Disdaining the balance of power, he insisted that America’s role was “not to prove… our selfishness, but our greatness.”40 If that was true, America had no right to hoard its values for itself. As early as 1915, Wilson put forward the unprecedented doctrine that the security of America was inseparable from the security of all the rest of mankind. This implied that it was henceforth America’s duty to oppose aggression everywhere:
