It
is not necessary to repeat or review, except in certain directions,
the considerations and conclusions set forward in this book with regard
to the means and methods or the lines of divergence or successive development
which the actual realisation of human unity may take. But still on some
sides possibilities have arisen which call for some modification of
what has been written or the conclusions arrived at in these chapters.
It had been concluded, for instance, that there was no likelihood of
the conquest and unification of the world by a single dominant people
or empire. This is no longer altogether so certain, for we have just
had to admit the possibility of such an attempt under certain circumstances.
A dominant Power may be able to group round itself strong allies subordinated
to it but still considerable in strength and resources and throw them
into a world struggle with other Powers and peoples. This possibility
would be increased if the dominating Power managed to procure, even
if only for the time being, a monopoly of an overwhelming superiority
in the use of some of the tremendous means of aggressive military action
which Science has set out to discover and effectively utilise. The terror
of destruction and even of large-scale extermination created by these
ominous discoveries may bring about a will in the governments and peoples
to ban and prevent the military use of these inventions, but, so long
as the nature of mankind has not changed, this prevention must remain
uncertain and precarious and an unscrupulous ambition may even get by
it a chance of secrecy and surprise and the utilisation of a decisive
moment which might conceivably give it victory and it might risk the
tremendous chance. It may be argued that the history of the last war
runs counter to this possibility, for in conditions not quite realising
but approximating to such a combination of circumstances the aggressive
Powers failed in their attempt and underwent the disastrous consequences
of a terrible defeat. But after all, they came for a time within a hair's
breadth of success and there might not be the same good fortune for
the world in some later and more sagaciously conducted and organised
adventure. At least, the possibility has to be noted and guarded against
by those who have the power of prevention and the welfare of the race
in their charge.
One
of the possibilities suggested at the time was the growth of continental
agglomerates, a united Europe, some kind of a combine of the peoples
of the American continent under the leadership of the United States,
even possibly in the resurgence of Asia and its drive towards independence
from the dominance of the European peoples, a drawing together for self-defensive
combination of the nations of this continent; such an eventuality of
large continental combinations might even be a stage in the final formation
of a world-union. This possibility has tended to take shape to a certain
extent with a celerity that could not then be anticipated. In the two
American continents it has actually assumed a predominating and practical
form, though not in its totality. The idea of a United States of Europe
has also actually taken shape and is assuming a formal existence, but
is not yet able to develop into a completed and fully realised possibility
because of the antagonism based on conflicting ideologies which cuts
off from each other Russia and her satellites behind their iron curtain
and Western Europe. This separation has gone so far that it is difficult
to envisage its cessation at any foreseeable time in a predictable future.
Under other circumstances a tendency towards such combinations might
have created the apprehension of huge continental clashes such as the
collision, at one time imagined as possible, between a resurgent Asia
and the Occident. The acceptance by Europe and America of the Asiatic
resurgence and the eventual total liberation of the Oriental peoples,
as also the downfall of Japan which figured at one time and indeed actually
presented itself to the world as the liberator and leader of a free
Asia against the domination of the West, have removed this dangerous
possibility. Here again, as elsewhere, the actual danger presents itself
rather as a clash between two opposing ideologies, one led by Russia
and Red China and trying to impose the Communistic extreme partly by
military and partly by forceful political means on a reluctant or at
least an infected but not altogether willing Asia and Europe, and on
the other side a combination of peoples, partly capitalist, partly moderate
socialist who still cling with some attachment to the idea of liberty,—to
freedom of thought and some remnant of the free life of the individual.
In America there seems to be a push, especially in the Latin peoples,
towards a rather intolerant completeness of the Americanisation of the
whole continent and the adjacent islands, a sort of extended Monroe
Doctrine, which might create friction with the European Powers still
holding possessions in the northern part of the continent. But this
could only generate minor difficulties and disagreements and not the
possibility of any serious collision, a case perhaps for arbitration
or arrangement by the U.N.O., not any more serious consequence. In Asia
a more perilous situation has arisen, standing sharply across the way
to any possibility of a continental unity of the peoples of this part
of the world, in the emergence of Communist China. This creates a gigantic
bloc which could easily englobe the whole of Northern Asia in a combination
between two enormous Communist Powers,Russia
and China, and would overshadow with a threat of absorption South-Western
Asia and Tibet and might be pushed to overrun all up to the whole frontier
of India, menacing her security and that of Western Asia with the possibility
of an invasion and an overrunning and subjection by penetration or even
by overwhelming military force to an unwanted ideology, political and
social institutions and dominance of this militant mass of Communism
whose push might easily prove irresistible. In any case, the continent
would be divided between two huge blocs which might enter into active
mutual opposition and the possibility of a stupendous world-conflict
would arise dwarfing anything previously experienced: the possibility
of any world-union might, even without any actual outbreak of hostilities,
be indefinitely postponed by the incompatibility of interests and ideologies
on a scale which would render their inclusion in a single body hardly
realisable. The possibility of a coming into being of three or four
continental unions, which might subsequently coalesce into a single
unity, would then be very remote and, except after a world-shaking struggle,
hardly feasible.
-Sri
Aurobindo
