Word: vetoes
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...chemical) weapons, build only enough conventional weapons to arm its twelve divisions; 2) NATO would set minimum force levels for all its members' armies, 3) the Brussels pact powers would by unanimous vote set maximum force levels for each national army. The French would thus have a veto on any German effort to add to their twelve divisions...
...exciting from the viewpoint of the political consumer, find a good show that will pull the indifferents into active politics, an explosive political crisis may arise. But there are dangers short of explosion-and they may be as serious. Riesman finds much of current politics turning around "the Veto groups," which are much more clear about what they don't want than about where they want the society...
Contemporary veto groups-ethnic, sectarian, regional, occupational-are more shapeless and more numerous than the old American interest groups, which had clear ideas about their goals. The new ones spread their pressures beyond the field of politics into, for instance, movie censoring. Their leadership is heavy with inside-dopesters. Their membership ranks are swelled by new-style indifferents, driven thence by well-meaning moralizers, who are always railing at the indifferents for not taking part in politics. Anxious to conform, the indifferent finds a group- but remains at heart an indifferent. Vetogroup leaders can manipulate the indifferents, but usually...
Some Political Specifics. Riesman's "construction," from nursery school to veto group, can obviously be used to lay bare the causes of specific defects in American political life (although he does not do so). If politics is heavily influenced by inside-dopesterism and veto-groupism, the observer would expect to find great difficulty in the formation and expression of clear goals, and that is what observers have found in U.S. peacetime policy of the last 20 years, including the last two. The U.S., anxious for approval, listens closely to the signals of the others in the peer group...
...concert to restrain or punish an aggressor. The collective security idea was inserted into the Charter of the United Nations. But the member states in the U.N. have never been willing to provide the forces. And as for "collective security" from common action by national armies, the Security Council veto takes care of that. Yet regional pacts as instruments of collective security are as illusory...