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If that is a new policy, it would come as a surprise to every American statesman, going back to James Monroe. For at its basis lies the sovereign right, defended by Americans of all decades of self-protection. It was perhaps best'expressed by a great Secretary of State, Elihu Root, who wrote in 1914: "it is well understood that the exercise' of the right of self-protection may, and frequently does, extend in its effect beyond the limits of the territorial jurisdiction the state exercising it ... [It is] the right of every sovereign state to protect itself by preventing a condition of affairs in which it will be too late to defend itself."