America’s Permanent Foreign Policy
The Independent confesses that for world-politics of the kind now occupying the United States with the other world-powers, “popular or representative governments are ill fitted. Questions of foreign policy can not be made the subjects of party controversies. When the administration has taken a stand, . . . the opposition can do nothing but support it. . . . An aristocracy or a despot may maintain a permanent foreign policy; but so long ago as when Thucydides wrote, it was understood that a democracy was incompetent to govern dependencies.” It is now fixed that the United States will have a permanent foreign policy. Since such can be maintained only by an aristocracy or a despotism, and since there is here no aristocracy, it remains inevitable that this permanent foreign policy can be maintained only by a despotism. That despotism has begun, and is growing as steadily as the clock ticks. The late king of Italy, shortly before he was killed, said to the American ambassador, concerning the United States: “You will lead the world—you are leading it now materially.” Yes, the United States always has led the world. Up to 1898 she led the world forward in liberty and enlightenment. Now she is leading the world the other way.