World Order: Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History

Following two chapters on Asia, Kissinger moves on to analyze the United States, its role in the world, its self-perception, and its foreign policy styles up until World War II. Chapter 7 comprises the following categories: “America on the World Stage,” “Theodore Roosevelt: America as a World Power,” “Woodrow Wilson: America as the World’s Conscience,” and “Franklin Roosevelt and the New World Order.”

One key aspect of the American foreign policy is its complicated role:

[I]t expanded across a continent in the name of Manifest Destiny while abjuring any imperial designs; exerted a decisive influence on momentous events while disclaiming any motivation of national interest; and became a superpower while disavowing any intention to conduct power politics. America’s foreign policy has reflected the conviction that its domestic principles were self-evidently universal and their application at all times salutary; that the real challenge of American engagement abroad was not foreign policy in the traditional sense but a project of spreading values that it believed all other peoples aspired to replicate (234).

This messianic aspect of American foreign policy combined with its conviction in one’s own moral superiority is important to understanding American actions since the country’s inception.