DEC.22 '87 11:27 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

December 22, 1987

MEMORANDUM

TO: Dr. Kissinger

FROM: Timothy Geithner

RE: Research Project on U.S. Foreign Policy

David Yang, the SAIS PhD candidate and former Osgood advisee, is enthusiastic about your U.S. foreign policy research project. He now spends half his time at State and is about to begin working on his dissertation, but he could easily devote a couple months to your U.S. foreign policy work. If you envision a longer time commitment (three to six months) or an effort as substantial as what we discussed on Asia, he would need to cut back his other commitments. I think he would be willing to do so, but I also suspect he might be able to do what you need in two months. Before making the final arrangements for him to come up to New York, I think it would be good to have a sense of the length of commitment, magnitude of the effort you have in mind for the U.S. foreign policy research.

MAR.11 '88 15:49 KISSINGER ASSOCIATES, WASH. DC

3/11/88

NOTE:

Dr. Kissinger has already read and reacted to this paper.
I am in the process of writing new text based on his
comments.

I will complete China by the end of March and Japan
by the end of April.

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of what the thinking peoples of the world desire, with their
longing hope for justice and for social freedom and
opportunity."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, pp. 232-234.)

4.2.2.6: September 27, 1918

Fourth Liberty Loan, address opening the campaign for the
fourth liberty loan delivered in New York City (9/27/18):

"... That indispensable instrumentality [to ensure a future peace settlement] is a League of Nations formed under covenants that will be efficacious. Without such an instrumentality, by which the peace of the world can be guaranteed, peace will rest in part upon the word of outlaws and only upon that word. For Germany will have to redeem her character, not by what happens at the peace table, but by what follows.

And, as I see it, the constitution of that League of
Nations and the clear definition of its objects must be a
part, is in a sense the most essential part, of the peace
settlement itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed now,
it would be merely a new alliance confined to the nations
associated against a common enemy. It is not likely that it
could be formed after the settlement. It is necessary to
guarantee the peace; and the peace cannot be guaranteed as
an afterthought. The reason, to speak in plain terms again,
why it must be guaranteed is that there be parties to the
peace whose promises have proved untrustworthy, and means
must be found in connection with the peace settlement itself
to remove that source of insecurity. It would be folly to
leave the guarantee to the subsequent voluntary action of
the Governments we have seen destroy Russia and deceive
Rumania.

But these general terms do not disclose the whole
matter. Some details are needed to make them sound less
like a thesis and more like a practical program. These,
then, are some of the particulars, and I state them
authoritatively as representing this Government's
interpretation of its own duty with regard to peace:

First, the impartial justice meted out must involve no
discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and
those to whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a
justice that plays no favorites and knows no standard but
the equal rights of the several peoples concerned;

Second, no special or separate interest of any single
nation or any group of nations can be made the basis of any

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part of the settlement which is not consistent with the
common interest of all;

Third, there can be no leagues or alliances or special
covenants and understandings within the general and common
family of the League of Nations.

Fourth, and more specifically, there can be no special,
selfish economic combinations within the League and no
employment of any form of economic boycott or exclusion
except as the power of economic penalty by exclusion from
the markets of the world may be vested in the League of
Nations itself as a means of discipline and control.

Fifth, all international agreements and treaties of
every kind must be made known in their entirety to the rest
of the world.

Special alliances and economic rivalries and
hostilities have been the prolific source in the modern
world of the plans and passions that produce war. It would
be an insincere as well as insecure peace that did not
exclude them in definite and binding terms.

The confidence with which I venture to speak for our
people in these matters does not spring from our traditions
merely and the well-known principles of international action
which we have always professed and followed. In the same
sentence in which I say that the United States will enter
into no special arrangements or understandings with
particular nations let me say also that the United States is
prepared to assume its full share of responsibility for the
maintenance of the common covenants and understandings upon
which peace must henceforth rest. We still read
Washington's immortal warning against "entangling alliances"
with full comprehension and an answering purpose. But only
special and limited alliances entangle; and we recognize and
accept the duty of a new day in which we are permitted to
hope for a general alliance which will avoid entanglements
and clear the air of the world for common understandings and
the maintenance of common rights."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, pp.
256-258.)

