Ideals and self-interest in American's foreign relations

IN THIS book I have sought to present a thesis about America's foreign relations which will have a useful application to contemporary circum stances. The historical material is developed at considerable length in the belief that this thesis requires a rather extensive illustration and documentation if the reader is to appreciate the full meaning of its generalizations and to judge their validity with relative objectivity. While I hope that this approach will be thorough enough to avoid some of the evils of oversimplification that inevitably occur when one organizes any mass of historical detail according to a particular scheme of analysis, I have not attempted to set forth a defini tive or comprehensive interpretation of any particular man or event. In my research I have relied chiefly upon published material, of which there is a vast accumulation relating to the period since the turn of the century. At the same time, from consulting those who are thoroughly familiar with all the relevant historical material, including the many unpublished manuscripts and private papers, I have reason to think that an exhaustive investigation of these sources would not significantly modify my central thesis.

In so far as Ideals and Self-Interest in America's Foreign Relations succeeds in presenting an interpretation of America's past foreign relations that con tributes to an understanding of the problems of power and moral purpose underlying her present position in world politics, it will be due, in large measure, to the encouragement and wisdom of men who know far more than I about international relations and American foreign policy. In so far as the book fails, it will be partly due to my own limitations and partly due to the substantial limitations imposed by the inordinate complexity of the problems themselves. Where fundamen principles of international rela ions are concerned there are no pat answers, no unambiguous generaliza ions, no final solutions, but only educated guesses about cause and effect nd rough approximations to the impenetrable truth.