Four Policemen
Under the Four Policemen plan, only four nations would have been allowed to own any weapon more powerful than a rifle. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the idea during World War II as a guarantor of world peace. He wanted a council of the four major Allies, known as the Big Four, to hold the guns and keep order everywhere else. The plan never took that exact form. Its echoes can still be found in the Security Council of the United Nations. Why did Roosevelt turn against the League of Nations? Why did he insist that China sit beside Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States? And how did a blueprint for four sheriffs end up inside a world organization?
In 1935, Roosevelt gave his foreign policy adviser Sumner Welles a blunt verdict on the League of Nations. He said it had become nothing more than a debating society, and a poor one at that. The United States had declined to join the League in 1919 and had followed a policy of isolationism ever since. Roosevelt himself had supported the League in 1919-1920, so his change of heart carried weight.
His complaint was one of scale. He criticized the League for representing the interests of too many nations at once. The Wilsonian hope of international consensus and collaboration no longer convinced him. He came to favor peace secured through the unified efforts of the world's great powers.
By August 1941, at his first meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Roosevelt was already discussing the idea that great powers should police the world.
The Atlantic Charter, issued after that first meeting, made no mention of any American commitment to a new international body. Roosevelt had made sure of the omission. He was reluctant to announce his postwar plans in public, because the American people might reject them. He also did not want to repeat Woodrow Wilson's struggle to win Senate approval for League membership.
In September 1941 he put his thinking on paper. He judged it unwise to rebuild a League of Nations, which because of its size, in his words, "makes for disagreement and inaction." He proposed trusteeship instead, a principle he said was based on "unselfish service." Some peoples, he wrote, were like "minor children" who needed trustees in their dealings with other nations. Other nations had to be "led back into a spirit of good conduct."
Inside the United States Department of State, postwar planning had sat in abeyance for most of 1940 and 1941, after a desultory first effort. After the Atlantic Conference, the department prepared a directive on postwar planning by mid-October. It reached the president in late December.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 changed Roosevelt's position. He recast his trusteeship idea as a proposal for Four Policemen: the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China. They would enforce the peace for several years after the war. Roosevelt made his first references to the plan in early 1942 and kept using the term from then on. A wider organization of nations remained possible "for the purpose of full discussion," provided that "management" stayed with the Policemen.
Britain's beat would be its empire and Western Europe. The Soviet Union would watch over Eastern Europe and the central Eurasian landmass. China would cover East Asia and the Western Pacific, while the United States took the Western Hemisphere.
Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov arrived in Washington on the 29th of May to discuss a second front in Europe. Roosevelt used the visit to present his postwar vision. He told Molotov he "could not visualize another League of Nations with 100 different signatories." The Big Four, he said, must unite after the war to police the world and disarm aggressor states. Asked about other countries, he warned that too many policemen could lead to infighting. Even so, he was open to letting other allies take part.
A memorandum of the conversation shows how far Roosevelt's disarmament idea reached. He pictured enforced disarmament of enemies and even some friends, backed by inspection. Germany, Italy, Japan, France, Czechoslovakia and Rumania would be denied military forces. Other nations might join the first four after experience proved they could be trusted. The memorandum named the United States, England, Russia and perhaps China as the police.
A second meeting on the 1st of June brought news that Stalin was willing to support the plan, including enforced disarmament. Roosevelt also raised decolonization. He suggested that former colonies pass through a period of international trusteeship before gaining independence. One of the four seats, though, would draw doubts from Molotov and sharper objections from London.
Roosevelt told British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden that in any serious conflict of policy with Russia, China "would undoubtedly line up on our side." He meant the Republic of China, since the Communists had not yet won the Chinese Civil War. A friendly China could also matter if the Americans, Soviets and Chinese agreed to occupy Japan and Korea together.
Molotov voiced concern about China's stability. Roosevelt answered that the combined "population of our nations and friends was well over a billion people."
There was a question of race as well. Japan belonged to the Axis, so China was the only Asian nation Roosevelt thought strong enough to serve as a Policeman. Including it, and the "part-Asian" Soviets as he saw them, would help keep his new order from dividing along racial lines.
