new direction. The objection 
to the European Community is not one of principle, but is a repudiation of 
its rejection of a broader membership and an objection to its political 
framework. What, then, is to be done? Or, more exactly, what should 
Britain do? 

It may well be said that Britain should wait for a more favourable 
moment to join the Common Market, pending some change (which it is 
optimistically assumed will be for the better) in the political condition of 
France, such as the final entry of General de Gaulle into Olympus. Dr. 
Erhard is very ready to consider a wider community. He has used his 
influence to work for wider Community advances in connection with the 
Kennedy Round of tariff negotiations, though it is still difficult to predict 
what will come out of these negotiations. But, despite Dr. Erhard's efforts, 
the prospects for British membership of OEEC on any agreed terms, let 
alone on terms other than the straightforward acceptance of the formulae 
of the Treaty of Rome, are far from bright. 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

A Wider Framework 

The crux of the matter is, of course, the conditions of entry. And of 
these conditions, those that affect British relations with the Commonwealth 
are the most difficult of all to agree upon. The wider framework of the 
Atlantic Community or even the Commonwealth of the Free World, a framework 
for the present and specifically including the whole Commonwealth, 
North America and Western Europe, can overcome this difficulty in a 
fashion satisfactory for Britain and the Commonwealth. Merger in an 
exclusive and autarchic North-west European bloc, after the British people 
have (in General de Gaulle's words) "detached themselves from everything 
that holds them outside our community", would be a submergence lethal 
for the Commonwealth and contemptible for Britain. 

It has often been claimed by responsible people that both the EEC 
and the Atlantic Community are desirable goals; but that, instead of the 
diplomatic building of the structure moving simultaneously and pragmatically, 
the Common Market of the Six must be firmly established first. 
Events have falsified this policy, whatever its abstract desirability or otherwise. 
For the Common Market, on this argument, was itself seen as capable 
of extension to take in other members, in particular Britain. The breakdown 
of the 1962-63 negotiations showed that this could not be taken for granted. 
Secondly, the political content of the Community was such that close political 
ties with other international groupings, like Britain's with the Commonwealth 
and the United States, were not easy to reconcile. Those who 
believed that only an economic negotiation was involved should have 
learned better from Dr. Hallstein's blunt statement : "We are not in business; 
we are in politics", It is easy enough to say that the Commonwealth 
and the Common Market are not incompatible, and what is wanted for 
Britain is to be in both ; but how? 

Commonwealth Interests 

Commonwealth opinion about British entry into the Common Market 
ranged from the dubious to the openly hostile. Mr. Lester Pearson, Prime 
Minister of Canada, has consistently favoured, on a liberal economic basis, 
the policy of the Atlantic Community and the Kennedy Round of tariff 
liberalisation ; and he has restored closer relations with the United States. 
Mr. John Diefenbaker led the opposition to British entry into the EEC, 
emphasising that "the Commonwealth is the only proven pattern of mutual 
tolerance, understanding and co-operation". In Melbourne, Sir Robert 
Menzies, talking in terms not of political emotion (which may yet help to 
win wars) but of statistics, said "there are people in Britain-some of them 
very highly placed-who have yet to learn of the massive extent of the 
trade between this country and Britain . . . . " 

The distinctive political strength of Britain, manifested in many a 
moment of crisis, has lain precisely in her Commonwealth ties. If it can 
be said that "the British Isles are geographically part of Europe", like 
Spain or Sweden, equally Europe itself is just a peninsula of Eurasia



CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

and the Soviet Union, in both Europe and Asia, underlines this fact. In 
language, culture and stock, Britain has other connections. 

A dynamic Britain has to consider her own economic development. 
Likewise each of the other Commonwealth countries has to watch what 
may be for the benefit of its own economic future. Sometimes this has 
meant the imposition of tariffs on British goods in order to protect infant 
industries, and industrialists at home have not been voiceless in making 
their protest. The fact remains that Britain exports more to the Commonwealth 
and dependencies than to all the European Six, although recently 
Britain has increased both her Commonwealth and also her European 
exports. 