4.2.2.7: December 21, 1918

" . . . That indispensable instrumentality [to ensure a
future peace settlement] is a League of Nations formed under
covenants that will be efficacious. Without such an

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Second, no special or separate interest of any single
nation or any group of nations can be made the basis of any
part of the settlement which is not consistent with the
common interest of all;

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of the world.

4.2.2.8: December 28, 1918

At the Guildhall, London, response to an address of welcome by the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall, London (12/28/18):

"... And as I have conversed with the soldiers, I have been more and more aware that they fought for something that not all of them had defined, but which all of them recognized the moment you stated it to them. They fought to do away with an old order and to establish a new one, and the center and characteristic of the old order was that unstable thing which we used to call the "balance of power"-- a thing in which the balance was determined by the sword which was thrown in the one side or the other; a balance which was determined by the unstable equilibrium of competitive interests; a balance which was maintained by jealous watchfulness and an antagonism of interests which, though it was generally latent, was always deep-seated. The men who have fought in this war have been the men from free nations who were determined that that sort of thing should end now and forever.

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It is very interesting to me to observe how from every
quarter, from every sort of mind, from every concert of
counsel, there comes the suggestion that there must now be,
not a balance of power, not one powerful group of nations
set off against another, but a single overwhelming, powerful
group of nations who shall be the trustee of the peace of
the world. It has been delightful in my conferences with
the leaders of your Government to find how our minds moved
along exactly the same line, and how our thought was always
that the key to the peace was the guarantee of the peace,
not the items of it; that the items would be worthless
unless there stood back of them a permanent concert of power
for their maintenance. That is the most reassuring thing
that has ever happened in the world. When this war began
the thought of a League of Nations was indulgently
considered as the interesting thought of closeted students.
It was thought of as one of those things that it was right
to characterize by a name which as a university man I have
always resented; it was said to be academic, as if that in
itself were a condemnation, something that men could think
about but never get. Now we find the practical leading
minds of the world determined to get it. No such sudden and
potent union of purpose has ever been witnessed in the world
before. . .

It was this incomparably great object that brought me
overseas. It has never before been deemed excusable for a
President of the United States to leave the territory of the
United States; but I know that I have the support of the
judgement of my colleagues in the Government of the United
States in saying that it was my paramount duty to turn away
even from the imperative tasks at home to lend such counsel
and aid as I could to this great, may I not say, final
enterprise of humanity."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, pp. 342-344.)

4.2.2.9: December 30, 1918

In Free Trade Hall, Manchester, address at a luncheon
(12/30/18):

"You know that the United States has always felt from
the very beginning of her history that she must keep herself
separate from any kind of connection with European politics,
and I want to say very frankly to you that she is not now
interested in European politics. But she is interested in
the partnership of right between America and Europe. If the

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future had nothing for us but a new attempt to keep the
world at a right poise by a balance of power, the United
States would take no interest, because she will join no
combination of power which is not the combination of all of
us. She is not interested merely in the peace of Europe,
but in the peace of the world. Therefore it seems to me
that in the settlement that is just ahead of us something
more delicate and difficult than was ever attempted before
is to be accomplished, a genuine concert of mind and of
purpose. But while it is difficult there is an element
present that makes it easy. Never before in the history of
the world, I believe, has there been such a keen
international consciousness as there is now. Men all over
the world know that they have been embarrassed by national
antagonisms and that the interest of each is the interest of
all, and that men as men are the objects of government and
international arrangements. There is a great voice of
humanity abroad in the world just now which he who cannot
hear is deaf. There is a great compulsion of the common
conscience now in existence which if any statesman resist he
has gained the most unenviable eminence in history. We are
not obeying the mandates of parties or of politics. We are
obeying the mandates of humanity. . . ."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, pp. 353-354.)

4.2.2.10: January 3, 1919

Before the Italian Parliament, address on being made a
citizen of Rome (1/3/19):

"Therefore, our task at Paris is to organize the
friendship of the world, to see to it that all the moral
forces that make for right and justice and liberty are
united and are given a vital organization to which the
peoples of the world will readily and gladly respond. In
other words, our task is no less colossal than this, to set
up a new international psychology, to have a new atmosphere.

