{"id":3097,"date":"2013-07-13T01:45:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=3097"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:45:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:45:54","slug":"51-the-need-of-military-unification-vol-25-the-human-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/25-the-human-cycle\/51-the-need-of-military-unification-vol-25-the-human-cycle","title":{"rendered":"-51_The Need of Military Unification.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tChapter XXIV <\/font> <\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe Need of Military Unification <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tI<\/font>N THE<\/b> process of centralisation by which all the powers of an organised community come to be centred in one
\n sovereign governing body, \u2014 the process which has been the
\nmost prominent characteristic of national formations, \u2014 military necessity has played at the beginning the largest overt part.
\nThis necessity was both external and internal, \u2014 external for the defence of the nation against disruption or subjection from without, internal for its defence against civil disruption and disorder. If a common administrative authority is essential in order to bind
\ntogether the constituent parts of a nation in the forming, the first need and claim of that central authority is to have in its hands the
\nmeans to prevent mortal dissidence and violent strife that would weaken or break up the organic formation. The monarchy or any
\nother central body must effect this end partly by moral force and psychological suggestion. For it stands as the symbol of union
\nand imposes respect for their visible and consecrated unity on the constituent parts, however strong may be their local, racial, clan
\nor class instincts of separatism. It embodies the united authority of the nation entitled to impose its moral force as greater than
\nthe moral right of the separate parts, even if they be something like sub-nations, and to command their obedience. But in the
\nlast resort, since these motives may at any moment fail when revolting interests or sentiments are strong and passions run
\nhigh, the governing body must have always the greatest military force at its command so as to overawe the constituent elements
\nand prevent the outbreak of a disruptive civil war. Or if the civil war or rebellion comes about, as can always happen when the
\nmonarchy or the government is identified closely with one of the parties in a quarrel or is itself the subject of dissatisfaction
\nand attack, then it must have so great a predominance of force behind it as to be morally sure of victory in the conflict. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013475<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis
\ncan only be secured to the best possible perfection, \u2014 it cannot be done absolutely except by an effective disarmament,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 if the
\nwhole military authority is centred in the central body and the whole actual or potential military force of the society subjected
\nto its undivided control. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tIn the trend to the formation of the World-State, however
\nsubconscient, vague and formless it may yet be, military necessity has begun to play the same large visible part. The peoples of the
\nworld already possess a loose and chaotic unity of life in which none can any longer lead an isolated, independent and selfdependent existence. Each feels in its culture, political tendencies and economic existence the influence and repercussion of events
\nand movements in other parts of the world. Each already feels subtly or directly its separate life overshadowed by the life of
\nthe whole. Science, international commerce and the political and cultural penetration of Asia and Africa by the dominant
\nWest have been the agents of this great change. Even in this loose unacknowledged and underlying unity the occurrence or
\nthe possibility of great wars has become a powerful element of disturbance to the whole fabric, a disturbance that may one day
\nbecome mortal to the race. Even before the European war, the necessity of avoiding or minimising a collision between one or
\ntwo that might prove fatal to all was keenly felt and various well-intentioned but feeble and blundering devices were tentatively introduced which had that end in view. Had any of these makeshifts been tolerably effective, the world might long have
\nremained content with its present very unideal conditions and the pressing need
\n\t\t\tof a closer international organisation would not have enforced
\n\t\t\titself on the general mind of the race. But the European collision
\n\t\t\trendered the indefinite continuance of the old chaotic regime
\n\t\t\timpossible. The necessity of avoiding any repetition of the
\n\t\t\tcatastrophe was for a time universally acknowledged. A means of
\n\t\t\tkeeping international peace and of creating an authority which shall
\n\t\t\thave the power to dispose of dangerous international questions and
\n\t\t\tprevent what from the new point of view of human unity we may call
\n\t\t\tcivil war between the peoples of mankind, had somehow or other to be
\n\t\t\tfound or created.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013476<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tVarious ideas were put forward with more or less authority as to the necessary conditions of international peace. The
\ncrudest of these was the foolish notion, created by a one-sided propaganda, which imagined that the destruction of German
\nmilitarism was the one thing needful and in itself sufficient to secure the future peace of the world. The military power, the
\npolitical and commercial ambitions of Germany and her acute sense of her confined geographical position and her encirclement
\nby an unfriendly alliance were the immediate moral cause of this particular war; but the real cause lay in the very nature of the
\ninternational situation and the psychology of national life. The chief feature of this psychology is the predominance and worship of national egoism under the sacred name of patriotism. Every national ego, like every organic life, desires a double
