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Tu pocrrine that perhaps wrought the most havoc in international relations is the principle of non-intervention. This principle, which is so deeply rooted in the minds of our statesmen and diplomats that it can be called a dogma, is in such complete contradiction to every manifestation of the modern life of nations that its consequences during the past twenty years have been disastrous. This doctrine was one of the main reasons why a band of unscrupulous gangsters was able to achieve supreme power in Europe.
The principle of “non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries” was established centuries ago by hereditary monarchies. It was a question of courtesy among gentlemen, expressing the same feeling as many related families have towards each other’s domestic affairs, The nations were ruled by old, historical dynasties. War and peace were decided upon by the monarchs, and it was the understanding among the great ruling houses that they were not to interfere with each other’s internal affairs. At that time it was a defensible principle.
During the period of transition from absolute monarchies [ p. 81 ] to democratic nations, this idea was taken over, as it was to the interest of the newly established democracies that the remaining kings should not interfere in their internal constitutional life. But as time went on and the development of industry, commerce and communications made one single economic unit of the whole world, this principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other countries became a farce.
It has the same effect on our international life as Prohibition had on the public life of the United States. Being entirely in contradiction to reality, it not only does not safeguard a nation from foreign intervention, but makes it subject to all kinds of illegal intervention.
It is not necessary to enumerate all the cases in which, under the hypocrisy of non-intervention, the totalitarian powers interfered in the internal affairs of other countries, established their own organizations, undermined the existing social order, bribed and corrupted men and institutions, instigated and fostered assassinations, revolutions and civil wars.
Hardly any nation on this earth was exempt from these internal convulsions. But the democratic countries closed their eyes to these facts, saying that this was none of their business, that they could not do anything because any action would be against the principle of non-intervention. And this principle was sacrosanct.
But apart from the great number of catastrophes which were the direct result of “non-intervention,” what are the possibilities of a policy based on that principle, and what is [ p. 82 ] the real relationship of the internal affairs of the nations towards each other ?
Let us regard the world as it was established and organized after the First World War. Those who created that order believed that they laid the foundation for a closer international relationship, for better distribution of wealth, for increased international commerce, for disarmament, prosperity and permanent progress. And what happened?
The newly created states started with a policy of “self-sufficiency.” Czechoslovakia, which inherited the great industrial enterprises of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy, was predominantly an industrial country. Hungary as it remained was a purely agricultural country. For years the Czechoslovakian Government pursued a one-sided agricultural policy, creating by mainly artificial means and subventions a domestic agriculture, in order to produce at home the necessary foodstuffs, with the consequence that Hungary and the other Balkan countries lost a natural market for their agricultural surpluses and were unable to buy industrial products from Czechoslovakia and from other industrial countries. As an “only remedy” they started to create, equally by purely artificial means and government subyentions, a new industry in order to produce at home whatever products their farmers needed. The result was rising prices and lowered living standards in all the countries concerned,
When asa result of the world economic crisis Britain gave up the gold standard and devaluated sterling, the United States shortly after was forced to devaluate the dollar proportionately.
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When the Disarmament Conference started and the democratic nations were prepared and willing to reduce their armaments, Italian militarism and intensified German armaments thwarted every attempt at an agreement and forced the democratic nations also to rearm.
The examples could be multiplied almost without limit. In each case we see that the internal policy of a certain government or governments—economical or financial, in the labor or military field—forced other governments to adapt their own policies to the new conditions created by the others.
The richest country in the world—the United States of America—abounding in plenty in the production of consumers goods, and where the supply of raw materials seemed to be inexhaustible, was forced to stop motor-car production for private consumption, to ration sugar, to conscript its entire man power, to limit individual income, to tax all excess profits, thus changing most radically the American way of life.
Why?
These revolutionary changes in the mighty United States of America, so self-assured in its power, in its political and economic superiority, and in its aloofness from the “foreign quarrels,” are the direct consequences of the fact that a few years before the German Government stopped motor-car production for private use, conscripted its youth, rationed sugar, taxed excess profit and limited individual income. Yet, there are people in the United States who, after having witnessed how the internal policy of a country 4,000 miles away has directly and profoundly affected the internal policy [ p. 84 ] of the United States and the daily life of its citizens, are still talking seriously about non-intervention as a “policy”!
If one nation pursues an autarchic policy, it disrupts the entire international trade and affects the living standard of every individual of the other nations. If one nation enters into an armament race, every other nation is forced to spend a bigger portion of its national income for armaments. If one nation regards a treaty as a scrap of paper, treaties in general lose their value. If one great nation devaluates its currency for internal financial reason, other nations are forced to follow suit. If one government is in a position to force its workers to work sixty hours a week, it reacts on labor conditions in other countries. If one nation begins to educate its youth on a purely militaristic basis, all the other nations have to prepare for military organization. If one government exploits without scruple the advantages of dictatorship, all the other nations are forced to renounce more and more of their democratic achievements,
The internal lives of the individual nations are so interwoven, their effect upon each other so apparent, that this interchange of causes and effects is one of the few crystallizations of international life which has the characteristics of a social law.
And this law seems to be a very peculiar one. It resembles in some respects the theory of marginal utility in economics, whereby the price of a commodity is determined by the cost of production to the producer, working under the least favorable conditions among those able to compete.
It seems that in the modern inter-related lives of the nations the standard of living, of culture, labor conditions, individual [ p. 85 ] freedom, taxation, export trade, defense policy— all depend to a great extent on the policies followed in the same fields by other nations. And the nation living under the lowest moral and least favorable economic conditions is the determining factor.
It appears that in a given territory—certainly on the continent of Europe, but probably on the entire globe—there exists some law or at least some tendency according to which, among a certain number of interdependent nations, all the states are forced to adapt their form of government to the least civilized form of government existent in any state among them.