We know that there cannot be another balance of power.
That has been tried and found wanting, for the best of all
reasons that it does not stay balanced inside itself, and a
weight which does not hold together cannot constitute a
makeweight in the affairs of men. Therefore, there must
be something substituted for the balance of power, and I am
happy to find everywhere in the air of these great nations
the conception that that thing must be a thoroughly united

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league of nations. What men once considered theoretical and idealistic turns out to be practical and necessary. We stand at the opening of a new age in which a new statesmanship will, I am confident, lift mankind to new levels of endeavor and achievement."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, pp. 363-364.)

4.2.2.11: February 14, 1919

Presentation of the Covenant of the League of Nations, address before the third plenary session of the peace conference, (2/14/19):

"And you will notice that this body [the proposed League] has unlimited rights of discussion--I mean of discussion of anything that falls within the field of international relationship--and that it is specially agreed that war or international misunderstandings or anything that may lead to friction and trouble is everybody's business, because it may affect the peace of the world. And in order to safeguard the popular power so far as we could of this representative body it is provided, you will notice, that when a subject is submitted, not to arbitration, but to discussion by the executive council, it can upon the initiative of either one of the parties to the dispute be drawn out of the executive council onto the larger forum of the general body of the delegates, because throughout this instrument we are depending primarily and chiefly upon one great force, and that is the moral force of the public opinion of the world--the cleansing and clarifying and compelling influences of publicity--so that intrigues can no longer have their coverts, so that designs that are sinister can at any time be drawn into the open, so that those things that are destroyed by the light may be properly destroyed by the overwhelming light of the universal expression of the condemnation of the world.

Armed force is in the background in this program, but it is in the background, and if the moral force of the world will not suffice, the physical force of the world shall. But that is the last resort, because this is intended as a constitution of peace, not as a league of war."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, pp. 425-426.)

4.2.2.12: March 4, 1919

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Metropolitan Opera House Speech, address at a public meeting in New York City (3/4/19):

"It is one of the agreements of this covenant that it is the friendly right of every nation a member of the League to call attention to anything that it thinks will disturb the peace of the world, no matter where that thing is occurring. There is no subject that may touch the peace of the world which is exempt from inquiry and discussion, and I think everybody here present will agree with me that Germany would never have gone to war if she had permitted the world to discuss the aggression upon Serbia for a single week. The British Foreign Office pleaded that there might be a day or two delay so that representatives of the nations of Europe could get together and discuss the possibilities of a settlement. Germany did not dare permit a day's discussion. You know what happened. So soon as the world realized that an outlaw was at large the nations began, one by one, to draw together against her. We know for certainty that if Germany had thought for a moment that Great Britain would go in with France and Russia she never would have undertaken the enterprise, and the League of Nations is meant as notice to all outlaw nations that not only Great Britain but the United States and the rest of the world will go in to check enterprises of that sort. And so the League of Nations is nothing more nor less than the covenant that the world will always maintain the standards which it has now vindicated by some of the most precious blood ever spilt.

... Mr. Taft was speaking of Washington's utterance about entangling alliances, and if he will permit me to say so, he put the exactly right interpretation upon what Washington said, the interpretation that is inevitable if you read what he said, as most of these gentlemen do not. And the thing that he longed for was just what we are now about to supply; an arrangement which will disentangle all the alliances in the world.

Nothing entangles, nothing enmeshes a man except a selfish combination with somebody else. Nothing entangles a nation, hampers it, binds it, except to enter into a combination with some other nation against the other nations of the world. And this great disentanglement of all alliances is now to be accomplished by this Covenant, because one of the Covenants is that no nation shall enter into any relationship with another nation inconsistent with the covenants of the League of Nations. Nations promise not to have alliances. Nations promise not to make combinations against each other. Nations agree there shall be but one

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combination, and that is the combination of all against the
wrongdoer."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, pp.
446, 452-453.)

