ABSTRACT
The analyses of the process by which Greenland and Iceland came to be included in the Western Hemisphere, and of the origins of the basic concept that defines the latter, allow to draw some preliminary provisional conclusions. The decision to intervene in the two Arctic islands marked the first tentative foray of the internationalist circles in US foreign policy outside the traditional perimeter of the American continent. This provided a test case for domestic public opinion that was in fact of much greater importance than the strategic significance of the islands themselves. The theory of national security became a specific "science" of the bipolar international order that emerged at the close of the war. The circumstances precipitated the system that was crystallizing around two antagonistic and unfulfilled war aims—the liberal-democratic doctrine of the United States, a form of "supernationalism" applicable to all, and of Soviet communism, a supranational model with internationalist leanings.