\n\t\t\tself-fulfilment, intensive and extensive or expansive. The deepening and enriching of its culture, political strength and economic wellbeing within its borders is not felt to be sufficient if there is not, without, an extension or expansion of its culture, an increase of
\nits political extent, dominion, power or influence and a masterful widening of its commercial exploitation of the world. This
\nnatural and instinctive desire is not an abnormal moral depravity but the very instinct of egoistic life; and what life at present is
\nnot egoistic? But it can be satisfied only to a very limited degree by peaceful and unaggressive means. And where it feels itself
\nhemmed in by obstacles that it thinks it can overcome, opposed by barriers, encircled, dissatisfied with a share of possession and
\ndomination it considers disproportionate to its needs and its strength, or where new possibilities of expansion open out to it
\nin which only its strength can obtain for it its desirable portion, it is at once moved to the use of some kind of force and can
\nonly be restrained by the amount of resistance it is likely to meet. If it has a weak opposition of unorganised or ill-organised
\npeoples to overcome, it will not hesitate; if it has the opposition of powerful rivals to fear, it will pause, seek for alliances
\nor watch for its moment. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013477<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tGermany had not the monopoly of this expansive instinct and egoism;
\n\t\t\tbut its egoism was the best organised and least satisfied, the
\n\t\t\tyoungest, crudest, hungriest,
\nmost self-confident and presumptuous, most satisfied with the self-righteous brutality of its desires. The breaking of German
\nmilitarism might ease for a moment the intensity of the many headed commercial wrestle but it cannot, by the removal of a
\ndangerous and restless competitor, end it. So long as any kind of militarism survives, so long as fields of political or commercial
\naggrandisement are there and so long as national egoisms live and are held sacred and there is no final check on their inherent
\ninstinct of expansion, war will be always a possibility and almost a necessity of the life of the human peoples. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnother idea put forward with great authorities behind it was a league of free and democratic nations which would keep
\nthe peace by pressure or by the use of force if need be. If less crude, this solution is not for that any more satisfactory than the
\nother. It is an old idea, the idea Metternich put into practice after the overthrow of Napoleon; only in place of a Holy Alliance of
\nmonarchs to maintain peace and monarchical order and keep down democracy, it was proposed to have a league of free
\n\t\t\t\u2014
\nand imperial \u2014 peoples to enforce democracy and to maintain peace. One thing is perfectly sure that the new league would go
\nthe way of the old; it would break up as soon as the interests and ambitions of the constituent Powers became sufficiently disunited or a new situation arose such as was created by the violent resurgence of oppressed democracy in 1848 or such as would be
\ncreated by the inevitable future duel between the young Titan, Socialism, and the old Olympian gods of a bourgeois-democratic
\nworld. That conflict was already outlining its formidable shadow in revolutionary Russia, has now taken a body and cannot be
\nvery long delayed throughout Europe. For the war and its after consequences momentarily suspended but may very well turn
\nout to have really precipitated the advent and accentuated its force. One cause or the other or both together would bring a
\ncertain dissolution. No voluntary league can be permanent in its nature. The ideas which supported it, change; the interests
\nwhich made it possible and effective become fatally modified or obsolete. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013478<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThe supposition is that democracies will be less ready to go
\nto war than monarchies; but this is true only within a certain measure. What are called democracies are bourgeois States in
\nthe form either of a constitutional monarchy or a middle-class republic. But everywhere the middle class has taken over with
\ncertain modifications the diplomatic habits, foreign policies and international ideas of the monarchical or aristocratic governments which preceded them.1 This continuity seems to have been a natural law of the mentality of the ruling class. In Germany it
\nwas the aristocratic and the capitalist class combined that constituted the Pan-German party with its exaggerated and almost
\ninsane ambitions. In the new Russia the bourgeoisie during its brief rule rejected the political ideas of the Czardom in internal
\naffairs and helped to overturn autocracy, but preserved its ideas in external affairs minus the German influence and stood for
\nthe expansion of Russia and the possession of Constantinople. Certainly, there is an important difference. The monarchical
\nor aristocratic State is political in its mentality and seeks first of all territorial aggrandisement and political predominance or
\nhegemony among the nations, commercial aims are only a secondary preoccupation attendant on the other. In the bourgeois
\nState there is a reverse order; for it has its eye chiefly on the possession of markets, the command of new fields of wealth,
\nthe formation or conquest of colonies or dependencies which can be commercially and industrially exploited and on political
\naggrandisement only as a means for this more cherished object. Moreover, the monarchical or aristocratic statesman turned to
\nwar as almost his first expedient. As soon as he was dissatisfied with the response to his diplomacy, he grasped at the sword or
\nthe rifle. The bourgeois statesman hesitates, calculates, gives a longer rope to diplomacy, tries to gain his ends by bargainings,