4.2.2.13: June 19, 1919

Address Before the Belgian Chamber of Deputies (6/19/19):

"The League of Nations was an inevitable consequence of this war. It was a league of right, and no thoughtful statesman who let his thought run into the future could wish for a moment to slacken those bonds. His first thought would be to strengthen them and to perpetuate this combination of the great governments of the world for the maintenance of justice. The League of Nations is the child of this great war for right. It is the expression of those permanent resolutions which grew out of the temporary necessities of this great struggle, and any nation which declines to adhere to this Covenant deliberately turns away from the most telling appeal that has ever been made to its conscience and to its manhood. The nation that wishes to use the League of Nations for its convenience, and not for the service of the rest of the world, deliberately chooses to turn back to those bad days of selfish contest, when every nation thought first and always of itself and not of its neighbor, thought of its rights and forgot its duties, thought of its power and overlooked its responsibility.

Those bad days, I hope, are gone, and the great moral power,
backed if need be, by the great physical power of the
civilized nations of the world will now stand firm for the
maintenance of the fine partnership which we have thus
inaugurated."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, p.
512.)

4.2.2.14: July 10, 1919

Presenting the Treaty for Ratification, address to the
Senate of the United States (7/10/19):

"... It was not easy to graft the new order of ideas on the old, and some of the fruits of the grafting may, I fear, for a time be bitter. But, with very few exceptions, the men who sat with us at the peace table desired as sincerely as we did to get away from the bad influences, the illegitimate purposes, the demoralizing ambitions, the

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international counsels and expedients out of which the sinister designs of Germany had sprung as a natural growth.

" . . ."

" . . . War had lain at the heart of every arrangement of the Europe,--of every arrangement of the world,--that preceded the war. Restive peoples had been told that fleets and armies, which they toiled to sustain, meant peace; and they now knew that they had been lied to: that fleets and armies had been maintained to promote national ambitions and meant war. They knew that no old policy meant anything else but force, force,--always force. And they knew that it was intolerable. Every true heart in the world, and every enlightened judgement demanded that, at whatever cost of independent action, every government that took thought for its people or for justice or for ordered freedom should lend itself to a new purpose and utterly destroy the old order of international politics. Statesmen might see difficulties, but the people could see none and could brook no denial. A war in which they had been bled white to beat the terror that lay concealed in every Balance of Power must not end in a mere victory of arms and a new balance. The monster that had resorted to arms must be put in chains that could not be broken. The united power of free nations must put a stop to aggression, and the world must be given peace. If there was not the will or the intelligence to accomplish that now, there must be another and a final war and the world must be swept clean of every power that could renew the terror. The League of Nations was not merely an instrument of peace; it was the only hope for mankind. Again and again the demon of war had been cast out of the house of the peoples and the house swept clean by a treaty of peace; only to prepare a time when he would enter in again with spirits worse than himself. The house must now be given a tenant who could hold it against all such. Convenient, indeed indispensable, as statesmen found the newly planned League of Nations to be for the execution of present plans of peace and reparation, they saw in it a new aspect before their work was finished. They saw it as the main object of the peace, as the only thing that could complete it or make it worth while. They saw it as the hope of the world, and that hope they did not dare to disappoint. Shall we or any other free people hesitate to accept this great duty? Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?"

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, pp. 541, 547-548.)

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4.2.2.15: September 4, 1919

Address delivered on western tour, Columbus, Ohio (9/4/19):

"... The passions of this world are not dead. The rivalries of this world have not cooled. They have been rendered hotter than ever. The harness that is to unite nations is more necessary now than it ever was before, and unless there is this assurance of combined action before wrong is attempted, wrong will be attempted jsut so soon as the most ambitious nations can recover from the financial stress of this war."

(Source: The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 5, p. 594.)

5: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Cordell Hull

6: The Architects of Containment

7: Carter and Reagan: An Idealist Revival

8: Conclusion

8.1: Comparison/Contrast of Different Strands of American Idealism

8.2: Concluding Thoughts

9: Bibliography

9.1: Woodrow Wilson

- Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd (eds.), The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1927), 6 volumes.

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