Churchill objected. In October 1942 he told Eden that Republican China would hand the Americans a dependable vote in any attempt to liquidate the British overseas empire. He feared Washington was trying to undermine Britain's colonial holdings in Asia. Eden shared the view and doubted that China, in the midst of a civil war, could ever return to stability.
Roosevelt replied that China "might become a very useful power in the Far East to help police Japan." He said he fully supported giving China more aid. The next objections would come from people who wanted power spread more evenly among nations.
On New Year's Day 1942, representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China signed a short document. It later became known as the Declaration by United Nations. The next day, representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures.
Roosevelt's ideas about the permanent organization shifted over time. At first he imagined it would be formed several years after the war. Later he came to see creating the United Nations as the most important goal of the entire war effort. His vision had three branches. An executive branch would hold the Big Four. An enforcement branch would be the same four nations acting as the Four Policemen, or Four Sheriffs. An international assembly would represent everyone else.
Liberal internationalists pushed back. They feared the Four Policemen could harden into a new Quadruple Alliance. In April 1944, the State Department drafted a new plan that kept great power solidarity at its center. The Big Four would serve as permanent members of the Security Council. Each would hold a veto that overrode any resolution against its interests. The department did compromise on membership, widening eligibility to every nation fighting the Axis powers instead of a select few.
Roosevelt made sure leading Republicans were on board, especially Senators Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and Warren Austin of Vermont. He insisted on full coordination with the Republican leadership, determined to avoid the mistakes Wilson had made. He believed the new body could solve minor problems and give the great powers, all holding vetoes, a chief mechanism for settling major disputes among themselves. Human rights interested him especially, and his wife played a major role in that area.
The Dumbarton Oaks Conference convened in August 1944, with delegations from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and China. Roosevelt considered the creation of the United Nations his most important legacy, since it turned a wartime alliance into a permanent organization. At the San Francisco Conference of 1945, the Big Four were the only sponsoring countries. The heads of their delegations took turns chairing the plenary meetings. There the Big Four and their allies signed the Charter of the United Nations.
One more seat remained to be added, and Churchill would be the one to insist on it.
France became the fifth permanent member of the Security Council, because of Churchill's insistence, after the United Nations was officially established later in 1945. The original Big Four held their seats as the product of a compromise with internationalist critics. They received significantly less power than the Four Policemen proposal had envisioned.
Sir Brian Urquhart, a former Undersecretary General of the UN, described the arrangement as a pragmatic system based on the primacy of the strong. He recalled that Roosevelt had called it a "trusteeship of the powerful" and, later, "the Four Policemen."
Senator Vandenberg wrote in his diary in April 1944 that the concept was "anything but a wild-eyed internationalist dream of a world state." In his words, it was "based virtually on a four-power alliance."
Urquhart judged that this foundation proved to be both the potential strength and the actual weakness of the future UN. The organization rested on a concert of great powers, and their own mutual hostility, as it turned out, was "itself the greatest potential threat to world peace." The veto that each of the four held meant that any one of them could block the very body meant to restrain them.
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Common questions
What was the Four Policemen proposal?
The Four Policemen was a postwar council proposed by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt as a guarantor of world peace. It would have given the four major Allies the job of keeping order, while other countries were disarmed.
Which countries were the Four Policemen?
The Four Policemen were the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States and the Republic of China. They were the four major Allies of World War II and were also called the Big Four.
What areas would each of the Four Policemen have controlled?
Britain would have policed its empire and Western Europe, and the Soviet Union Eastern Europe and the central Eurasian landmass. China would have covered East Asia and the Western Pacific, and the United States the Western Hemisphere.
Why did Roosevelt want China to be one of the Four Policemen?
Roosevelt believed China would side with the United States in any serious conflict of policy with Russia. He also saw China as the only Asian nation strong enough to serve, and wanted to avoid dividing his new order along racial lines.
Why did Churchill object to China as one of the Four Policemen?
Churchill feared the Americans were trying to undermine Britain's colonial holdings in Asia. In October 1942 he told Anthony Eden that China would give the United States a dependable vote against the British overseas empire.
How did the Four Policemen proposal lead to the UN Security Council?
As a compromise with internationalist critics, the Big Four became the permanent members of the UN Security Council, each with a veto. They held significantly less power than the Four Policemen proposal had envisioned, and France was later added as a fifth permanent member at Churchill's insistence.
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21 references cited across the entry
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