DISARMAMENT
The common good, the essential end of the State, imposes upon public authority the duty to provide for internal order and to defend against possible external aggression the rights of society, whose life it governs. It therefore renders legitimate the maintenance of an organized force at the disposal of the executive power, to suppress the causes of internal disorder and repel external aggression. The extent, however, of such public force must be strictly proportionate to the requirements of the end in view, and thus kept within reasonable limits, lest it prejudice other important elements of the common good. Catholic doctrine, accordingly, while it does not, in principle, judge war illegitimate provided it meets certain conditions, likewise does not declare illegitimate either the profession of arms or a corresponding armament, provided it does not exceed the necessities of defense.
The implementation of disarmament therefore depends on the greater or lesser security upon which a nation can rely, both internally and externally. Disarmament and security are two problems that are
inextricably connected and inseparable. It is also clear that disarmament can only achieve a certain degree: since the State always needs an armed force, if only for internal defense, disarmament will in every case be partial. Rather than speaking of disarmament, one should more properly speak of reduction and limitation of armaments, and the limits within which these should be contained ought to depend on the principle that the purpose of armed forces is essentially defensive, their justification deriving from the necessity of defense, both of internal order and of rights in the international sphere.
The neglect of these norms has been the cause of the arms race that has taken place since the 17th century. The policy of the balance of power, based solely on the relation of forces, has forced nations perpetually to remain on a war footing, since an arrangement resting on so unstable a foundation could give way at any moment and give rise to armed conflict. To this process was added the atmosphere of suspicion regarding the intentions of others, for nations do not arm merely to keep their powder dry in their arsenals, and the consequent distrust of the faithful observance of international agreements. An order purely mechanical, constructed without the support of any valid moral and juridical principle before the force of the powers, cannot generate security. Legal positivism has contributed to fostering the psychosis of armaments. If, according to international law as interpreted by positivists and accepted for convenience by politicians, a State possesses full liberty to wage war for any reason, the other States have no recourse but to arm themselves, trusting in force rather than in law.
All these causes and others led States to adopt the formula of the armed nation, maintaining standing armies, introducing compulsory conscription, and progressively increasing their effects in a dizzying competition of expenditures harmful to the general economy of the country, whose resources were largely swallowed up by military budgets.
The voice of the Church has not failed to warn peoples of the dangers of such ruinous policies. Leo XIII, in the apostolic letter *Pervenuti all'anno vigesimo quinto* of 9 March 1902, deplored “the fatal criteria that consecrate material forces as almost the supreme law of the world: whence the progressive and immoderate increase of military preparations, that is, that armed peace comparable in many respects to the most disastrous effects of war.” Pius X, in a letter sent on 11 June 1911 to the Apostolic Delegate of the United States, praised the initiative of the Carnegie Endowment for disarmament, which he said was necessary “especially at this time when the numerical importance of armies, the power of war matériel, and military science have so advanced as to suggest the possibility of wars that would strike even the most powerful princes with mortal fear.” Well known are the proposals of Benedict XV to the belligerent peoples of the First World War, made public on 1 August 1917. For the attainment of peace, among other things the Pope advised “a just agreement among all for the simultaneous and reciprocal reduction of armaments, according to norms and guarantees to be established in the measure necessary and sufficient for the maintenance of public order within each State.” In the same sense Pius XI expressed himself in the encyclical *Ubi Arcano Dei* of 23 December 1922. The Church has therefore made its own the cause of disarmament.
Attempts to reach an agreement on this subject have not been lacking in the history of international relations. The aspiration to diminish the means of offense for the benefit of humanity has always been alive among peoples and among some statesmen, but it has never succeeded in taking concrete form. In 1814, while the Treaty of Paris was being negotiated, Talleyrand proposed to the victorious powers that they seriously examine the possibility of reducing armies in time of peace. The proposal was not accepted, because France, exhausted by twenty years of war, then lacked sufficient prestige. In 1831 France took the initiative of a similar proposal, to which Prince Metternich replied that the return of armies to a peacetime footing could only be the consequence of security and confidence achieved in the good will of States to respect the commitments they had undertaken.
More serious was the attempt of Tsar Nicholas II, who revived the idea of a general reduction of armaments, inviting in 1898 the States to a conference to discuss the question. The small nations responded favorably to the invitation, which was received coldly by the great powers, which at the Hague Conference of 1899 definitively frustrated the proposal, despite the fact that Russia had limited the original program to the modest proportion of a general commitment not to increase armaments for a few years. These repeated unsuccessful attempts show how impossible it is to solve the problem of material disarmament without a prior moral disarmament and the transformation of that selfish mentality, intent solely on the triumph of the particular interests of each nation.
The persistence of such a mental attitude and the never-abandoned hegemonic aims of the great powers rendered more urgent the efforts recently made by the
League of Nations to reach a collective agreement on the reduction of armaments. At the end of the First World War, the States, instructed by recent experience, showed themselves more disposed to accept, with Article 8 of the Covenant, the principle that was a requirement for peace: to reduce national armaments “to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations,” entrusting the Council with the task of preparing plans to be submitted for the approval of governments. Meanwhile they pledged themselves to exchange all information relating to the extent of their armaments and to military, naval, and air programs. The prospects of disarmament were confirmed by the preamble to Part V of the Treaty of Versailles (1919), in which it was stated that Germany pledged itself strictly to observe the military, naval, and air clauses imposed upon it “with a view to making possible the preparation of a general limitation of the armaments of all nations.”
Twelve years had to pass, however, before a plenary conference for the reduction and limitation of armaments could be convened. This conference, inaugurated in 1932, conducted its work amid insurmountable difficulties arising from the conflicting directives of the powers. It had to be suspended in 1933 due to the withdrawal of Germany, which was already secretly rearming, and closed without achieving any result. The arms race resumed unchecked until the outbreak of the Second World War, after which the victorious powers, having drafted the United Nations Charter, granted the disarmament question only a few passing mentions as an object upon which the General Assembly and the Military Staff Committee might focus (Articles 1 and 47), without assuming any formal commitment to its implementation.
The necessity of achieving disarmament remains, nevertheless, urgent. Pius XII repeatedly insisted upon it during the years of the last conflict. In his 1939 Christmas message, he warned that «peace settlements which do not assign fundamental importance to a mutually agreed, organic, progressive disarmament, both in the practical and spiritual orders, and which fail to implement it loyally, will sooner or later reveal their inconsistency and lack of vitality.» He returned to the same theme again at Christmas 1941.
The attainment of this lofty goal will not be possible without the prior realization of certain prerequisites. To the moral disarmament already mentioned must be joined a renewed sense of the sacred character of law, with the abandonment of the fatal principle that force may replace or produce it; a consequent mutual trust among States, assured that their rights will not be impunely violated; and the establishment of an efficient international organization entrusted with the defense of both small and great nations and the control of their armaments. The achievement of these aims is certainly arduous, but the evolution of international law and institutions must steadily strive toward them, to free peoples from the specter of war and the unbearable burden of unproductive expenditures that devour national resources and impoverish the economies of nations.