Authors: Henry Kissinger
“
wrongdoing or impotence
”: Theodore Roosevelt’s Annual Message to Congress for 1904, HR 58A-K2, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, RG 233, Center for Legislative Archives, National Archives.
“
All that this country desires
”: Ibid.
Backing up this ambitious concept
: To demonstrate the strength of the American commitment, Roosevelt personally visited the Canal Zone construction project, the first time a sitting president had left the continental United States.
“
pursued a policy of consistent opposition
”: Morris,
Theodore Rex,
389.
“
make demands on [the] Hawaiian Islands
”: Ibid., 397.
“
should be left face to face with Japan
”: Roosevelt’s statement to Congress, 1904, quoted in Blum,
Republican Roosevelt,
134.
“
practice cruise around the world
”: Morris,
Theodore Rex,
495.
“
I do not believe there will be war with Japan
”: Letter to Kermit Roosevelt, April 19, 1908, in Brands,
Selected Letters,
482–83.
“
I wish to impress upon you
”: Roosevelt to Admiral Charles S. Sperry, March 21, 1908, in ibid., 479.
“
Do you not believe that if Germany
”: Roosevelt to Hugo Munsterberg, October 3, 1914, in ibid., 823.
civilization would spread
: See James R. Holmes,
Theodore Roosevelt and World Order: Police Power in International Relations
(Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007), 10–13, 68–74.
“
Our words must be judged by our deeds
”: Roosevelt, “International Peace,” 103.
“
We must always remember
”: Roosevelt to Carnegie, August 6, 1906, in Brands,
Selected Letters,
423.
“
It was as if
”: Woodrow Wilson, Commencement Address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (June 13, 1916), in
Papers of Woodrow Wilson,
ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 37:212.
“
the culminating and final war
”: Woodrow Wilson, Address to a Joint Session of Congress
on the Conditions of Peace (January 8, 1918) (“Fourteen Points”), as quoted in A. Scott Berg,
Wilson
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2013), 471.
“
cooling off
”: In all, the United States entered such arbitration compacts with Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Great Britain, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Russia, and Spain. It began negotiations with Sweden, Uruguay, the Argentine Republic, the Dominican Republic, Greece, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, Persia, Salvador, Switzerland, and Venezuela.
Treaties for the Advancement of Peace Between the United States and Other Powers Negotiated by the Honorable William J. Bryan, Secretary of State of the United States
,
with an Introduction by James Brown Scott
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1920).
“
We have no selfish ends
”: Woodrow Wilson, Message to Congress, April 2, 1917, in
U.S. Presidents and Foreign Policy from 1789 to the Present,
ed. Carl C. Hodge and Cathal J. Nolan (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2007), 396.
“
These are American principles”: “
Peace Without Victory,” January 22, 1917, in supplement to
American Journal of International Law
11 (1917): 323.
“
Self-governed nations do not
”: Wilson, Message to Congress, April 2, 1917, in
President Wilson’s Great Speeches, and Other History Making Documents
(Chicago: Stanton and Van Vliet, 1917), 17–18.
“
The worst that can happen
”: Woodrow Wilson, Fifth Annual Message, December 4, 1917, in
United States Congressional Serial Set
7443 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1917), 41.
“
the destruction of every arbitrary power
”: Woodrow Wilson, “An Address at Mount Vernon,” July 4, 1918, in Link,
Papers,
48:516.
“
no autocratic government could be trusted
”: Wilson, Message to Congress, April 2, 1917,
President Wilson’s Great Speeches
, 18.
“
that autocracy must first be shown
”: Wilson, Fifth Annual Message, December 4, 1917, in
The Foreign Policy of President Woodrow Wilson: Messages, Addresses and Papers
, ed. James Brown Scott (New York: Oxford University Press, 1918), 306.
“
dare … attempting any such covenants
”: Ibid. See also Berg,
Wilson,
472–73.
“
an age … which rejects
”: Woodrow Wilson, Remarks at Suresnes Cemetery on Memorial Day, May 30, 1919, in Link,
Papers,
59:608–9.
“
a number of small states
”: Lloyd George, Wilson memorandum, March 25, 1919, in Ray Stannard Baker, ed.,
Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement
(New York: Doubleday, Page, 1922), 2:450. For a conference participant’s account of the sometimes less than idealistic process by which the new national borders were drawn, see Harold Nicolson,
Peacemaking, 1919
(1933; London: Faber & Faber, 2009). For a contemporary analysis, see Margaret MacMillan,
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
(New York: Random House, 2002).
“
not a balance of power, but a community of power
”: Address, January 22, 1917, in Link,
Papers,
40:536–37.
All states, in the League of Nations concept
: Wilson, Message to Congress, April 2, 1917,
President Wilson’s Great Speeches
, 18.
“
open covenants of peace
”: Wilson, Address to a Joint Session of Congress on the Conditions of Peace (January 8, 1918) (“Fourteen Points”), in
President Wilson’s Great Speeches,
18. See also Berg,
Wilson,
469–72.
Rather than inspire
: The United Nations has provided useful mechanisms for peacekeeping operations—generally when the major powers have already agreed on the need to monitor an agreement between them in regions where their own forces are not directly involved. The UN—much more than the League—has performed important functions: as a forum for otherwise difficult diplomatic encounters; several peacekeeping functions of consequence; and a host of humanitarian initiatives. What these international institutions have failed to do—and were incapable of accomplishing—was to sit in judgment of what specific acts constituted aggression or prescribe the means to resist when the major powers disagreed.
