In Roosevelt’s conception, America would have been one nation among many—more powerful than most and part of an elite group of great powers—but still subject to the historic ground rules of equilibrium. Wilson moved America onto a plane entirely remote from such considerations. 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
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