\narrangements, peaceful pressure, demonstrations of power. In the end he is ready to resort to war, but only when these expedients have failed him and only if the end seems commensurate with the means and the great speculation of war promises a very
\n\t\t\tstrong chance of success and solid profit. But on the other hand,
\n\t\t\tthe bourgeois-democratic State has developed a stupendous military
\n\t\t\torganisation of which the most powerful monarchs and aristocracies
\n\t\t\tcould not dream. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t1<\/sup>So also has Socialist Russia taken over from the Czars these ideas and habits with very little or no modification.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013479<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAnd if this tends to delay the
\noutbreak of large wars, it tends too to make their final advent sure and their proportions enormous and nowadays incalculable
\nand immeasurable. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThere was a strong suggestion at the time that a more truly
\ndemocratic and therefore a more peaceful spirit and more thoroughly democratic institutions would reign after the restoration
\nof peace by the triumph of the liberal nations. One rule of the new international situation was to be the right of nations to
\ndispose of their own destinies and to be governed only by their free consent. The latter condition is impossible of immediate
\nfulfilment except in Europe, and even for Europe the principle is not really recognised in its total meaning or put into entire
\npractice. If it were capable of universal application, if the existing relations of peoples and the psychology of nations could be
\nso altered as to establish it as a working principle, one of the most fertile causes of war and revolution would be removed,
\nbut all causes would not disappear. The greater democratisation of the European peoples affords no sure guarantee. Certainly,
\ndemocracy of a certain kind, democracy reposing for its natural constitution on individual liberty would be likely to be
\nindisposed to war except in moments of great and universal excitement. War demands a violent concentration of all the
\nforces, a spirit of submission, a suspension of free-will, free action and of the right of criticism which is alien to the true
\ndemocratic instinct. But the democracies of the future are likely to be strongly concentrated governments in which the principle
\nof liberty is subordinated to the efficient life of the community by some form of State socialism. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013480<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tA democratic State of that kind might well have even a greater power
\n\t\t\tfor war, might be able to put forward a more violently concentrated
\n\t\t\tmilitary organisation in event of hostilities than even the
\n\t\t\tbourgeois democracies and it is not at all certain that it would be
\n\t\t\tless tempted to use its means and power. Socialism has been
\n\t\t\tinternational and pacific
\nin its tendencies because the necessity of preparation for war is favourable to the rule of the upper classes and because war itself
\nis used in the interests of the governments and the capitalists; the ideas and classes it represents are at present depressed and
\ndo not grow by the uses or share visibly in the profits of war. What will happen when they have hold of the government and
\nits temptations and opportunities has to be seen but can easily be forecast. The possession of power is the great test of all idealisms
\nand as yet there have been none religious or secular which have withstood it or escaped diminution and corruption. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tTo rely upon the common consent of conflicting national egoisms for the preservation of peace between the nations is
\nto rely upon a logical contradiction. A practical improbability which, if we can judge by reason and experience, amounts to an
\nimpossibility, can hardly be a sound foundation for the building of the future. A League of Peace can only prevent armed strife for
\na time. A system of enforced arbitration, even with the threat of a large armed combination against the offender, may minimise
\nthe chance of war and may absolutely forbid it to the smaller or weaker nations; but a great nation which sees a chance of making
\nitself the centre of a strong combination of peoples interested in upsetting the settled order of things for their own benefit, might
\nalways choose to take the risks of the adventure in the hope of snatching advantages which in its estimation outweighed the
\nrisks.2 <\/sup>Moreover, in times of great upheaval and movement when large ideas, enormous interests and inflamed passions divide the
\npeoples of the world, the whole system would be likely to break to pieces and the very elements of its efficacy would cease to
\nexist. Any tentative and imperfect device would be bound before long to disclose its inefficacy and the attempt at a deliberate
\norganisation of international life would have to be abandoned and the work left to be wrought out confusedly by the force of
\nevents. The creation of a real, efficient and powerful authority which would stand for the general sense and the general power <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u2013481<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t2The subsequent history of the League of Nations, which had not been
\n\t\t\tformed at the time of writing, has amply proved the inefficacy of
\n\t\t\tthese devices.of mankind in its collective life and spirit and would be something more than a bundle of vigorously separate States loosely
\ntied together by the frail bond of a violable moral agreement is the only effective step possible on this path. Whether such an
\nauthority can really be created by agreement, whether it must not rather create itself partly by the growth of ideas, but still
\nmore by the shock of forces, is a question to which the future alone can answer. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tAn authority of this nature would have to command the psychological
\n\t\t\tassent of mankind, exercise a moral force upon the nations greater