They submitted an analysis
: “Differences Between the North Atlantic Treaty and Traditional Military Alliances,” appendix to the testimony of Ambassador Warren Austin, April 28, 1949, in U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations,
The North Atlantic Treaty
, hearings, 81st Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1949), pt. I.
“
I am for such a League provided
”: Roosevelt to James Bryce, November 19, 1918, in
The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,
ed. Elting E. Morrison (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954), 8:1400.
what if an aggressor
: Seeking to crush resistance to Italy’s colonial expansion, Mussolini ordered Italian troops to invade what is today’s Ethiopia in 1935. Despite international condemnation, the League of Nations took no collective security counteractions. Using indiscriminate bombing and poison gas, Italy took occupation of Abyssinia. The nascent international community’s failure to act, coming after a similar failure to confront imperial Japan’s invasion of China’s Manchuria, led to the collapse of the League of Nations.
“
an instrument of national policy
”: Treaty between the United States and other powers providing for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. Signed at Paris, August 27, 1928; ratification advised by the Senate, January 16, 1929; ratified by the President, January 17, 1929; instruments of ratification deposited at Washington by the United States of America, Australia, Dominion of Canada, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Great Britain, India, Irish Free State, Italy, New Zealand, and Union of South Africa, March 2, 1929; by Poland, March 26, 1929; by Belgium, March 27, 1929; by France, April 22, 1929; by Japan, July 24, 1929; proclaimed, July 24, 1929.
Not all of this—especially the point on decolonization
: See Peter Clarke,
The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana
(New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009).
“
The kind of world order
”: Radio Address at Dinner of Foreign Policy Association, New York, October 21, 1944, in
Presidential Profiles: The FDR Years,
ed. William D. Peterson (New York: Facts on File, 2006), 429.
“
We have learned the simple truth
”: Fourth Inaugural Address, January 20, 1945, in
My Fellow Americans: Presidential Inaugural Addresses from George Washington to Barack Obama
(St. Petersburg, Fla.: Red and Black Publishers, 2009).
“
Bill, I don’t dispute your facts
”: William C. Bullitt, “How We Won the War and Lost the Peace,”
Life,
August 30, 1948, as quoted in Arnold Beichman, “Roosevelt’s Failure at Yalta,”
Humanitas
16, no. 1 (2003): 104.
During the first encounter of the two leaders
: On Roosevelt’s arrival in Tehran, Stalin claimed that Soviet intelligence had identified a Nazi plot, Operation Long Jump, to assassinate Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin together at the summit. Members of the
American delegation harbored serious doubts about the Soviet report. Keith Eubank,
Summit at Teheran: The Untold Story
(New York: William Morrow, 1985), 188–96.
“
They talk about pacifism
”: As quoted in T. A. Taracouzio,
War and Peace in Soviet Diplomacy
(New York: Macmillan, 1940), 139–40.
“
He [Roosevelt] felt that Stalin
”: Charles Bohlen,
Witness to History, 1929–1969
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), 211. See also Beichman, “Roosevelt’s Failure at Yalta,” 210–11.
Another view holds that Roosevelt
: Conrad Black,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2003). Roosevelt was enough of a sphinx to prevent an unambiguous answer, though I lean toward the Black interpretation. Winston Churchill is easier to sum up. During the war, he mused that all would be well if he could have a weekly dinner at the Kremlin. As the end of the war was approaching, he ordered his chief of staff to prepare for war with the Soviet Union.
All twelve postwar presidents
: As Truman, the first postwar President, explained it, “The foreign policy of the United States is based firmly on fundamental principles of righteousness and justice” and “our efforts to bring the Golden Rule into the international affairs of this world.” Eisenhower, tough soldier that he was, as President described the objective in almost identical terms: “We seek peace … rooted in the lives of nations. There must be justice, sensed and shared by all peoples … There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations.” Thus, as Gerald Ford stated in a 1974 joint session of Congress, “Successful foreign policy is an extension of the hopes of the whole American people for a world of peace and orderly reform and orderly freedom.” Harry S. Truman, Address on Foreign Policy at the Navy Day Celebration in New York City, October 27, 1945; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Second Inaugural Address (“The Price of Peace”), January 21, 1957, in
Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957–1961,
62–63. Gerald Ford, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, August 12, 1974, in
Public Papers of the Presidents: Gerald R. Ford (1974–1977),
6.
“
Any man and any nation
”: Lyndon B. Johnson, Address to the United Nations General Assembly, December 17, 1963.
a new international order
: For an eloquent exposition, see Robert Kagan,
The World America Made
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).
“
Whoever occupies a territory also imposes
”: Milovan Djilas,
Conversations with Stalin,
trans. Michael B. Petrovich (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1962), 114.
“
A basic conflict is thus arising
”: Kennan to Charles Bohlen, January 26, 1945, as quoted in John Lewis Gaddis,
George Kennan: An American Life
(New York: Penguin Books, 2011), 188.
“
foreign policy of that kind
”: Bohlen,
Witness to History,
176.
without requiring ambassadorial approval
: The American Embassy was then, briefly, without an ambassador: W. Averell Harriman had left the post while Walter Bedell Smith had yet to arrive.