If Britain is going to be the seventh member of the Community, with 
all that this implies, the Commonwealth countries will take a new look at 
their own interests, one consequence of which may be closer ties with the 
United States. Canada is already closely linked to US capital, as a condition 
of her own development ; Australia and New Zealand are indubitably 
strategically dependent_ If there is a tendency towards Britain becoming 
m erely European, it could spell the break-up of an historic association 
The members of the Commonwealth will become "foreign". 

These two divergent interests can only be reconciled if a completely 
new framework of discussion is involved. That framework will have to 
include Western Europe, minus the Iberian peninsula, and the Commonwealth. 
The late Lord Beaverbrook's long and hard-fought campaign for a 
Commonwealth Free Trade Area alone is not practicable, since, to take 
but one example, his own native country of Canada will not play. But 
Mr. Harold Wilson's outward-looking, free-trade and monetary proposals, 
first made in Washington in April, 1963, are practicable. Within this wider 
regional framework specific British problems and specific Commonwealth 
problems can be solved, especially if a substantial part of the Kennedy 
Round's proposals are adopted. Nor would it be wise to postpone consideration 
of an Atlantic initiative until the EEC's differences have been 
ironed out_ It is doubtful whether the EEC, as at present constructed, 
could ever expand by natural evolution from this nucleus into an Atlantic 
Community, as distinct from a military alliance. It has to be reshaped ; 
and an Atlantic initiative should be an element in its reshaping. 

It may be thought unsatisfactory that acceptance of any common 
ideology, such as lies behind the Warsaw Pact, should be required for a 
community of free nations. At least this is arguable. Nevertheless, if such 
a community is to be developed, there is a strong case for its having a 
democratic basis. The Treaty of Rome makes no such requirement, and 
the recent history of Germany. Italy and even France, offers no such 
guarantee. 

Finally, as regards the Commonwealth itself, much could be done that 
is not being done. Not only is a Commonwealth-wide Development Commission 
required in general but, in specific terms, Commonwealth trade 
should be deliberately encouraged as a matter of policy. For this purpose 
an established Trade Commission. holding regular meetings. appears to be 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

needed. Some of the Commonwealth countries are at a stage when they 
require products which we are ceasing to require here. For the products 
of our locomotive works, railway machine shops, and some kinds of 
engineering works, there is a vast potential demand. As Harold Wilson 
suggested at Seaham in May, 1963: "We should agree to expand those 
sections of our industrial system where existing capacity is inadequate to 
meet Commonwealth needs ... we should agree to work jointly for worldwide 
commodity agreements to stabilise primary prices ... and expand 
the volume of world liquidity for financing world trade". Above all, we 
should co-operate to the full in the aid which nations who boast that they 
are prosperous can give to those which can make no such claim. We must 

eek to offer our aid in such forms as grants, no-interest or very low-interest 
loans, which do not add to their ever-increasing debt. 


3. Atlantic Partnership 
AS the limitations of what the United Nations could achieve in the 

enforcement of peace were recognised, NATO was developed on the 
military side and European Union on the economic and cultural side. 
However, for some decades there had been an alternative line of thought. 

The "Special Relationship" 

As long ago as 1909, A. J. Balfour put on paper, for Theodore Roosevelt's 
eye, a memorandum entitled The Possibility of an Anglo-Saxon Confederation. 
It contemplated a joint Foreign Office and Admiralty, and 
stated: "If England and America do not federate , the history of the world 
will continue to be one of warfare". Had, indeed, some action been taken 
on the document, the history of 1914-1918 might have been different. However, 
federal or even confederate union was far too strong meat at that 
time for the public and the politicians, while objection to anything that 
might appear like a cultural bloc was rightly strong for free traders. The 
union itself was disliked by imperialists, who felt that they could very well 
"go it alone". 

The proposal was still to be too much to take, when advocated in 
broad Western terms by Clarence Streit in Union Now, in 1939, and later, 
again by him, for a more limited area. The blunt truth about wider schemes 
at this juncture was that Germany and Italy were enemy countries along 
with Japan; that Russia had negotiated the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact; 
and that France was ~oon to be under the Vichy Government. Proposals 
had, therefore, to be made in terms of that part of the free world that 
was actually allied against the Axis and fighting against it or was soon 
to do so. This part was in fact almost exclusively English-speaking, apart 
from the Soviet Union. 

