September 10, 1975

World Union Idea Haunts Congress

The ghost of an idea I thought was dead and buried still haunts the halls of Congress.

The proposal for a "federal union" of world democracies - a sensation just before the American entry into World War II - has risen from the grave once more.

It all started with a book by Clarence Streit, then a foreign correspondent for the New York Times.  Titled "Union Now," the book advocated an "Atlantic Community" based on the concept of the United States.

The idea gained great popularity and a good deal of official support in the few years prior to Pearl Harbor.  Then the European Allies were engaged in a losing war with the German-Italian Fascist Axis.  The United States was neutral on the side of the allies.  It was an era of "lend-lease," "America First," and "Rosie the Riveter."

World union was viewed by the Europeans as a way of getting Uncle Sam to save them.  Americans saw peaceful union as a way of settling the war before we became involved.

The attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese snuffed out Streit's proposal - or so most of us thought.

We entered into alliances with the besieged European democracies to prosecute the war.  We enlarged this into the more binding North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and then supplemented it with the United Nations.  Our friends set up the European Economic Community.

Supposedly there was no need for federalization of the free nations on the model of the United States.  Streit retired and the world lost track of him.

Not quite so.  Streit is alive and well at 79, and his grand idea hangs on by a thread.

The idea of an Atlantic Community is introduced in Congress occasionally, supported with some fine speeches in the Congressional Record and dutifully sent to committee to languish for another interim.

The present Congress went through the ceremony once again during the closing weeks of the last session.  It would have been little noted except that political conservatives - unhappy with today's liberal trend - chose to drag out the bearded proposal for Americans to gawk at.

I'm not upset by such a proposal, though it looks like a bucket of fish hooks in its present form.

As we enter the U.S. Bicentennial year, perhaps it is appropriate to consider whether or not federalization that welded 13 struggling colonies into a mighty nation has application in these troubled times.

We certainly wouldn't want the United States saddled with the horrendous economic problems that beset other nations.

However, no nation in the complex world situations of today has the resources to stand aloof.

Streit modeled his world union on U.S. constitutional and British monarchial principles with power apportioned on the basis of population.  The legislative branch would consist of two houses as most democracies know them.  The executive branch would consist of a five-man board which would elect its members to one-year terms as president, but would appoint a "premier" who would serve so long as he had the "confidence" of the legislators.

It is easy to see how this mish-mash would alarm traditionalists on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yet, the increasing inter-dependence of nations seems to doom go-it-alone nationalism.

"The object of Union," wrote Streit back in 1939, "is to advance the freedom and individuality of the individual.

"Everywhere nationalism - in its zeal to make our nation, instead of ourselves, self-sufficing and independent - is centralizing government, giving it more and more power over the citizen's business and life, putting more and more of that power in one man's hands, freeing the government from its dependence on the citizen while making him more and more dependent on it - on the pretext of keeping him independent of other governments.

"The national state has tended to become a super-state in its power to dispose of the citizen, his money, job, and life.  Nationalism has been impoverishing the citizen with taxes, unemployment and depression," wrote Streit.

It is interesting that conservatives today make these same statements which Streit made 37 years ago as a liberal.

A good, conservative case can be made for the dangers of nationalism, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the United Nations.  The logical alternative to these is a world federal union - and, certainly, Americans would want this reserved to representative government.

Thus, the recent House-Senate Joint Resolution calling for an Atlantic Convention should not be dismissed out of hand.

The language of the resolution is reasonable in its intent:

"Whereas a more perfect union of the Atlantic Community ... give promise of strengthening common defense, assuring more adequate energy resources, providing a stable currency to improve commerce of all kinds, and enhancing the economic prosperity, general welfare, and liberty of the people of the member nations - now, therefore, be it resolved that the Congress hereby establishes a delegation...to organize and participate in a convention made up of similar delegations from such North Atlantic Treaty parliamentary democracies...to explore the possibility of agreement on a declaration that it is the goal of their peoples to transform their present relationship into a more effective unity based on federal or more democratic principles."

One hundred eleven Congressmen endorsed this resolution, the largest number in three decades.

Until the UN shapes up, maybe we should find out what they have in mind!

Author: Lindsey Williams