The Specter of Neutralism

Neutralism is the most indigenous, the most spontaneous and the most important political mood in Europe.

Neutralism is the most indigenous, the most spontaneous and the most important political mood in Europe. So long as the continent remains socially sick, neutralism will continue. So long as the continent retains the possibility of social health, neutralism will survive. Not a political movement in the ordinary or traditional sense, neutralism cuts across all parties, infects all classes, colors all political ideologies. Neutralism speaks of the profound yearning of all Europeans to achieve once more their former proud position of political and cultural independence; neutralism reflects the despairing fear of all Europeans that this yearning may be beyond realization.

America acts, Europe reacts. This has been the pattern of events over the past few decades. Western Europe has increasingly felt itself to be an object manipulated by forces it cannot control. And if we glance for only a moment at the increasing discrepancy between American productivity and European, between American wealth and European, we come upon the first fact essential for an understanding of neutralism.

Steadily—through and after the war—the balance of international trade has tilted in favor of America. During the war years, naturally, the American export surplus was enormous, amounting in 1943 to $9.3 billions and in 1944 to $10.2 billions. This trend has not been stopped in the postwar period. In 1952 the American balance of trade came to $4.3 billions; in 1954 it rose to $4.5 billions. The average yearly export surplus now runs to from four to five times that of 1939!

True enough, during the past two years there has been a slight gain by Western Europe; but the basic problem remains. As Special Ambassador Draper put it in 1952:

“The internal and intra-European financial and payment problems, serious as they are, nonetheless are overshadowed by the balance of payments problem of Western Europe vis-a-vis the dollar area. This phenomenon, which has its roots in the huge excess of United States exports over its imports, has persisted in varying degree over a period of years. Unless a balance can be restored there is real danger of a deep and perhaps disastrous fissure between the economies of Europe and America.”

Until now this shortage has been met by the economic and military aid programs, which have, incidentally, contributed very heavily to the extraordinary American prosperity of the past decade. But now the period of large-scale aid to Europe is almost over, and precisely to the degree that there has been some revival of economic life, the continent feels a sharper desire to resist its status of economic subjugation.

By subjugation we do not, of course, mean that a colonial-imperialist relationship exists between Europe and America. Clearly, that is not the case, although by the sheer magnitude of its economic strength America does tend to override Europe. The fact of ...