Prudent Limits to an American Commitment on European Political Union

The United States has for some time been com mitted to European political union. The policy was and is to federate western Europe in a union about equal in power to our own federal union and to link the two so that they would balance each other yet, without separating, exercise their combined weight in world affairs. This has been known in State Department circles as Operation Dumbbell. The ex pression is apt, also, in the slang sense, for the policy is self- defeating and dangerous. The United States commitment to European political union is so deep that the only way to limit it prudently is to replace Operation Dumbbell with a policy of Atlantic federal union. A policy of Atlantic federal union would recognize that any other bond—alliance or confedera tion—would be too frail to be depended upon to hold such heavyweights together. Time is working against eventual union slowly achieved by degrees; everything in our time moves at revolutionary speed. What the United States is aiming to do in western Europe can be done on an Atlantic scale by transforming NATO as it is into a federal government, by transferring to the Atlantic union power over foreign policy and defense, by establishing a common market, a common cur rency, and a common citizenship, and by doing so in the way that has been shown to be successful, the pattern of federation as achieved through the United States Constitution.—Ed.