ign policy. The existing domestic institutions of the
European nations are for the most part irrelevant to such a policy.

The one way in which the foreign policy of the United States can make
for democracy is by strengthening and encouraging those political
forces which make for international peace. The one respect in which the
political system, represented by the United States, is still
antagonistic to the European political system is that the European
nation, whatever its ultimate tendency, is actually organized for
aggressive war, that the cherished purposes of some of its states cannot
be realized without war, and that the forces which hope to benefit by
war are stronger than the forces which hope to benefit by peace. That is
the indubitable reason why the United States must remain aloof from the
European system and must avoid scrupulously any entanglements in the
complicated web of European international affairs. The policy of
isolation is in this respect as wise to-day as it was in the time of its
enunciation by Washington and Hamilton; and nobody seriously proposes to
depart from it. On the other hand, the basis for this policy is wholly
independent of the domestic institutions of the European nations. It
derives from the fact that at any time those nations may go to war about
questions in which the United States has no vital interest. The
geographical situation of the United States emancipates her from these
conflicts, and enables her to stand for the ultimate democratic interest
in international peace.

This justifiable policy of isolation has, moreover, certain important
consequences in respect to the foreign policy of the United States in
the two Americas. In this field, also, the United States must stand in
every practicable way for a peaceful international system, and whatever
validity the Monroe Doctrine may have in its relation to the European
nations is the outcome of that obligation. If South and Central America
were thrown open to European colonial ambitions, they would be involved
very much more than they are at present in the consequences of European
wars. In this sense the increase of European political influence in the
two Americas would be an undesirable thing which the United States would
have good reason to oppose. In this sense the extension of the European
system to the American hemisphere would involve consequences inimical to
democracy. In 1801 the North was fighting, not merely to preserve