ABSTRACT
The Genocide provided an opportunity for America to experiment with intervention. America's specific actions toward the Armenians from 1915 to 1927 established a general model that was to become a blueprint for its foreign policy worldwide ever since. In dealing with the Armenian Genocide, the United States established a legacy of paradox. The paradox is this: the self-interest that impelled the United States to engage on behalf of the Armenians is the same self-interest that impelled the United States to abandon the Armenians. However, throughout the nineteenth century, America's self-image and sense of its role in the world slowly edged away from isolationism and moved, at first warily, toward internationalism. Though they appeared to be opposite on the surface, these movements were ironically driven by the same impulse—to protect and strengthen the self-interest of the United States. The self-interested nature of American internationalism was revealed upon America's entry into World War I.
