Assistant Professor of Government Ted Lehmann wrote an article that appeared in the January issue of Security Studies, a leading international relations theory and security journal. The article "Keeping Friends Close and Enemies Closer: Classical Realist Statecraft and Economic Exchange in U.S. Interwar Strategy," sheds new and original light on our entry into WWII and the origins of Japanese oil dependency on the United States. This dependency was the proximate cause of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor after Franklin Roosevelt severed trade with Japan in July 1941. The article ends with a discussion of contemporary U.S. leverage relative to China and a quote from Alexander Hamilton about the risks of excessive debt:
"…the debt too may be swelled to such a size, as that the greatest part of it may cease to be useful as a Capital, serving only to pamper the dissipation of idle and dissolute individuals: as that the sums required to pay the Interest upon it may become oppressive, and beyond the means, which a government can employ, consistently with its tranquility, to raise them; as that the resources of taxation, to face the debt, may have been strained too far to admit of extensions adequate to exigencies which regard the public safety. Where this critical point is, cannot be pronounced, but it is impossible to believe, that there is not such a point." Alexander Hamilton, "Report on Manufactures," in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 10 (New York:Columbia University Press, 1966), 282.
"…the debt too may be swelled to such a size, as that the greatest part of it may cease to be useful as a Capital, serving only to pamper the dissipation of idle and dissolute individuals: as that the sums required to pay the Interest upon it may become oppressive, and beyond the means, which a government can employ, consistently with its tranquility, to raise them; as that the resources of taxation, to face the debt, may have been strained too far to admit of extensions adequate to exigencies which regard the public safety. Where this critical point is, cannot be pronounced, but it is impossible to believe, that there is not such a point." Alexander Hamilton, "Report on Manufactures," in The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 10 (New York:Columbia University Press, 1966), 282.
