Potentialities of America's Far Eastern Policy

Abstract

kT NO time since the turn of the twentieth century, when visions of Oriental lands and trade launched America on the career of a world power, has there been greater evidence than in the present of forces straining to break away from the moorings of American Far Eastern policy. Now the stimulus is not the prospect of national aggrandizement but a realization that the aggression of an Oriental nation menaces seriously existing American interests. Now the question is not whether America should depart from isolation but whether it should go beyond even the relatively vigorous policy developed since its advent to national maturity. In the first year of the Sino-Japanese conflict America pursued a policy midway between isolation and active intervention; in the second year its policy has been at least a little beyond this midway point. But now from the most varied quarters-public organizations, members of Congress, and even, by implication, from the President in his last annual Congressional message-come proposals to the effect that America's policy should progress considerably farther, even if by no means to active intervention. In sum, there are indications that the potentialities of America's Far Eastern policy are much greater than has been commonly assumed. The times and their practical issues thus emphasize an important problem-that of how far, in terms of specific measures in relation to the Far Eastern conflict, the potentialities of American Far Eastern policy do extend. The problem must be differentiated from the undertaking of prophecy, which the quick play of the casual or the imponderable has never made more venturesome than in the present. The question here raised is rather that of what new methods are potentialities of American Far Eastern policy, in the sense that they are compatible with its fundamental principles and the trends evinced in the development of those principles. Such a