Historically the Republican Party of the United States has always 
hitherto favoured the "special relationship" between Britain and the United 
States, since the days when the Party was influenced by that eminent 
strategist, Admiral Mahan. Over half the white population of the USA 
claims descent from Britain or from Ireland. Apart from population descent, 
the special relationship is a matter of language, law and history. As M. 
Georges Pompidou, the French Prime Minister, significantly said in Paris: 

"The Anglo-American link is not a European link". 

The Democratic Party in the United States has a traditionally different 
view, which the British Labour Party should be peculiarly able to appreciate. 
Here, indeed, the two Parties tend to think and feel together. Opposed 
to regionalism save under stress (although later a vigorous supporter of 
NATO), the Democratic Party since Woodrow Wilson has affirmed, as 
Party policy, its strong support for international organisations, first the 
League of Nations and then the United Nations, and for a global approach, 
only modified by the necessary distinctions based on ease of collaboration. 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

On the British side, dislike of the "special relationship" has been 
envenomed by a vocal anti-Americanism, less in evidence in Britain than in 
certain Continental countries, but evident enough, especially on the extreme 
Right and the extreme Left, and on analysis largely inspired by self-
righteousness, jealousy and envy. This chauvinist jealousy does not contribute 
to, but rather weakens, that chance of reaching a satisfactory 
accommodation between Washington and Moscow on which the peace of 
the world actually depends. 

The enemies or rivals of Britain, from Bismarck to Hitler, have recognised, 
as basic, her "special relationship" with the USA and also with 
Canada and Australasia. The USA has a dominant economic relationship 
with Canada, and a dominant strategic one with Australia and New 
Zealand. The "special relationship" is, as a matter of fact, an association 
which has saved democracy on more occasions than one. Traditional dislike 
of les pouvoirs anglosaxons has been seldom absent from the mind of 
General de Gaulle. But such exclusiveness is deplorable. A sound world 
policy must be at a minimum an Atlantic policy, which includes Europe 
with others. It is not an Anglo·Saxon or a North-west European policy. 
It is an Atlantic policy or one that might more happily be called a policy 
of the Free World Commonwealth, essentially including India and the new 
Commonwealth countries and the other developing countries, as stages to 
a wider integration on the international plane. Here is to be found that 
wider framework or "tripod" arrangement which has been mentioned above. 

The Atlantic Community 

The Atlantic Community, strictly construed, is not perhaps a fortunate 
title. At a minimum the concept is thought of as including Australia and 
New Zealand, which are in the Pacific. If it is to be "open-ended", then 
all appearance of a racial bloc or a club of rich nations must be avoided. 
The inclusion of such Commonwealth countries as those of the Indian 
sub-continent is, therefore, important. It is essential that co-ordinated assistance 
shall be given by the wealthy nations, acting jointly, to the developing 
countries of the world, in such a fashion that the risk of building an 
exclusive bloc of the "have" nations shall not only be avoided, but be seen 
to be avoided. 

We must not, however, be too literal-minded. NATO includes Greece 
and Turkey, which are not on the North· Atlantic, both of which are 
developing countries. The phrase "the Atlantic Community" will serve for 
the present, although the phrase "the Commonwealth of the Free World" 
is, in certain contexts, preferable. The periphery must be as wide as possible. 
The effective nucleus, in terms of resources and power, is likely to 
be an Atlantic one for the foreseeable future. If the relationship between 
Britain and Western Continental Europe is to become closer, not least if 
Britain should again contemplate membership of the EEC, this can only 
be done within a framework, or an "organic union" including not only 
EFTA, the Six and the Commonwealth, but North America too. This is 
obvious on strategic and financial grounds alone, leaving out cultural bonds. 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

To omit the United States would be like leaving her out of NATO and 
expecting what was left to be effective. 

