Geography is Fate?

AMERICA'S STRATEGY IN WORLD POLITICS-Nicholas John Spykman-Harcourf, Brace ($3.75).

Long before Pearl Harbor, Professor Nicholas John Spykman glanced up one day from his studies of German Geopoliticians Friedrich Ratzel and Karl Haushofer to observe that, if he looked at the globe one way, the New World encircled the Old. But if he looked at the globe another way-if, for example, Germany had upset the balance of power in Europe, or Japan upset the balance of power in Asia, and these two powers joined forces-the Old World encircled the New. In this geopolitical embrace, the New World might suffer a "caress of death." So he wrote this provocative and controversial book to tell his compatriots why they must be ready at all times to fight to preserve the balance of power in Europe and Asia.

A geopolitician, Professor Spykman wrote with the colossal calm of the new fatalism in which geography is destiny. A Dutchman (he was naturalized in 1928), he viewed destiny with the phlegm common to a people that has lived for generations below sea level. A professor of international relations at Yale, he thought with the cold-bloodedness of a historian who knows that nations come & go, but that the human race goes on.

What he had to say was this: due to its position as a continental island between Asia and Europe, the survival of the U.S. has always depended, and always will depend, on maintaining a balance of power in Europe and Asia. Whenever that balance is seriously unbalanced, the U.S. must fight. Also, due to the U.S. geographic position, there have always been two opposed geopolitical theories as to where and when to fight. One theory is interventionism, which maintains that the fight must be fought in Asia and Europe, with the help of European and Asiatic allies. The other theory is isolationism, which maintains that the U.S. can retire behind its oceans and fight off all aggressors with the help of its hemispheric allies (Latin America). The question for Americans: Shall the U.S. dominate the world or become a buffer state between Germany and Japan?

Survival. Whatever else the U.S. may be fighting for in World War II it is fighting first & foremost, Author Spykman insists, for its political life. He thinks Americans ought to be a little clearer about the meaning of power. "In this kind of a world states can only survive by constant devotion to power politics. . . . The struggle for power is identical with the struggle for survival. . . . All else is secondary, because in the last instance only power can achieve the objectives of foreign policy."

In two lines Spykman condenses the viewpoint about which German geopoliticians have written volumes: "Geography is the most fundamental factor in the foreign policy of states because it is the most permanent. Ministers come and ministers go, even dictators die, but mountain ranges stand unperturbed." Out of this idea the Germans have made their fashionable theory of geopolitics, and the Nazis have made history.

Professor Spykman's contribution to the debate on intervention versus isolation is contained in such brilliant chapters of his book as America and the Transatlantic Zone ("The position of the United States in regard to Europe as a whole is ... identical to the position of Great Britain in regard to the European continent. . . .") America and the Transpacific Zone ("Participation in a war to preserve the balance of power in Europe against Germany means war in cooperation with the dominant naval power. Participation in a war to preserve the balance of power in Asia . . . means war against Japan, against the dominant naval power, a strategic problem of an entirely different nature.").

Good Neighbors. To the Good Neighbor policy Professor Spykman devotes the more urgently important half of his book. The basic mistake in the Good Neighbor policy, he points out, is the result of regarding the western hemisphere as capable of political or cultural unity.

"The political pattern of the hemisphere remains that of international anarchy." The Latin American countries distrust the Colossus of the North. There is a latent conflict between Argentina and Brazil, an other between Chile and Peru. There is the old grudge between the U.S. and Argentina.

Professor Spykman feels that the Pan-American conferences have done little more than overlook these conflicts. That is why Spykman sees no reason to believe that a German-Japanese victory will find the countries of the New World "any less divided than Europe, any more difficult to defeat one by one than the states of that unhappy continent." Hemisphere defense, he concludes, "will continue to rest, as in the past ... on the armed forces of the United States."

Quarter-sphere defense may be feasible from a military viewpoint. Economically, Professor Spykman believes that it is hopeless "without the tin and the tungsten of Bolivia, the copper of Chile and the tungsten, wool and tanning products of the Argentine, our war industries would be seriously crippled even if we could produce in northern Brazil the materials --which now come from the tropical zones of Asia and Africa."

From these dark facts Professor Spykman draws a drastic conclusion: "Hemisphere defense is no defense at all. The Second World War will be lost or won in Europe and Asia."

Post-War. Equally astringent are Spykman's remarks about the post-war world. "In the first world conflict of the 20th Century," he observes, "the United States won the war, but lost the peace. If this mistake is to be avoided, it must be remembered, once and for all, that the end of a war is not the end of the power struggle. . . . The interest of the United States demands not only victory in the war, but also continued participation in the peace."

Professor Spykman believes that a world federation is "still far off," and feels that "this is perhaps just as well. . . . Diplomacy would become lobbying and log rolling, and international wars would be come civil wars and insurrections, but man would continue to fight for what he thought worth-while and violence would not disappear from the earth." But his main objection to theories for the future is that "they provide very little guidance for the practical problems which will face the United States on the day of the armistice." On that day, he says, "there will be neither world state nor hegemony but many large and small powers." The business of the U.S. will be to maintain a balance of power among them, and "preserving the balance of power is a permanent job."

For Spykman accepts the fact "that there will always be conflict, and that war will remain a necessary instrument in the preservation of a balance of power."

To some, realism so simple may well seem as devastating as frost in a hothouse for orchids. But such people may take comfort in the thought that Professor Spykman is not infallible, that the cult of realism has its own limitations and coldbloodedness leads to its own kind of distortion. To others, tired of statesmanship by euphemism and eye-catching phonies, Spykman's plain talking seems a bracing corrective.

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