Third World

“ As always, development diplomacy shall continue to serve particularly our actions in the negotiation of treaties and agreements with other nations. It shall guide us in resolving those irritants that remain of a passing era that made us the charge of another country. It shall define our place among the nations of the Third World. ”

“ Though we have taken the momentous step of opening ties with the Com­munist countries and of identifying our cause with the nations of the Third World, we see many problems in international relations that require more than ever the steadfast pursuit of an independent foreign policy. ”

“ Our deep commitment to human rights and to meeting human needs has improved our relationship with much of the Third World. Our decision to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China will help to preserve peace and stability in Asia and in the Western Pacific. ”

“ We are grown more nearly citizens of the world.
This new knowledge, these new duties and interests, must have two effects—they must extend our power, influence, and trade, and they must elevate the public service. Every returning soldier or traveler tells the same story—that the very name "American" has taken a new significance throughout the Orient. The shrewd Oriental no longer regards us as a second- or third-class Power. ”

“ These are the lands in which we have the greatest stake and the greatest temptation to pursue an imperialistic policy. The real power in this world, however, lies in Europe. It is Europe that decides the fate of Asia, Africa, Australia, and may in the end decide that of South America. It is from Europe that the fear of war arises, and it is in our dealings with Europe, and in the dealings of European nations with one another, that the hope of peace and of progress in international development must centre. ”

“ In other words, they have wanted their share in the division of Africa and Asia into spheres under the control of European nations.
Is a logical and legitimate ambition to play a part in the world's politics in proportion to one's population, one's wealth, one's industrial and maritime activity, necessarily a menace to the world's peace? It has always been, and I suppose always will be, in the nature of those who have, to look with alarm upon the efforts of those who have not, to possess something. ”

“ A NEW PHASE OF HUMAN EVOLUTION The cessation of hostilities on the continent of Europe, the prospect of an early termination of the bloody conflict raging in the Far East, invest the members of the world Bahá’í community, and particularly its standard-bearers in the great Republic of the West, with a great, a unique, and inescapable responsibility. ”

“ Having colonized the Far West, having mastered its internal resources, the nation turned at the conclusion of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century to deal with the Far East to engage in the world-politics of the Pacific Ocean. ”

“ In two wars, first in Korea and now in Vietnam, we furnished most of the money, most of the arms, most of the men to help other nations defend their freedom.
Today the great industrial nations of Europe, as well as Japan, have regained their economic strength; and the nations of Latin America--and many of the nations who acquired their freedom from colonialism after World War II in Asia and Africa--have a new sense of pride and dignity and a determination to assume the responsibility for their own defense. ”

“ And, beyond this general resolve, we are called to act a responsible role in the world's great concerns or conflicts—whether they touch upon the affairs of a vast region, the fate of an island in the Pacific, or the use of a canal in the Middle East. Only in respecting the hopes and cultures of others will we practice the equality of all nations. ”

“ The organisation of Europe and mankind according to the plan of the Allies is a broader program, a pan-human program, carried out democratically through the self-determination of nations and without militarism. Pangermanism is geographically and culturally a smaller and reactionary program: it aims at the unification of the Old World, Europe, Asia and Africa. But alongside of the Old World there has developed the New World—America. The program of the Allies proclaims the organisation of the Old and New Worlds, the direct organisation of all mankind. ”

“ Other nations, large and small, while still managing to maintain an official neutrality, have found themselves drawn into diplomatic controversies with both groups of belligerents. With the exception of South America, the continents of the world have sent contingents to fight in Europe. The destinies of Africa, Asia, and Australia are at stake, and the destinies [6] of the western hemisphere will, long before the end is reached, be influenced vitally by the tremendous events that are taking place in Europe. ”

“ Accept this rounded figure, and we have perhaps 140 nations or potential nations on the planet. Some are long established and stable. Other nations are new-born, with small populations, few resources and minimal means of defense or offense. By and large this is the family of nations which might be coordinated into an effective world authority which would be responsible for order, decency and peace in a federally coordinated world. ”

“ How far shall the modern world recognize nations which are not nations, but combinations of a dominant caste and a suppressed horde of serfs? Will it not be possible to rebuild a world with compact nations, empires of self-governing elements, and colonies of backward peoples under benevolent international control? ”

“ These inferior nations were all incarnate anachronisms, relics of dark ages which had survived into an epoch of democracy and liberty, and it now behooved them to readjust themselves to that. Their institutions must be modernized, their Old World conceptions abandoned, and their people taught to imitate the progressive nations of the West. ”

“ These two colonial powers hold in their hands the raw materials upon which all Europe except Russia and the Balkans depends for its well-being. What will be the colonial policy of Great Britain and France toward other European nations, especially toward Italy and Germany? What will be their policy toward Japan? Does not the peace of the world depend upon how the colonial powers will solve the problem of giving to Italy, Germany, and Japan a fair share in the privilege of developing610 and trading with Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world over which fly the British and French flags? ”

“ There is only one Antwerp, one Trieste, one Constantinople, and there are many claimants. Is Russia to control the Yellow Sea or is Japan? Is the Persian Gulf to be British, Russian or German? Is the present division of colonial possessions to be maintained or is there to be a new distribution, from which some nations will gain and others lose? What is to decide what colonies shall belong to what nation or what share each nation shall have in the profits of exploitations? ”

