Word: spykman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1942-1942
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Survival. Whatever else the U.S. may be fighting for in World War II it is fighting first & foremost, Author Spykman insists, for its political life. He thinks Americans ought to be a little clearer about the meaning of power. "In this kind of a world states can only survive by constant devotion to power politics. . . . The struggle for power is identical with the struggle for survival. . . . All else is secondary, because in the last instance only power can achieve the objectives of foreign policy...
...lines Spykman condenses the viewpoint about which German geopoliticians have written volumes: "Geography is the most fundamental factor in the foreign policy of states because it is the most permanent. Ministers come and ministers go, even dictators die, but mountain ranges stand unperturbed." Out of this idea the Germans have made their fashionable theory of geopolitics, and the Nazis have made history...
Professor Spykman's contribution to the debate on intervention versus isolation is contained in such brilliant chapters of his book as America and the Transatlantic Zone ("The position of the United States in regard to Europe as a whole is ... identical to the position of Great Britain in regard to the European continent. . . .") America and the Transpacific Zone ("Participation in a war to preserve the balance of power in Europe against Germany means war in cooperation with the dominant naval power. Participation in a war to preserve the balance of power in Asia . . . means war against Japan, against...
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...