France Is the Fulcrum

The world stage is like those theatrical productions that fill the proscenium with a dozen different sets from among which spotlights pick out first a bedroom, then a street corner, office, bar. Just so, the journalistic spotlights focus on Lebanon this week, or Formosa or Venezuela, then on the Congo, Cuba, Goa, New Guinea. … This familiar phenomenon is tactical. Action in a local area hots up: a major disaster occurs, there are riots in the streets, a government falls, or—the most usual leadoff—people start shooting each other. In most cases these incidents have much less global importance than suggested by the headlines.

At a deeper level of international scene shifting that may be called strategic, what happens does change the global equilibrium. The local region becomes the fulcrum for a shift that may be decisive for a civilization or all the world. At this strategic level, Russia was the critical area and fulcrum from 1917-23. From 1930-34 it was Germany; and China, from 1947-49.

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James Burnham

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The world stage is like those theatrical productions that fill the proscenium with a dozen different sets from among which spotlights pick out first a bedroom, then a street corner, office, bar. Just so, the journalistic spotlights focus on Lebanon this week, or Formosa or Venezuela, then on the Congo, Cuba, Goa, New Guinea. … This familiar phenomenon is tactical. Action in a local area hots up: a major disaster occurs, there are riots in the streets, a government falls, or—the most usual leadoff—people start shooting each other. In most cases these incidents have much less global importance than suggested by the headlines.

At a deeper level of international scene shifting that may be called strategic, what happens does change the global equilibrium. The local region becomes the fulcrum for a shift that may be decisive for a civilization or all the world. At this strategic level, Russia was the critical area and fulcrum from 1917-23. From 1930-34 it was Germany; and China, from 1947-49.