FUTURE WORLD SECURITY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24901, 14 June 1946, Page 7

FUTURE WORLD SECURITY

REGIONAL GROUPS

LORD ALTRINCHAM’S VIEWS (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON. June 13. The United Nations Organisation alone would not be capable in this generation of preventing a third world war, and the right course would be to organise groups for regional security, said Lord Altrincham, formerly British Minister in the Middle East, in a speech at the Empire Press Union Conference. He added that no world organisation would guarantee peace until the opposite political and economic beliefs of the Western Powers and Russia were in some way reconciled. Lord Altrincham said that Russia would continue to insist on the veto because her leaders were sincerely afraid of a line-up against her by the rest of the world. The veto was not an expression of power politics in the cruder meaning of the term, for he did not believe the Russian leaders were actuated by militaristic Imperialism. It sprang from fear and from a profound conviction that only by its exercise could the Russian regime remain secure. The right course, therefore, would be to organise groups for regional security which manifestly did pot threaten the security of Russia in her own sphere. Hp suggested that regional organisations should be set up first in Western Europe; second, in North America; third, in the Middle East; fourth, on the African Continent south of the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; and fifth, in south-east Asia and the southern Pacific. The Commonwealth policy should be to devolve responsibility still further so that the greater Dominions should be supreme in their own areas with United Kingdom strength reinforcing theirs by virtue of a concrete security plan. Britain would be the mgin link between the various regional systems because she must participate in them all, but control must be vested in truly regional authorities, not centred in Whitehall. fjord Altrincham said that some progress had already been made in a regional security plan for south-east Asia and the southern Pacific where the voices of New Zealand and Australia, would be pre-eminent. He hoped those two Dominions were not taking merely a polite and platonic interest in the future of Malaya and Singapore. They would share the consequences of whatever was done in that region as had been shown by the events following the fall of Singapore. Lord Altrincham added that the United Kingdom would have to take the lead in the Middle East, but it was to be hoped that tfie last had been heard of the whimsy that the sectirity of the Empire’s interests in the Middle East was purely a United Kingdom responsibility in which New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa need manifest only a police and platonic concern. The groupings he nad suggested were desirable, not pnly for the negative purpose of avoiding war. The peace would be barren if the nations were unable to combine on the positive task of rebuilding and expanding international prosperity. “The American drive for American prosperity has dangers for other peoples/’ said Lord Altrincham* ‘‘l* the world copsists of two vast economic blocs led by America and Russia with nothing outside but a welter of weaker States forbidden to cooperate as economic groups to stimulate their own recovery, the prospect for trade expansion will be unpromising. England must, therefore, strive to prevent economic dualism by intermediate organisation within the United Nations,” Lord Altrincham said he hoped the British Government would send Parliamentary delegations from time to time, and entrust the regional councils with real constitutional power.