THE NATIONS: Super-Armed Peace

Two years after the defeat of German militarism, 19,000,000 men in the world are under arms; this costs the world about $27,400,000,000 a year, not counting what is spent on atomic and other secret research. These figures are the conclusion reached after a worldwide survey conducted by the New York Times under direction of its able Military Editor Hanson W. Baldwin. He believes that despite the disappearance of Germany and Japan as military powers, there are more soldiers today than on the eve of war in 1938.

Only seven* nations spend as little as 10% of their budgets for armaments. China contains the largest armies, but many on both the Nationalist and the Communist sides are not organized. Russia has the largest ground force (3,800,000). In spite (or because) of the fact that it is the strongest power, the U.S. gets along with a ground force of 670,000.

What are the world’s chances of “settling down” so that the burden of these armaments can be lightened? In one sense, that depends on confidence in the United Nations. More immediately, it depends on the settlement of outstanding issues, nearly all of which are related to the Communist drive for domination. The Chinese, for example, are not going to demobilize until one side or the other wins the civil war. Turkey is an even more pertinent example. It has an army of 675,000 (slightly larger than the U.S. force) mobilized against Russian pressure. Turkey is not going to demobilize until it is pretty sure that the Truman Doctrine will be consistent U.S. policy and that the Russians will understand that the U.S. intends, by money, leadership and arms, to protect other nations against Russian aggression. The Leyte was in Istanbul harbor last week not as a threat but as a symbol of that U.S. security policy.

American delegates returning from the Moscow Conference privately stress the fact that any U.S. “wobbling” on the Truman Doctrine will cause the countries threatened by Moscow to lose confidence in the U.S., and will also invite the Russians to further aggressive moves. For the moment, Moscow is rather quiescent. It has made a significant (and long overdue) concession on Korea (see FOREIGN NEWS), and is concentrating on an economic effort to get the most that it can out of eastern and central Europe.

The official travelers also report that Moscow expects a major economic collapse in the U.S. If the Russians are right about that, or if the Truman Doctrine “wobbles,” a lot more men than 19,000,000 may be under arms.

* Eire, Norway, Belgium, Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala and Panama (which has no army at all).