Postwar American security planning will be realistic and adequate only to the extent that it is based upon a careful evaluation of the present and prospective relationship of the power position of the United States to that of the remainder of the world. In the past, it has been fashionable in this country to condemn power politics as something immoral, associated with the sinister contrivings of European diplomatists and not with the honest and above-board conduct of foreign relations by a democratic and peace-loving people. The term “power politics” has come to mean the cynical and ruthless use of power to advance national interests at the expense of others. But even though such a use—or abuse—of power is to be condemned, it does not follow that the power factor in international relations can be disregarded or even minimized. In practice, it will always be uppermost in the minds of statesmen, however much they say about the legal equality of all states, and the peoples of democratic countries need to be as fully aware of the constructive uses to which power may be put as to the misuse of which it is so freely susceptible.

While condemnation of power as a basis of policy has by no means disappeared from American thinking, there is a growing realization that we were able with impunity to minimize its importance in the past because of the existence of a particular set of circumstances which combined to provide us with adequate national security and which required little positive effort on our part. In other words, there is a new awareness of the fact that our favorable position with respect to security, which existed during the latter part of the nineteenth century and up to 1914, arose, not from moral superiority on our part or from the inherent excellence of our governmental system, but from other factors which had little or no relationship to these political or moral qualities.