To get one important power to adjust its interests to those of another 
has been, through the whole history of politics, notoriously difficult. Perhaps 
a major cause of the contemporary malaise in France and in Britain, which 
can easily be stimulated into a popular neurosis, is the emotional crisis of 
adjustment to other nations following from diminished military power and 
injured national pride. But at present we in Britain have reason to be 
satisfied with the pace and nature of our adjustment, since there is the 
prospect of an evolution towards a greater future joint influence. Within 
such a joint arrangement, the "subordination" of British to American views 
should not be necessary. 

Building the Partenrship 

It is frequently alleged, not without justification, that Washington tried 
for several years to push Britain into the EEC in the belief that, once 
there, she would assume the leadership in policy and could be relied upon 
to mitigate any anti-American tendencies. This was to count on too much. 
Any such attempt to seize the leadership by a late arrival suspect of being 
an Anglo-American "Trojan Horse", was doomed by French resistance. 
[t is much more to the point that Britain should early, not late, throw herself 
wholeheartedly into building an Atlantic partnership ; should not repeat 
her earlier error of hesitant delay ; and should assert her leadership by 
pressing for this partnership to be a genuine one, in which Congress must 
listen to its European partners, instead of assuming an isolated self-sufficiency 
or a policy of "go-it-alone". 

One first consequence of an Atlantic partnership or community, or an 
,. organic union", is that Britain, Canada and other members should not 
only be habitually consulted on high policy by Washington, but that their 
views should, as a routine and accepted matter, be allowed proportionate 
weight in shaping the policy of the Community on matters that affect the 
well-being of all the members. The traffic of partnership must be a two-
way traffic. The USA must be prepared to consult and co-ordinate as a 
firm practice, no less than her allies, who enjoy an equal sovereign dignity. 

At the present time, according to a recent poll, 70 per cent of the 
people of Britain do not feel that the Americans, in any significant sense, 
treat them an equal partners. The electors or Senators from Nebraska 
must not be under the archaic illusion that they, any more than the electors 
or M.P.s of Britain or France, are sovereign in deciding the policy of the 
whole free world. There must be habitual and routine consultation. 

An "organic union", would involve a steady interchange of personnel 
at all administrative levels; the development (as obtained during the last 
war) of the appropriate organs of co-operation ; the erosion of legal 
obstacles to all this, based upon too rigid juristic concepts ; and a mutual 
influence on policy. There seems to be a case for eliminating duplication 
by bringing NATO and OECD, despite some differences in membership, 
into closer administrative conjunction ; and perhaps for developing and 
giving official status to a joint Parliamentary Assembly. There are some 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

grounds for believing that existing Congressional rules might so far be 
changed as to permit the U.S. Congress to be adequately represented. Such 
representation could not only encourage personal understanding, but have 
a two-way effect upon policy. Certainly there is a strong feeling that, if 
there is going to be a community or partnership, Congress must make 
changes and acknowledge the new situation. The decisive Congressional 
support for President Kennedy's Trade Expansion Act indicated "a wind 
of change.,. 

The Defence of Europe 

Although the strategic details of the partnership cannot be discussed 
here, clearly every Government must be assured of the reliability of its 
allies before yielding control of its own weapons. The French Government 
i~ alleged to feel that the US cannot be guaranteed to provide for the 
nuclear defence of Europe. It also feels, by something of a lapse in logic, 
that France can be guaranteed to provide this defence for a non-nuclear 
Germany. But mutual confidence is the basis of NATO, as of every military 
alliance. The indivisibility of the defence and the vital strategic importance 
of Western Europe lies in the centre of the American scheme. This, however, 
means that the President, and even more Congress, must recognise 
more explicitly that the USA also is not fully independent of her allies. 
This last point, rightly seen by the French to be crucial, does not preclude 
each country retaining forces adequate to protect local interests, though 
the day for Suez adventures lies in the past. Of course, the political adjustment 
that is needed in the United States towards NATO is paralleled within 
Europe. The military commitment by France and Britain to the Alliance 
(not only NATO) has tended to be the first commitment that is pared down, 
in the belief that the USA will take up the slack. A higher political 
priority for the Atlantic Community in American terms must be matched 
by a high military priority in British and French terms. However, this 
priority of commitment will, in the contemporary situation, affect crucial 
areas beyond the North Atlantic area as well as within it. 

