U.S. WAR AIMS—Walter Lippmann —Atlantic-Little, Brown & Co. ($1.50).
America's retaliation for Christopher Columbus, Walter Lippmann, continues to discover the Old World. In U.S. War Aims, an occasionally repetitious sequel to the spectacularly successful U.S. Foreign Policy* he reports his latest discovery: the U.S. is a part of the Atlantic Community.
Those who think that Author Lippmann has merely coined a new name for the old ideogram "Western World" will do an injustice to the most analytical mind in U.S. journalism. For Walter Lippmann wrote his new book around the term Atlantic Community to describe a historical development which, if true, means a political change of planetary significance: the Western World's center of gravity has jumped West. Henceforth the Atlantic Ocean will be what the Mediterranean was for 20 centuries—the lake of decision. Implication: to the strongest power along the shorelines of this new Mediterranean may fall the splendor and the responsibility that once were Rome's. That strongest power is the U.S. Its war aims ultimately express only one concern: the safeguarding of the unique U.S. position as the dominant Atlantic power.
America, says Lippmann, is a continental island in the great oceanic basin of the Atlantic and the Pacific, and hence is foredestined to try to prevent the establishment of an aggressively expanding empire in either sea. That, and not trade conflicts, is the real reason why the U.S. has fought two wars with Germany in 24 years and has always supported China against Japan.
The Atlantic Community includes all nations on both shores of the Atlantic, and those nations on the Pacific side who have had the good sense to be far from
Asia. Combining about 522,000,000 people in about 42 sovereign states, it is the only area of the planet where "the facts of international life conform with the spirit of the Atlantic Charter." The Atlantic is the crucial area of U.S. fate.
Three Worlds. Correcting Wendell Willkie, Author Lippmann submits that the world, far from being one, is divided into three parts—the Atlantic Community (in which the U.S. and Britain play the leading roles), the Russian Orbit, the embryonic Chinese Orbit. The postwar settlement with Germany is the combined job of the Atlantic Community and the Russian Orbit. The settlement with Japan is the tripartite job of the Atlantic Community, the Russian and Chinese Orbits. Together, the three "are the founding members of a world order of peace."
Policy toward Japan. Japan, Author Lippmann believes, must submit to being expelled from the Asiatic mainland, entirely shorn of sea power. "The terms defined in the Cairo Declaration will last if Russia, China and the U.S. stand firmly upon them."