[ p. 109 ]
To make the nations safe from aggression has been for the past twenty years one of the most popular slogans of democratic diplomacy. We had established a status quo and said that no changes could be made unless they were based on mutual understanding of all the parties concerned. We had “outlawed” war and said that the use of armed forces in order to achieve a change in the status quo without the consent of the other party is “aggression.” We preached that aggression was a crime and tried to unite all the other nations (at least within the framework of the League of Nations) to take up arms on the side of the victim of aggression. As under the given circumstances there was no chance of any change in the status quo by agreements, “aggressions” started within a few years after the establishment of this artificial world construction.
For many years, particularly during the meetings of the ill-fated Disarmament Conference, there was widespread scholastic debate in order to obtain a “definition of aggression.” None of the many definitions brought forth was unanimously accepted, but all those attempts to get a definition of aggression had as a basis the idea that the nation [ p. 110 ] which for the first time crosses the territorial boundaries of another nation with armed forces is the aggressor.
This conception about aggression is most unsatisfactory and creates not only complete confusion about the real origin and beginning of aggression, but also paralyzes the freedom-loving and democratic nations and exposes them to the greatest dangers.
Is aggression a crime? And if so, why?
Aggression is undoubtedly that kind of human activity which in many instances during our history has brought positive results, has spurred progress and helped to spread civilization and culture.
The prototype of acts of aggression is the activity of the missionaries. To penetrate without invitation and mutual consent into remote continents with the intention to change entirely the way of living of strange people is indeed an act of aggression. But is it a crime, and is it to be disapproved ?
The Crusades were an act of aggression. The French Reyolution and America’s conquest of the West were acts of aggression. But can we by any means disapprove these events and call them illegal or a crime?
It appears obvious that the conception according to which the beginning of the use of force is the only form of aggression, and that it is in all cases aggression, could only be right in an absolutely perfect and just world order, which has never existed, and almost certainly never will exist in our world of constant changes and evolutions, It is indefensible to call aggression any kind of forceful act independent of whether it is directed against an innocent people or against an injustice.
[ p. 111 ]
The idea expressed by a leader of the French Revolution, “Where there is order and injustice, disorder is the beginning of justice,” is also valid in international relations. The first use of armed forces can, therefore, by no means be a satisfactory criterion for the term “aggression.”
Ifa nation attacks one of our naval bases or airdromes, we call it “aggression,” and we are prepared to go to war in order to defend our possessions. But when our enemies attack the principles on which our entire life is based, our freedom, our families, our prosperity, and our future, we are indifferent and fail to arrive at the point of calling it “aggression” and to react accordingly.
England and France declared war when their ally Poland was overrun by the German armed forces. The United States declared war when the Japanese bombed American possessions in Hawaii and in the Philippines. ‘This was fully in accordance with our established policies that war is outlawed, that aggression is a crime, and that aggression is the first military action, and only military action.
It is almost incalculable how many lives and how much wealth and destruction this conception will cost us.
‘The march of the German armies and the dive-bombing by the Japanese air forces were the mth act of aggression against the democratic powers. To call just this wth act “aggression” because it was accompanied by the fireworks of gun powder explosions is indeed most unsatisfactory.
‘This war started when Benito Mussolini proclaimed publicly and solemnly that Fascist Italy’s aim is to destroy the principles of the French Revolution, and when Adolf Hitlet’s government proclaimed publicly and solemnly that for [ p. 112 ] Nazi Germany “Right is what is in the interest of the German Volk.”
It was in that moment, if our democracies were working according to present-day realities, and had we had a clear vision of the real possessions we must defend, that the aroused forces of the free peoples ought to have intervened to stop this aggression.
The defense of our way of life, the defense of our nations and the destruction of the aggressive forces would have cost at that time less than one thousandth in blood, sweat, toil and tears of what it will cost now.
In the face of this reality, it is impossible to say that such questions as, “What is aggression ?” “Where does it begin ?” “When must we start fighting in order to stop it?” are merely theoretical. In fact, on the correct reply to such questions and on the correct interpretation of such theoretical principles rest the life and death of millions of men, and the preservation or waste of hundreds of billions of dollars.
