Interdependence and National Security: The Two Pillars of U.S. Foreign Policy

What was still needed to confer an operative framework on the sweeping generalizations that had always served as the basis of U.S. foreign policy was an occasion supplied by history itself. That opportunity came between 1940 and 1941 in the revolution triggered by the definitive collapse of the "intermediate system," the post-1919 version of the balance of power. The seedbed had been amply prepared, and the historical context did the rest.