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World Relationships.
It became increasingly evident that the foreign policy of the United States could not consist solely of a Caribbean policy, a Pan-American policy, and a Far Eastern policy, but that it must necessarily involve a world policy.

During the years after the Spanish War the world was actively discussing peace; but all the while war was in the air.
The peace devices of 1815, the Holy and the Quadruple Alliances, had vanished.

The world had ceased to regard buffer states as preventives of wars between the great nations, although at the time few believed that any nation would ever dare to treat them as Germany since then has treated Belgium.

The balance of power still existed, but statesmen were ever uncertain as to whether such a relation of states was really conducive to peace or to war.