The second great danger of the superficial interpretation of aggression—calling it merely armed intervention—is the negative, defensive mentality which it involves and which it spreads among the freedom-loving nations.
War being outlawed, military initiative being aggression, and aggression being a crime, the democratic nations have been lulled into a negative conception of life which can only hasten their destruction.
We have been teaching in our schools, in our parliaments, in our press and in our various religious and political associations, a kind of pacifism which is as remote from the realities of the world and from the real conception of peace as [ p. 113 ] incantation is from medical science. We refuse to recognize biological facts by simply not mentioning them by their names, and we try to cure our illnesses with pious preachings, stubbornly refusing to listen to scientifically trained physicians and to follow their advice.
This strange conception of peace and our equally unreal conception of aggression created a passive, negative conception of life among democratic nations which involved all the manifestations of our existence. We wanted nothing. We had absolutely no intentions, no ideals, no purpose, except to keep at peace, keep shooting away from us, and to keep intact those little earthly possessions we inherited. This ignorance of the most elementary forces of this world made us incapable not only of preventing certain events, but even of coping with them when they occurred. ,
An extraordinary spectacle was that series of fights by which Nazi Germany defeated one by one all the European nations. No nation had possessed the mental capacity to understand what was going on and to prevent its steady progress. This would have meant initiative, action, prevention—all made impossible through our negative conception of life.
The life of an individual, just like the life of a nation, is nothing but constant action, initiative and struggle. Whoever stops is defeated and must cede his place to others. There is no such thing as holding one’s position in this continuing progress and in trying to force others to stop, too. A conception of static peace is inconceivable, and if we do not put the dynamic forces of life into the service of our cause, they will be used by others and directed against us.
[ p. 114 ]
We can only prevent these dynamic forces from leading to wars if we are prepared to steer them into lawful channels. But we shall certainly not be able to stop them by the simple expedient of ignoring them and by trying individually to escape from them.
The successes of Hitler can in a certain degree be explained by the right analysis of the effects of these two drives. In a world ruled almost entirely by statesmen, diplomats and civil servants completely submerged in a static, negative conception and rendered totally impotent to act and to take any initiative, there suddenly arose an uneducated outlaw, with no knowledge whatsoever of international affairs, of diplomacy, of private or constitutional law, but merely possessing the simple faculty of a primitive man to act. Having no control over this primitive impulse, like our over-educated, over-cautious statesmen have, he had always on his side the power of “events,” which is a thousand times stronger than the power of arguments.
If we want to learn from the past twenty years and to prevent the repetition of such catastrophes, we must begin by changing this sterile and passive attitude of our peoples. We must realize that on the battlefield defensive measures may sometimes be a strategic necessity; in the field of ideas, ‘it is always identical with defeat.
It is utterly unsatisfactory to teach our youth and to proclaim to our public that democracy is the best form of goyernment, that ours is a just cause and that the forces of evil will be destroyed because ultimately the righteous cause must always prevail. Such a fatalistic attitude is really a weak defense of our shortcomings. It is correct to say that [ p. 16 ] the righteous cause usually prevails, but we can trace in history periods in which the “righteous” cause suffered defeat for generations and even for centuries,
The more active and the more positive, not the more righteous, will win this fight between the democratic and the totalitarian forces. Righteousness is a factor in victory only insofar as it gives us more faith and more force to be active and positive.
Our primary effort must be, therefore, to pull out from our public life the roots of these static conceptions of defense. We must clearly state those democratic principles in the national and international life which we want to preserve, those principles which we want to establish and for which we are willing to fight. We must give these principles a realistic and understandable interpretation which would make possible their existence and their defense.
We must declare as aggression any attack on these principles, whether the attack is military or ideological. And all nations which champion these principles must in such cases regard themselves as being the objects of aggression, whether the attack is military or ideological.
Only when we can clearly detect the origin of the aggression against our way of life, and only if we possess the mechanism of suppressing any such attacks, shall we have created a state of affairs which we might call safe from aggression. In any international life organized on that basis, military acts and “shooting war” will be reduced to a minimum, and when it does occur it will meet with the same overwhelming might as a common criminal finds in a well organized city.