“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.
CHAPTER 8: THE UNITED STATES
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.
“contained by the adroit and vigilant application”: “X” [George F. Kennan], “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” Foreign Affairs 25, no. 4 (July 1947).
“the unity and efficacy of the Party”: Ibid.
“The question is asked”: Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 (New York: Chelsea House, 1974), 7:7710.
“freedom under a government of laws”: A Report to the National Security Council by the Executive Secretary on United States Objectives and Programs for National Security, NSC-68 (April 14, 1950), 7.
“difficult for many to understand”: John Foster Dulles, “Foundations of Peace” (address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, New York, August 18, 1958).
Should the victorious army cross: George H. W. Bush faced a similar issue after Saddam Hussein’s forces had been expelled from Kuwait in 1991.
“If the American imperialists are victorious”: Shen Zhihua, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War: Trilateral Communist Relations in the 1950s, trans. Neil Silver (London: Routledge, 2012), 140.
“indeed the focus of the struggles in the world”: Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 149–50. On the Chinese leadership’s analysis of the war and its regional implications, see also Sergei N. Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993); Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin Press, 2011), chap. 5; Shen, Mao, Stalin, and the Korean War; and Shu Guang Zhang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950–1953 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995).
Considerations such as these induced Mao: See Chapter 5.
“the wrong war, at the wrong place”: General Omar N. Bradley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testimony before the Senate Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, May 15, 1951, in Military Situation in the Far East, hearings, 82nd Cong., 1st sess., pt. 2, 732 (1951).
Charges of immorality: See Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1977); Robert Elegant, “How to Lose a War: The Press and Viet Nam,” Encounter (London), August 1981, 73–90; Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 272–79, 311–24.
“We must remember the only time”: “An Interview with the President: The Jury Is Out,” Time, January 3, 1972.
“prepared to establish a dialogue with Peking”: Richard Nixon, U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970’s: Building for Peace: A Report to the Congress, by Richard Nixon, President of the United States, February 25, 1971, 107. To this point, American government documents had referred to “Communist China” or had spoken generally of authorities in Beijing or (the Nationalist name for the city) Beiping.
“any sense of satisfaction”: Richard Nixon, Remarks to Midwestern News Media Executives Attending a Briefing on Domestic Policy in Kansas City, Missouri, July 6, 1971, in Public Papers of the Presidents, 805–6.
These phrases, commonplace today: See Kissinger, On China, chap. 9.
“only if we act greatly”: Richard Nixon, Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1973, in My Fellow Americans, 333.
“our instinct that we knew what was best for others”: Richard Nixon, U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970’s: Building for Peace, 10.
“The second element of a durable peace”: Richard Nixon, U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970’s: A New Strategy for Peace, February 18, 1970, 9.
“All nations, adversaries and friends”: Richard Nixon, U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970’s: Shaping a Durable Peace, May 3, 1973, 232–33.
“I’ve spoken of the shining city”: Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the American People, January 11, 1989, in In the Words of Ronald Reagan: The Wit, Wisdom, and Eternal Optimism of America’s 40th President, ed. Michael Reagan (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004), 34.
“I have a gut feeling I’d like to talk”: Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 592.
“the helicopter would descend”: Lou Cannon, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 792.
“governments which rest upon the consent”: Ronald Reagan, Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the State of the Union, January 25, 1984, in The Public Papers of President Ronald W. Reagan, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
“commonwealth of freedom”: George H. W. Bush, Remarks to the Federal Assembly in Prague, Czechoslovakia, November 17, 1990, accessed online at Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, eds., The American Presidency Project.
“great and growing strength”: Ibid.
“beyond containment and to a policy”: George H. W. Bush, Remarks at Maxwell Air Force Base War College, Montgomery, Alabama, April 13, 1991, in Michael D. Gambone, Small Wars: Low-Intensity Threats and the American Response Since Vietnam (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2012), 121.
“enlargement”: “Confronting the Challenges of a Broader World,” President Clinton Address to the UN General Assembly, New York City, September 27, 1993, in Department of State Dispatch 4, no. 39 (September 27, 1993).
“a world of thriving democracies”: Ibid.
“Deliver to United States authorities”: George W. Bush, Presidential Address to a Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001, in We Will Prevail: President George W. Bush on War, Terrorism, and Freedom (New York: Continuum, 2003), 13.
“These carefully targeted actions”: George W. Bush, Presidential Address to the Nation, October 7, 2001, in ibid., 33.
“the establishment of a broad-based”: “Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-establishment of Permanent Government Institutions,” December 5, 2001, UN Peacemaker online archive.
“to support the Afghan Transitional Authority”: UN Security Council Resolution 1510 (October 2003).
No institutions in the history: Surely it was telling that even while calling for gender sensitivity in the new regime, the drafters at Bonn felt obliged to praise the “Afghan mujahidin … heroes of jihad.”
“Except at harvest-time”: Winston Churchill, My Early Life (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 134.
Belgian neutrality: See Chapter 2.
“on the same side—united by common dangers”: The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (2002).
“Iraqi democracy will succeed”: George W. Bush, Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, United States Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. (November 6, 2003).
UN Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991: UN Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991 made the end of hostilities in the first Gulf War conditional on the immediate destruction by Iraq of its stock of weapons of mass destruction and a commitment never to develop such weapons again. Iraq did not comply with Resolution 687. As early as August 1991, the Security Council declared Iraq in “material breach” of its obligations. In the years following the Gulf War, ten more Security Council resolutions would attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with the
cease-fire terms. The Security Council found in later resolutions that Saddam Hussein “ultimately ceased all cooperation with UNSCOM [the UN Special Commission charged with weapons inspections] and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] in 1998,” expelling the UN inspectors the cease-fire had obliged him to accept.
In November 2002, the Security Council passed Resolution 1441, “deploring” Iraq’s decade of noncompliance, deciding that “Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions.” Chief inspector Hans Blix, not an advocate for war, reported to the Security Council in January 2003 that Baghdad had failed to resolve outstanding questions and inconsistencies.
The world will long debate the implications of this military action and the strategy pursued in the subsequent effort to bring about democratic governance in Iraq. Yet this debate, and its implications for future violations of international nonproliferation principles, will remain distorted so long as the multilateral background is omitted.
“The United States wants Iraq”: William J. Clinton, Statement on Signing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, October 31, 1998.
“a forward strategy of freedom”: Remarks by the President at the 20th Anniversary of the National Endowment for Democracy, Washington, D.C., November 6, 2003.
“this war is lost and the surge”: Peter Baker, Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (New York: Doubleday, 2013), 542.
“If we’re not there to win”: Ibid., 523.
“Americans, being a moral people”: George Shultz, “Power and Diplomacy in the 1980s,” Washington, D.C., April 3, 1984, Department of State Bulletin, vol. 84, no. 2086 (May 1984), 13.
CHAPTER 9: TECHNOLOGY, EQUILIBRIUM, AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS
Strategic stability was defined: For a review of these theoretical explorations, see Michael Gerson, “The Origins of Strategic Stability: The United States and the Threat of Surprise Attack,” in Strategic Stability: Contending Interpretations, ed. Elbridge Colby and Michael Gerson (Carlisle, Pa: Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, 2013); Michael Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
World Order Page 42