While many writers and historians have expounded on former President Teddy Roosevelt’s short career as a soldier in the Spanish-American War and his hawkish views in the period leading up to World War I, fewer have written on his vision for a law-driven and peaceful world.
Like President Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt favored an international body to promote a world governed by law. Both WW and TR wanted to avoid a round of great power wars that would disturb the peace every few decades. The words and ideas of these early 20th century statesman certainly provide a lot of food for thought for those who want to build something similar in contemporary times. In his 1905 annual address to Congress, TR endorsed the idea of what is sometimes called a concert of power:
“Our aim should be from time to time to take such steps as may be possible toward creating something like an organization of the civilized nations, because as the world becomes more highly organized the need for navies and armies will diminish,” Roosevelt said.
In his 1910 Nobel Peace Prize lecture, TR said, “it would be a masterstroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace.” President Woodrow Wilson echoed a similar sentiment: “there must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power — not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.”
In his address to Congress of January 22, 1917, WW announced the concert of power strategy that would replace America’s earlier strategy of non-entanglement: “In every discussion of peace that must end this war, it is taken for granted that the peace must be followed by some definite concert of power which will make it virtually impossible that any such catastrophe should ever overwhelm us again.”
Although Wilson’s League of Nations failed, during World War II President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought the same goal of a concert-governed international system in the form of the United Nations. During World War II, in 1942, FDR outlined his plan for a new world organization with a general assembly and a security council of the major powers: He envisioned a power concert of the US, the UK, Russia and China. The provision of security by the great powers would permit the majority of the world’s states to disarm and devote their resources to improving the standard of living of their people.
As writer Michael Lind points out in his story in The Globalist “The United States in the Global Concert of Power,” this type of thinking has been rejected in recent years by the bi-partisan foreign policy establishment. Lind correctly points out that our country’s leaders in the post-Cold War world tried to turn our country into a hegemon. International relations thinkers define a hegemon as a political entity that tries to dominate an international political system. Under Presidents Clinton and Bush and also Obama, the United States sought new spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. At the same time, the United States pursued a containment policy of China and Russia.
Germany tried to be a hegemon two times in the 20th century and a block of nations emerged to check its’ power. Soviet Russia tried to do the same thing later in the 20th century and suffered a similar fate. History proves that such a strategy is unsustainable.
What has the hegemony strategy cost us? Our country has maintained a military presence in Europe and Asia after the end of the Cold War. We have also deployed forces to Middle East on a regular basis. This foreign policy has cost our treasury billions of dollars.
What ramifications does our foreign policy have on our domestic policy? As of late, many have noticed the lack of security American’s face. Forty-two percent of the citizens of our country can’t afford the basics of a middle-class life – rent or mortgage, transportation, health insurance and a cell phone. Affordable housing has become an issue in major American cities and the homeless population is rising. Our internal security falling apart while we spend more and more on external defense.
The Cold War paralyzed the UN Security Council with Soviet Russia regularly vetoing UN decisions. Following the Cold War, however, a great-power concert became possible. Many of the permanent council members’ cooperated on a number of issues. However, this stopped with all of the recent geopolitical tensions between Russia, China, and the US. The extension of NATO to former Warsaw Pact members by the US in the 1990’s, the continuing existence of military bases in Asia despite the fall of the Soviet Union, and the formation of political blocs like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the Shanghai Corporation Organization have driven this conflict. The QSD includes the US, Japan, India and Australia and was formed to contain China and the SCO includes Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan and Turkey and was designed to serve as a check on US power.
What would a modern power concert look like? It would have to include the major power centers – the EU, US, China, and Russia – and it would enforce international law and peace, an organization similar to TR’s vision. When all of the power centers corporate instead of compete, each country could decrease its’ security costs and invest internally as well as in poverty invested parts of the world.
