Foreign Affairs

Deterrence is not automatic. While feasible, it will be much harder to achieve in the 1960s than is generally believed.

THE present tacit moratorium on the Formosan problem does not give hope that the question will simply resolve itself by the passage of time; it does provide an opportunity to ponder a solution of one of the major foreign policy dilemmas facing the United States. Before pressure to admit Communist China to the United Nations becomes irresistible, the United States should relieve itself of the anomaly of supporting a government which is held to be sovereign where it exerts no authority and which lacks sovereignty where it does. For it must be remembered that the United States holds the legal status of Formosa to be in abeyance. It maintains that neither the Cairo Declaration nor the Peace Treaty with Japan has operated to make Formosa and the Pescadores formally part of China. To endorse the Chinese claim of sovereignty over Formosa was thought unwise, presumably because to do so would automatically link the question with that of representation of the two rival Chinese régimes, and thereby give legitimate title to whichever régime was victorious in the civil strife.

FORMOSA—symbol of the struggle between freedom and Communism in the Orient—poses a test of how far United States foreign policy can combine the ideals of freedom with the flexible realism required by the harsh facts of world politics. Our friend and long-time ally, Chiang Kai-shek, presently holds Formosa (Taiwan); the Communists hold the mainland. We are unhappy that a great nation with the cultural traditions of China should be under the control of a totalitarian régime which does not share our belief in freedom. But for the present, at least, unless we wish to risk an all-out war, our desire to see the return of freedom to continental China cannot overcome the stark fact of the possession and control of the mainland by the Communists.

The notion that world government is a fairly simple possibility is the final and most absurd form of the "social contract" conception of government which has confused modern political thought since Hobbes.

Note: Where the period of republication of particular items for mass consumption is relevant to the discussion, this information is supplied in parentheses in the footnotes. Thus (1925-1939) means "originally published in 1925, republished until 1939," and (1925 to present) means "originally published in 1925, republished up to the present time." THE stress laid by Stalin on the importance of theory is so foreign to American habits of mind that we are prone to underestimate the influence which theory plays in determining his action. Any such tendency would lead us into especially grave error when we come to estimating the importance of his theoretical conception of the nature of revolution; for on this he has been amazingly consistent.

GOVERNMENT," said Alexander Hamilton, "ought to contain an active principle." Political institutions which advance the welfare of their human constituents achieve an internal state which is cohesive and dynamic and produce an external environment which is sympathetic and receptive. Those are the conditions needed for survival and growth. The United Nations Organization is charged with positive tasks. That at least gives it a chance to be potent in the world. Whether the chance is realized will depend primarily upon the General Assembly. The rôle of the Security Council is predominantly negative. Its task is to stop the nations from public brawling. But it has no mandate to change the conditions which make brawls likely.

Writing in 1943, Hamilton Fish Armstrong describes the postwar order that the Allies are fighting to create.

The journalist Dorothy Thompson explains Hitler’s Nazi revolution at the start of World War II.

Writing in 1933, Hamilton Fish Armstrong describes the collapse of the Weimar Republic and Adolf Hitler's ascent to power.

THE desire of the Cubans to become a free people among the American nations which had broken away from European rule provoked a series of bloody revolutions in the course of the nineteenth century. The last of these, captained by our three great generals, Maximo Gomez, Antonio Maceo and Calixto Garcia, broke out with the cry of "Independence or Death," and caused a cruel war in which the Cuban population was decimated and Cuban territories were devastated. Save for the individual efforts of a few heroic volunteers, the Cubans received no help from other countries, down to the day when the Congress of the United States voted its famous Joint Resolution of April 18, 1898, to which the President affixed his signature on April 20. The text of this document was as follows: Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: First. That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.

In our century and a half of national life there have been outstanding periods when American leadership has influenced the thought and action of the civilized world towards international good will and peace; and there have been moments—rare ones, fortunately—when American policy either has been negative and sterile, or has earned for us dislike or fear or ridicule. I believe many millions of citizens in the United States share my conviction that the past nine years must be counted on the debit side of the ledger.

WHEN the Republican Administration came into power on March 4, 1921, the country had given a clear and unmistakable indication of the line which it desired that our foreign policy should take. The preceding campaign had been fought largely on the issue of whether this country should abandon its traditional policy of independence in foreign affairs and should substitute for it a policy under which our independence of action might be subordinated to the decision of other nations. Even during the war our traditional policy had been scrupulously maintained. President Wilson had been careful to specify the conditions on which we entered into a limited partnership with other nations for the conduct of the war, and had insisted that that partnership be described as "The Allied and Associated Powers". Having entered the war on our own terms and for certain designated objectives, when those objectives had been attained and peace had been secured, the nation showed that it was ready to put an end to the temporary partnership and in the future to conduct its foreign relations in accordance with the historic American policy.

THE Abyssinian representatives in Geneva had proclaimed their intention of making a formal speech of protest at the autumn session of the Assembly of the League of Nations against the recent Anglo-Italian agreement which, despite reassuring statements in London, was regarded in many quarters -- particularly in Paris -- as a prelude to the division of Abyssinia into spheres of economic interest between Great Britain and Italy. London and Rome at the last moment induced Abyssinia to adopt a different course. The Empire of Abyssinia -- or, as it is now officially styled, Ethiopia -- has an area of about 350,000 square miles and a population of something like 10,000,000. Of these only about 3,500,000 belong to the Abyssinian ruling race. The rest are of Galla or other Hamitic stock or, in the conquered equatorial regions, are negroes. Though the Abyssinians proper are one of the oldest of Christian nations, at least half the total population are Mohammedans: indeed, a few years ago, after the death of the late King Menelek, it looked as if the Mohammedans might get the upper hand.

Alfred E. Zimmern argues that, in post-WWI Europe, the real obstacle to the Wilsonian vision of international cooperation and coordination is not resurgent nationalism, but the myopic, self-interested behavior of states and statesmen.

It’s tempting to see the 9/11 attacks as having fundamentally changed U.S. foreign policy. It’s also wrong. The Bush administration may have gone over the top in responding, but its course was less novel than generally believed. A quest for primacy and military supremacy, a readiness to act proactively and unilaterally, and a focus on democracy and free markets—all are long-standing features of U.S. policy.

On 9/11, the global jihadist movement burst into the world's consciousness, but a decade later, thanks in part to the Arab Spring and the killing of Osama bin Laden, it is in crisis. With Western-backed dictators falling, al Qaeda might seem closer than ever to its goal of building Islamic states. But the revolutions have empowered the group's chief rivals instead: Islamist parliamentarians, who are willing to use ballots, not bombs.