Word: spykman
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Good Neighbors. To the Good Neighbor policy Professor Spykman devotes the more urgently important half of his book. The basic mistake in the Good Neighbor policy, he points out, is the result of regarding the western hemisphere as capable of political or cultural unity...
Professor Spykman feels that the Pan-American conferences have done little more than overlook these conflicts. That is why Spykman sees no reason to believe that a German-Japanese victory will find the countries of the New World "any less divided than Europe, any more difficult to defeat one by one than the states of that unhappy continent." Hemisphere defense, he concludes, "will continue to rest, as in the past ... on the armed forces of the United States...
Quarter-sphere defense may be feasible from a military viewpoint. Economically, Professor Spykman believes that it is hopeless "without the tin and the tungsten of Bolivia, the copper of Chile and the tungsten, wool and tanning products of the Argentine, our war industries would be seriously crippled even if we could produce in northern Brazil the materials -which now come from the tropical zones of Asia and Africa...
From these dark facts Professor Spykman draws a drastic conclusion: "Hemisphere defense is no defense at all. The Second World War will be lost or won in Europe and Asia...
Post-War. Equally astringent are Spykman's remarks about the post-war world. "In the first world conflict of the 20th Century," he observes, "the United States won the war, but lost the peace. If this mistake is to be avoided, it must be remembered, once and for all, that the end of a war is not the end of the power struggle. . . . The interest of the United States demands not only victory in the war, but also continued participation in the peace...