\n\t\t\tthan that of their own national authority and compel more readily
\n\t\t\ttheir obedience under all normal circumstances. It would have not
\n\t\t\tonly to be a symbol and a centre of the unity of the race, but make
\n\t\t\titself constantly serviceable to the world by assuring the effective
\n\t\t\tmaintenance and development of large common interests and benefits
\n\t\t\twhich would outweigh all separate national interests and satisfy
\n\t\t\tentirely the sense of need that had brought it into existence. It
\n\t\t\tmust help more and more to fix the growing sense of a common
\n\t\t\thumanity and a common life in which the sharp divisions which
\n\t\t\tseparate country from country, race from race, colour from colour,
\n\t\t\tcontinent from continent would gradually lose their force and
\n\t\t\tundergo a progressive effacement. Given these conditions, it would
\n\t\t\tdevelop a moral authority which would enable it to pursue with less
\n\t\t\tand less opposition and friction the unification of mankind. The
\n\t\t\tnature of the psychological assent it secured from the beginning
\n\t\t\twould depend largely on its constitution and character and would in
\n\t\t\tits turn determine both the nature and power of the moral authority
\n\t\t\tit could exercise on the earth’s peoples. If its constitution and
\n\t\t\tcharacter were such as to conciliate the sentiment and interest in
\n\t\t\tits maintenance the active support of all or most of the different
\n\t\t\tsections of mankind or at least those whose sentiment and support
\n\t\t\tcounted powerfully and to represent the leading political, social,
\n\t\t\tcultural ideas and interests of the time, it would have the maximum
\n\t\t\tof psychological assent and moral authority and its way would be
\n\t\t\tcomparatively smooth. If defective in these respects, it would have
\n\t\t\tto make up the deficiency by a greater
\nconcentration and show of military force at its back and by extraordinary and striking services to the general life, culture
\nand development of the human race such as assured for the <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u201348<\/font>2<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tRoman imperial authority the long and general assent of the
\nMediterranean and Western peoples to their subjection and the obliteration of their national existence.
\nBut in either case the possession and concentration of military power would be for long the first condition of its security,
\nand the effectiveness of its own control and this possession would have to be, as soon as possible, a sole possession. It is
\ndifficult at present to foresee the consent of the nations of the world to their own total disarmament. For so long as strong
\nnational egoisms of any kind remained and along with them mutual distrust, the nations would not sacrifice their possession
\nof an armed force on which they could rely for self-defence if their interests, or at least those that they considered essential
\nto their prosperity and their existence, came to be threatened. Any distrust of the assured impartiality of the international
\ngovernment would operate in the same direction. Yet such a disarmament would be essential to the assured cessation of war
\n\t\t\t\u2014 in the absence of some great and radical psychological and moral change. If national armies exist, the possibility, even the
\ncertainty of war will exist along with them. However small they might be made in times of peace, and international authority,
\neven with a military force of its own behind it, would be in the position of the feudal king never quite sure of his effective control over his vassals. The international authority must hold under its command the sole trained military force in the
\nworld for the policing of the nations and also \u2014 otherwise the monopoly would be ineffective
\n\t\t\t\u2014 the sole disposal of the means
\nof manufacturing arms and implements of war. National and private munition factories and arms factories must disappear.
\nNational armies must become like the old baronial armies a memory of past and dead ages. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tThis consummation would mark definitely the creation of a
\n\t\t\tWorld-State in place of the present international conditions. For it
\n\t\t\tcan be brought into truly effective existence only if the 
\n\t\t\tinternational authority became, not merely the arbiter of disputes,
\n\t\t\tbut the source of law and the final power behind their execution. <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u201348<\/font><\/font>3<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t For the execution of its decrees against recalcitrant countries or classes, for the prevention of all kinds of strife not
\nmerely political but commercial, industrial and others or at least of their decision by any other ways than a peaceful resort to law
\nand arbitration, for the suppression of any attempt at violent change and revolution, the World-State, even at its strongest,
\nwould still need the concentration of all force in its own hands. While man remains what he is, force in spite of all idealisms
\nand generous pacific hopes must remain the ultimate arbiter and governor of his life and its possessor the real ruler. Force may
\nveil its crude presence at ordinary times and take only mild and civilised forms,
\n\t\t\t\u2014 mild in comparison, for are not the jail and
\nthe executioner still the two great pillars of the social order? \u2014 but it is there silently upholding the specious appearances of our
\ncivilisation and ready to intervene, whenever called upon, in the workings of the fairer but still feebler gods of the social cosmos.
\nDiffused, force fulfils the free workings of Nature and is the servant of life but also of discord and struggle; concentrated, it
\nbecomes the guarantee of organisation and the bond of order.   <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage \u201348<\/font>4<\/font><\/p>\n

\t<\/font><\/font><\/font> <\/font> <\/font>\n\t\t\t<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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