Whether the desire of many nations, possibly including the Germans, 
to have a share in the control of nuclear armaments is best met by an 
"in-mixing", a multinational nuclear force, such as the proposed MLF 
or ANF, is controversial. It should be said that it is an honest attempt to 
meet a political and diplomatic difficulty which, in the long run, should 
give the maximum guarantees and minimum offence to the Russians. A 
multinational force as such (perhaps non-nuclear) is certainly not, to use 
Lord Montgomery's words "utter and complete poppycock". The crux lies 
in the restriction to the practicable minimum of persons (which logically 
means the US President) who can authorise its use. 

For the moment only the Americans and British, and more questionably 
the French, have their fingers on the trigger ; but this situation can 
scarcely persist. Some kind of multilateral Presidential council or controlling 
board, linked with NATO and responsible for the Strategic Air Command, 
seems to be called for. This constitutional consultation would not conflict 
with Mr. Wilson's position that "only the United States should have (the 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

final) custody of the West's nuclear deterrent". The Conservative policy of 
an independent British deterrent deliberately pointed at great centres of 
urban and industrial population, as distinct from conventional arms or a 
second-strike force, is not an agreeable one. 

Creating the Community 

All this does not necessarily mean setting up some kind of common 
Foreign Office. There are many matters in which one of the Allies has 
prime interests and the others are little concerned. But it would mean that 
meetings of heads of Government became routine, as proposed at the 
meeting of the US President and the Canadian Premier. Also, in economic 
terms, it could mean the negotiation of international commodity agreements 
within the scope of the President's general tariff policy. It could, as 
suggested by Mr. Alastair Buchan, spell a reshaping of NATO, probably 
in closer conjunction with a non-military OECD, and an enlargement of 
its civilian staff. Clause 2, the economic and cultural clause of the NATO 
Charter, also requires far fuller implementation than it has hitherto 
received. 

Writing in Foreign Affairs (January, 1963), Mr. Christian Herter, the 
US Special Representative for Trade Negotiations, argued that, within the 
NATO structure, the NATO Parliamentarians "should be given additional 
functions" (perhaps enlarged to include OECD) ; that there should be a 
NATO Court of Justice; and a "permanent High Council at the highest 
political level, to concert and plan, and in agreed cases to decide policy 
on matters of concern to the community as a whole" . Some of these far-
reaching proposals may run a little ahead of the pragmatic scheme of the 
present game. More recently he has claimed that the creation of a true 
Atlantic Community within this next decade is a realistic and attainable 
goal. Both the proposal for routine Summit meetings, mentioned by Mr. 
Harold Wilson on his visit to Moscow, and the suggestion that major issues 
of strategy, where all the members of the Alliance are involved, should be 
settled on a basis of unanimity by a multinational council of three or four. 
are compatible with this. 

Mr. Herter's immediate recommendation was that "the governments of 
the NATO nations be asked to appoint at the earliest practical moment a 
special governmental commission charged with the responsibility of drawing 
up plans for the creation of a true Atlantic Community". The problems 
of associate membership of such a community are difficult ones because 
certain proud and influential countries would not want to be left completely 
outside (Japan, a member of OECD, is an example), yet associate membership 
might seem to relegate them to the second rank. In a Commonwealth 
of the Free World it is certainly to be hoped that India would be included. 
These issues cannot be settled prematurely ; but what does matter is to 
end the weakening dissensions within the alliance. As Churchill said, it is 

"the gradual assumption by all the nations concerned of that larger sovereignty, 
which can alone protect those diverse and distinctive customs and 
characteristics and their national traditions". International interdependence 
becomes the condition and context of national independence. 


