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Washington generalized this perception into an enduring truth of foreign policy, noting that “it is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its interest.”15 For Washington, the Continental Army was a practical school in which he received an accelerated course in statecraft,
... See moreRon Chernow • Washington
To an unrivaled extent, Obama identified American interests with the Palestinians.
Michael B. Oren • Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide
Good sense may suffice to direct the ordinary course of society; and amongst a people whose education has been provided for, the advantages of democratic liberty in the internal affairs of the country may more than compensate for the evils inherent in a democratic government. But such is not always the case in the mutual relations of foreign
... See moreAlexis de Tocqueville • Democracy in America, Volume I and II (Optimized for Kindle)
Debt, dependency, threats, and force, in that order, was the thinking of the day. These secret memos were written while Jefferson served as president of the United States.
David Treuer • The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present
Never in the postwar era was American prestige higher than in the aftermath of Suez. Small nations could scarcely believe the United States would support Egypt, a Third World country, in a fight against two of America’s oldest allies, or that it would come to the aid of a Muslim state resisting Israeli aggression.
Jean Edward Smith • Eisenhower in War and Peace
The transition from Ottoman to European colonial rule was embodied in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, reached secretly in 1916 while World War I was still being fought, in which a British and a French diplomat essentially divided what had been the Ottoman-controlled Middle East into British and French spheres of influence. This European era lasted
... See moreRichard Haass • The World
In a series of compromises, Lodge bound the three groups together in a solid front behind a series of fourteen reservations (fourteen to match Wilson’s Fourteen Points; newspapermen would dub them the “Lodge Reservations”) so that the Treaty of Versailles could be ratified only if these reservations—which would protect America’s sovereignty and
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