As in the other chapters in this book, it is wise to begin by recalling the past. In this case, I begin with the history and concepts that have guided U.S. foreign policy. This historical survey is useful first because the issues we will confront in the next half century, while distinctive, will not be wholly new. Americans have wrestled with them, wisely or otherwise, in the past, and that should help provide perspective as we face the future on the other side of the Great Spike. Second, looking forward, it is necessary to see the past as objectively as we can. There are endless aphorisms about the usefulness of history to illuminate the present and the future, as well as many concerning its lack of usefulness. In general, the use of history as a guide to the future has a bad name. Samuel Taylor Coleridge in one century and Lewis Namier in another both asserted that humanity could only look at the past and was incapable of looking forward. But in a book about the future, there is virtue in trying to belie Coleridge and Namier and, looking backward as well as forward, in trying to clarify where we have come from and what we face in the time ahead. In the half century from the Revolutionary War to President James Monroe's message to the Congress in 1823, the United States evolved from a group of colonies to a nation-state. In this half century, the United States gained its independence with the decisive aid of France. It struggled through another war with Britain over a neutral country's right to freedom of the seas. In 1823, it moved to guarantee the independence of its hemisphere against military intrusion from outside. There was an abiding security as well as an ideological component in the Monroe Doctrine. As for security, it warned the nations of Europe, including Russia, not to extend their military presence in the hemisphere. John C. Calhoun, then secretary of war, wished the United States to guarantee not merely the independence of Latin America from any extension of European power but also Latin America's movement toward democracy. John Quincy Adams, then secretary of state, had two objections. First, he felt that "the feudal and clerical heritage" of Latin America would render its movement toward democracy problematic.