SOURCE: Garrity, Patrick J. “Foreign Policy and The Federalist.” In Saving the Revolution: The Federalist Papers and the American Founding, edited by Charles R. Kesler, pp. 83-99. New York: The Free Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Garrity looks at the formation of early American foreign policy as revealed in The Federalist Papers.

In the first volume of his memoirs, Henry Kissinger reflects upon those traditions of American foreign policy that stand in the way of a more realistic approach to the preservation of U.S. national interests. Because of our geographic remoteness and the shield provided by British sea power during the nineteenth century, Kissinger tells us, “Americans came to consider the isolation conferred by two great oceans as the normal pattern of foreign relations. Rather arrogantly we ascribed our security entirely to the superiority of our beliefs rather than to the weight of our power or the...