Edson: Dumbarton Oaks secrecy ‘just a little silly’
By Peter Edson
Washington –
The futility of official efforts to maintain an air of sanctified, upper stratosphere mystery about the American-British-Russian conferences on post-war security, now going on at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, is best illustrated by the fact that details of the American plan leaked out at the Republican National Convention in Chicago last June. Nobody cared then and it makes no difference now, so all the effort to maintain super-secrecy seems just a little bit silly.
The original leak on the American plan came during the drafting of the Republican platform. In trying to draw up the planks on foreign policy, the Resolutions Subcommittee assigned this job ran into a snag.
There was still a good bit of isolationist strength in the party and furthermore, the GOP politicians wanted to be free to criticize the Roosevelt foreign policy and lay it on thick and good.
This attitude made it difficult to get into the platform any statements of principle that would go even as far as the Republican declaration of Mackinac Island in which, nearly a year before, GOP Senators, governors and party bigshots came out unanimously for joining an organization of nations to maintain a just and lasting peace.
Peace assembly
To sell the Resolutions Committee on the necessity for drafting a platform that would endorse something of that kind, Republican Senators Austin, Vandenberg and White, who were members of a foreign relations subcommittee familiar with Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s plans, finally felt forced to disclose to an executive session of the foreign policy plank drafters some of the details on how it was proposed to maintain peace by force. From these disclosures, information leaked out on the American plan to be presented to British and Russian delegations at Dumbarton Oaks.
News of this was generally buried under the more dramatic fight for the presidential nomination, but as revealed at Chicago the American plan called for an assembly of peace-loving nations, in which each nation would have only one vote. At the top, however, would be a council of eight nations, including the United States, Great Britain, Russia and China, whose representatives would sit permanently, and four smaller nations which would rotate annually.
It has, of course, been disclosed recently that this proposal might be modified to include France with the Big Four and to increase to seven the number of smaller nations on the council.
Whatever the numbers, in case trouble should break out in any part of the world, this executive council would be authorized to take action by vote of “an extraordinary majority,” defined as at least all of the larger nations plus one or two of the smaller nations. Thus, any one of the larger nations or all of the smaller nations combined could prevent action by negative votes.
In applying force against aggressor nations threatening the peace of the world, it was understood that the council would first try to settle disputes by diplomatic or economic sanctions. These failing, the council by extraordinary majority could decide force was necessary.
The larger nations would, of course, be expected to bear the greater burden of the costs and maintain the larger police forces which would, however, be largely under the control of their respective governments and operate principally in their own principal spheres of interest. For instance, trouble in South America would be assigned by the council to the United States for settlement, trouble in the Balkans to Russia, in Western Europe or Africa to Great Britain, in the Pacific perhaps to a combination powers.
Nonpartisanship
Disclosure of even this much of the American plan, as early as last June, made no difference in the end result. No governments fell, no diplomats were forced to turn in their portfolios, and the conference was held just as scheduled.
The fact that U.S. Senators told state secrets raises a nice question of ethics, but that is beyond the point that even after the cat had been let out of the bag, there were no ill effects. If anything, it helped the Republicans write a better platform, and helped the cause of making nonpartisan peace. That should prove there is no need for keeping a lot of this confidential stuff under such tight wrappings.
