Hamilton Fish Armstrong
Essay
Oct
1972
Seventy-FIVE years ago, Archibald Gary Coolidge, who later became the first Editor of Foreign Affairs, wrote a book with a theme and title entirely novel at that time, "The United States as a World Power." In it he made the first attempt to define the new role in the world then rapidly being assumed by the United States. He remarked that all nations divide mankind into two categories-themselves and everybody else. And he said that Americans would be just as prone as others to cherish the pleasing belief that they had grown great by their own virtues and the favor of a kindly Providence, whereas the progress of other states was marked by unscrupulous rapacity; hence, they would demand that American statesmen keep sharp watch lest nefarious foreigners take advantage of their good nature and honest simplicity. The accuracy of Mr. Coolidge's analysis was corroborated before long by the alacrity with which the American people accepted the idea that they had come into World War I altruistically, in order to make the world safe for democracy ("American" democracy); and again by their readiness to suppose that President Wilson and his advisers at Paris had been bamboozled by wily European statesmen. The latter conception was promoted by American isolationists who depicted the League of Nations as a naïve and useless affair and a trap to involve us in Old World power politics.
Essay
Apr
1968
Americans tend to think there is a solution to every problem. In a corollary-equally misleading though not unnatural, given the unrivaled material strength of the United States-they imagine that when the problem is international the solution to it will be American. Most international problems, however, do not have final solutions. Only a Carthaginian peace is final; and short of that, as even unconditional enemy surrenders have demonstrated, the distribution of rewards and punishments soon turns out to have results very different from those the victors foresaw or desired. Applying these truths to the situation in Viet Nam, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that there is not a final solution to the war there; that neither a preliminary nor a lasting solution will be determined by the amount of force which we are able or willing to use; and that in neither case will it correspond to our idea of "victory."
Essay
Jul
1963
The Federation of Malaysia is scheduled to come into existence on August 31 of this year by the merger of the existing Federation of Malaya with Singapore, the British colonies of Sarawak and North Borneo and the British- protected Sultanate of Brunei, thus forming a crescent well over a thousand miles long from the borders of Thailand almost to within eyesight of the southernmost Philippine islands. Although many difficulties stand in the way, the British and Malayan Governments say categorically that they will not be deterred from pushing the plan through. Some of the difficulties are historical and local, for the new Federation will be a rather arbitrary assemblage of widely separated territories with mixed populations at different stages of development. More important are the objections raised by Indonesia and the Philippines.
Essay
Oct
1962
Foreign policy is not a game of chess, though it is often called that. There is no fixed board and there is no book of rules to say that a certain move will be successful or that a contrary one will fail. The treatises on diplomacy are guides to techniques. Books of etiquette that tell how to hold a teacup or fold a handkerchief do not help when the ceiling falls in the parlor or a baby must be delivered in a taxicab. So with diplomacy, the human factors determine whether an emergency is handled well or badly.
