Immigration and Our Foreign Policy Objectives

Abstract

It has been said of the United States that we are the only nation to have reached the status of a great power without having fashioned a foreign policy. This is, undoubtedly, an exaggeration. We have forged, in the past, as much of a foreign policy as we have required. The truth is that foreign policy is only an adjunct to foreign relations, and in our case, both were circumscribed and episodic before I9I4. Eastward, the European balance of power, skillfully and brilliantly maintained by England, was favorable to our growth and security. British control of the Atlantic, counterbalanced as it was by our own strategic preponderance in respect to Canada, presented no challenge to us. We required no policy toward Europe because the British Foreign Office had a policy which it effectively implemented. In a limited way, to be sure, we played a role in maintaining the European power balance through the Monroe Doctrine, first suggested to us by the British. But this, too, was effective, in large measure, because it was backed by English sea power, and we scarcely saw it as related to the balance of power in Europe in any way. Under these idyllic and historically unique circumstances, we were left free for more than a century to concentrate on our own internal problems: to populate our continental land mass, to press westward to the Pacific, to develop our domestic economy, and to stabilize our domestic political institutions. If we thought of the Old World at all, it was principally as a labor market, except among those of us who had just arrived ourselves. Then, we sometimes had other thoughts and other yearnings, as several score immigrant writers have indicated. But our nostalgia was tempered by the sweeping opportunities of a continental expansion and by the daily translation of the American dream. We did not entirely forget, and, from time to time, our remembrance was reflected in domestic politics and even in our foreign relations. But mostly we looked ahead rather than back. Millions came. Few returned.