4. Cone I usion 
AT his Press Conference on November 30th, 1964, President Lyndon 

Johnson said: "The ultimate essentials of the defence of the Atlantic 
Community are the firmness and the mutual trust of the United States and 
Europe. The United States position I should make abundantly clear. The 
safety of the United States depends upon the freedom of Europe, and the 
freedom of Europe depends upon the strength and will of the United 
States. That strength and will have >zever been clearer, have never been 
more necessary than today. The United States is committed to the increasing 
strength and the co-operation of the Atlantic Community in every 
field of action-economic, commercial and monetary. There are no problems 
which we cannot solve together, and there are very few which any 
can solve for himself. The United States sees no safe fortune for ourselves 
and none for any other Atlantic nation in a policy of narrow 
national self-interest. One of the great aspirations within the Atlantic 
Community is the aspiration towards growing unity among the free peoples 
of Europe. No nation on either side of the Atlantic has done more to 
support this purpose than the United States. This support will continue." 

Great statesmanship consists in vision of the future, judgement, and 
insight into the nature and past history of a people. That policy best fits 
a country which is consonant with its national tradition, in the case of 
Britain a liberal tradition. Support of international organisations should 
lead logically on to support for some kind of World Authority. If and when 
some effective basis of co-operation can be reached with the Soviet Union, 
this will become practical politics, and we must not be diverted from this 
as our ultimate intention. 

One of the greatest features of British statesmanship has been the 
ability to enlarge a particular national policy into one with a wider scope 
and a more international appeal. Thus the Empire concept turned into the 
Commonwealth idea. Thus, too, Britain has adjusted herself to the rise 
to major world power of the greatest of her ex-colonies, the United States, 
an adjustment which goes back to the days when the Monroe Doctrine 
was made effective by the strength of the Royal Navy. This Anglo-Arnerican 
co-operation has had striking results, not least since the war, in the 
establishment of NATO, in some considerable measure on British initiative, 
and in the co-operation between Marshall and Bevin, which led to OEEC 
and the recovery of Western Europe. 

The line of evolution is clear. It must be integral partnership and organic 
union. For Britain, constructive statesmanship lies in full co-operation 
in building up an Atlantic Community as a prototype of a new Commonwealth 
of the Free World, to guarantee world peace, by common negotiation 
with the Soviet Union, within and through the United Nations, 


CREATING THE ATLANTIC COMMUNITY 

"making the world safe for diversity", as President Kennedy put it. This 
i~ a policy of such magnitude as to provide us with a sense of purpose 
and is well worthy of the challenge of our day. In the words of Emerson, 
we must be found "with strength still equal to the time". 


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Recent Fabian PubUcations 


RESEARCH PAMPHLETS 

237 NEw LooK AT CoMPREHENSIVE ScHooLs 
Michael Armstrong and Michael Young 2/. 
238 THE COMPANY AND THE COMMUNI1Y 
Paul Derrick 3I· 
239 BUILDING FOR A NEW SOCIE1Y 
Harry Brack 4/· 

240 MASSACRF. lN RWANDA 
Aaron Segal 3/241 
BRAZIL: THE DILEMMA OF REFORM 
Edmund Dell 3/6 
242 THE DEMOCRATIC FIRM 
Norman Ross 3/6 
243 THE STRANGER AT THE GATE 
Cedric Thornberry 2/6 
244 CHANGE IN THE TRADE UNIONS 
John Hughes 3/6 
245 THE Co-oPERATIVES AT TiiE CROSSROADS 
Sidney Pollard 4/246 
AUSTRALIAN LABOUR AND TiiE WORLD 
lames Jupp 3/


TRACTS 

351 SOCIALISTS AND MANAGERS 
A Fabian Group 3/· 
352 A LABOUR BRITAIN AND THE WoRLD 
Denis Healey 1/6 
353 fREEDOM IN THE WELFARE STATE 
Brian Abei-Smith 1/6 
354 BoMBS AND VoTEs 
Wayland Young 2/· 
355 THE ADMINISTRATORS 
A Fabian Group 4/· 

356 NEw PATmRNS FOR PRIMARY ScHooLs 
A Fabian Group 2/6 
357 BRITAIN IN NATO 
Neville Brown 1/6 
358 TRADE AND INTERNATIONAL INEQUALITY 
Sidney Wells 2/6 
359 THE FAMILY AND THE SOCIAL SERVICES 
Somerville Hastings and Peggy Jay 1/6 

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