“ Every neutral nation has suffered tremendously by the war. Every neutral nation will suffer until a new world-order among nations is projected and perfected.
We owe a tremendous duty to the world in connection with this great world crisis and [Pg 216] upheaval. Diligently should our best men and women, those of insight and greatest influence, and with the expenditure of both time and means, seek to further the practical working out of a World Federation and a permanent World Court. ”

“ They are rich in resources and cheap labor, poor in capital, poor in political experience, poor in the power of defense. The government of these states is the supreme problem of diplomacy. Just as the chief task of American politics to the Civil War was the organization of the unexploited West, so the chief task of world diplomacy to-day is the organization of virgin territory and backward peoples. I use backward in the conventional sense to mean a people unaccustomed to modern commerce and modern political administration. ”

“ It is, therefore, by no means idle talk when I say that when we are once plunged into the vortex of the competition of the Old-World powers for colonial expansion, especially in the Far East, the danger of war—not excluding unnecessary or foolish war—will be constantly near us. ”

“ At present, the incontestible superiority of the western nations in wealth, in mechanical skill, in means of transportation, in government, in the art of war, enables them to make their way across the Old World toward the remotest recesses of Asia. The nations whom we are accustomed to call oriental, but who are only inhabitants of the Lesser East, have ceased to be formidable adversaries to Europe ”

“ To the citizens of the Middle West and the Far West, especially, busy as they were with the development of vast untapped resources, the affairs of the outer world necessarily appeared remote and insignificant. ”

“ The preamble names as parties of the one part the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, described as the Five Allied and Associated Powers, and Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, the Hedjaz, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Roumania, Serbia, Siam, Czecho-Slovakia, and Uruguay, who with the five above are described as the allied and associated powers, and on the other part, Germany.
Desire for a firm, just and durable peace. ”

“ But this time, and for the first time, the effort is world-wide, and China and Iceland, Patagonia and Central Africa all swing together with us to make—or into another catastrophic failure to make—the Great State of mankind. ”

“ Beyond question the future of the Far East is the gravest matter before the civilized world to-day. For many generations the Eastern Question caused Sovereigns to turn restlessly in their beds and diplomatists to start at a footfall ”

“ The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them all. Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her domination. ”

“ On the one side the subtle skill of Old World diplomacy was toiling hard and successfully to revive under specious names its lost and failing causes, while on the other hand the New World policy, naïvely ignoring historical forces and secular prejudices, was boldly reaching out toward rough and ready modes of arranging things and taking no account of concrete circumstances. ”

“ In foreign, as in home relations, we developed a frontier mind, and even to-day, long after our last frontier has been reached, we are still thinking of Europe, as of so many of our internal problems, in terms of this great colonising adventure. ”

“ Let us, sir, never carry our arms into the territory of other nations, unless we are compelled to take them up in self-defense. A pacific character is of all others most important for us to maintain. With a sea-coast of two thousand miles, indented with harbors and lined with cities, with an extended commerce, and with a population of only six millions, how are we to set up for the avenger of nations? ”

“ Armed defense of democratic existence is now being gallantly waged in four continents. If that defense fails, all the population and all the resources of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia will be dominated by the conquerors. Let us remember that the total of those populations and their resources in those four continents greatly exceeds the sum total of the population and the resources of the whole of the Western Hemisphere--many times over. ”

“ They come not only from our hemisphere and from our neighborhood here in the Caribbean but also from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, from countries as diverse as Israel and Poland, Belgium and Bangladesh, countries with problems of their own, economic problems, political problems, even security problems. ”

“ Little good could come out of the state of society in Europe during the last century, for little good was in it. This state of things has improved.
The three nations whose interference seems likely to have a conspicuous effect upon the interests of Africa in the future, are France, England, and the United States.
France will have all the Mediterranean shore, and the caravan trade across the deserts. ”

“ If national colonies can be utilised for special national advantage, financial, industrial or commercial, the attempt will be made. If trade and investment can be made to follow the flag, the nation has an interest in securing colonies. ”

“ And so, with their backs to the wall, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Turkey and Bulgaria faced Servia, Russia, France, Belgium, Great Britain, Montenegro, Japan, Italy, Portugal, Rumania, the United States, Cuba, Brazil, Greece, Siam, China and little Liberia, while Guatemala, Panama, Haiti, Uruguay and Bolivia stood by in a position of neutrality, but for the most part indicating a willingness to help the Allies. ”

“ Whatever the outcome of the negotiations for peace, one thing is sure: for better, for worse, and whether we will or no, the West must know the East, and the East must know the West. With that knowledge will inevitably come an interchange of potent influences, of influences that will affect profoundly the religion and morals, the philosophy, the literature, the art, in short, all the elements that make up the civilizations of the two hemispheres. ”

“ The regions of the world in which the problem of the protection of foreign interests promises to be most important are three. In eastern Europe and the Near East it is evident that the settlements following the World War cannot set up states that will at once be able to discharge easily all the responsibilities toward their neighbors and toward resident foreigners that the great powers will wish to have assumed. ”

“ Science had to do her work of long and patient research before man could hopefully face the mighty forces and malignant influences of the tropics. Nor was the advance of knowledge and invention sufficient by itself to equip man for successful war against the ocean, the desert, the forest, and the swamp. The political and social development of the older countries was equally necessary. In order that thousands of settlers should be able and ready to press in where the one great leader had shown the way, Europe had to gain something like peace and stability. ”