UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY: ""Shield of the Republic

A useful but uninspired survey of the poverty, the insolvency of our foreign policy during fifty years when some policy was needed -- and an appraisal of those forces which demand that we formulate and preserve some basic policy today. For eighty years circumstances preserved us from the need. By progressive steps of acquisition and conquest our boundaries were extended. The Munroe Doctrine was our ""shield"". Then with Theodore Roosevelt, the influence of the Spanish War and the twentieth century, we entered a period of vacillation. No real reason for our entering the first World War was given, and therefore no real reason for our entering the peace. Our national prejudices, ""peace, disarmament, no entangling alliances"", and ""collective security"" prevented our finding a common ground for foreign policy. That common ground must now be found in community of interests with Britain, Russia and China. The will of powerful states to remain allied is the only possible creator of a general international order, this order held together by respect for the liberties of other people, with recognition of of a worldwide system of liberty under law.