Ernest R. May

From John Quincy Adams' conception of America as "the champion and vindicator only of her own liberty" to Woodrow Wilson's idealism, the splendid new Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations shows the extent to which foreign policy debates in America have really concerned the definition of the nation.

Much of what is said about the Alliance for Progress assumes that up to now Americans have been indifferent to Latin America; that, in so far as they have not, the results have been bad-that the record in Latin America is one in which neither our Government nor private interests can take pride; and that the Alliance therefore represents an entirely new departure. One of the most learned men of the New Frontier, former Harvard law professor Abram Chayes, now the State Department Legal Adviser, has said, for example, that the condition of Latin America today "is in some measure a consequence of our own neglect. For most of the 180 years of our history, we looked inward, or eastward across the ocean to Europe, or, latterly, around the world. Only rarely have we looked south and then not always with a benevolent eye."[i] While these generalizations are not baseless, neither are they unquestionably true, and they play enough part in current thinking to be worth some review.