BIG THREE'S WORLD

TIME Correspondent Stephen Laird, returning to the U.S. from Britain last week, gave a London's-eye view of world trends:

From what we in London have seen and heard in the past six months, these assumptions seem sound:

P: This is a war of Great Powers; they make the decisive military and political decisions.

P: The victorious Great Powers will determine the peace and the world's fate.

P: The Atlantic Charter is nice, but it does not offer much competition to power politics. The little nations, the way things are going now, will have to fit themselves 1) into an overall pattern agreed on and supported by the Big Three; or 2) into the sphere of an individual Great Power among the Big Three.

What Is a Power? London's weekly Economist has usefully defined a Great Power: "... a country capable of waging active and autonomous war against another Great Power. . . . For a country to be beyond question a Great Power, it must be able to fight with its own resources -- not necessarily with those to be found in its own territories, but with those that it can rely on being able to procure."

By this definition, in the spring of 1944, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. are unquestionably Great Powers. Britain is a conditional Great Power. (The conditions: 1) that the Commonwealth and Empire hold together; 2) that the U.S. is not hostile to Britain.) Germany and Japan are fading Great Powers. China is a potential Great Power (but the economic advances essential for such stature will require decades). France may again be strong (but France will not rank with the Great Powers).

Britain and the World. In the last twelvemonth, Great Britain's foreign policy has taken these lines: 1) closer economic and political arrangements among the Dominions and Colonies of the Commonwealth and Empire; 2) close, friendly relationships in western Europe (with particular reference to Holland, Belgium, Norway, France); 3) intimate relationship with the U.S.; 4) friendship and cooperation with the U.S.S.R. London has accepted the view that the U.S. will make no postwar commitments to Britain or to any other European nation if they mean that the U.S. would automatically have to go to war to back up the premises. But Britain firmly believes: 1) that the U.S. will not work with any Power against Britain; 2) that the U.S. will take an active interest in the maintenance of world law & order -- and Britain believes that this will be true whichever party wins the election.

Britain seems to feel that there is no way of stopping Russia from taking what she wants in eastern Europe anyway, therefore reasons that "realistic" policy is to allow Russia to have what she would take in any case. Britons in general do not expect Russia to be as greedy or as ruthless as some Americans seem to think. And, within this general policy of negation, Britain still hopes to preserve her interests in key spots -- notably Greece (see p. 28).

Britain and the U.S. As we saw it in London, the U.S. is the chief proponent of an overall pattern for world security, agreed on and supported by all nations, big and small. The U.S., therefore, does not seem to like or accept the power politics which Britain and Russia seem to have accepted. But no one in the higher levels of London authority, of any nationality, seems to believe that this idealistic policy will amount to a hill of beans against the "realities" of power politics. These men do not think that U.S. policy principles will determine anything unless they are backed by specific U.S. commitments to Europe.

So it looks to responsible men in London, so deep in the war, so close to Europe that they may not always see the world.

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