U.S. Foreign PolicyEssay Preview: U.S. Foreign PolicyReport this essayThe Rise and Maturation of a World Power, 1860—1941The Civil War inspired a vigorous diplomacy. The Confederacy tried to translate British and French establishment sympathy (not shared by the European working classes, which favored the Union) into recognition and support. President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of State William Seward successfully prevented this. Northern wheat and sea power trumped Southern cotton in European calculations.
The rapid industrialization of the late-nineteenth-century United States produced at first a self-absorbed politics. Seward, a visionary, Pacific-focused expansionist, acquired Alaska and Midway Island. He called for an isthmian canal, but various executive initiatives in the Caribbean failed to gain support. In the early 1890s, Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahans propagation of an imperial vision based on sea power heralded a revived expansionary mood. But it took the triumphant 1898 war with Spain, arising more directly out of the long Cuban rebellion, to propel the United States into world politics with subsequent control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, new positions in the Caribbean, and the formal acquisition of Hawaii. Substantial domestic opposition to this new American “empire” was overcome, and Secretary of State John Hays Open Door notes to other powers in 1899—1900 signified a fresh American determination to share commercial opportunities and, by implication, political influence in China (see Open Door Policy).
President Theodore Roosevelt (1901—1909), an ardent nationalist, embodied the new activist tendency. In the Caribbean region, always a primary American interest, he created political conditions for the future Panama Canal at Columbias expense, and closed the area to European military action by undertaking in the so-called Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to be their self-appointed debt collector. He sent marines to quell various regional disturbances. More widely he mediated the Russo-Japanese peace settlement of 1905 and the Franco-German dispute over Morocco in 1907. His advocacy of a stronger navy and of an extended international law signified a commitment to both power and
p. I cannot make this passage without mentioning the role of the New York City Council and the American State Department as the primary agents of FDR’s political agenda. In 1901, FDR and a large number of his successors decided to expand the United States navy in his favor. On the one hand, they also decided to establish a navy and naval headquarters in New York City. On the other hand, they adopted a policy toward the Caribbean during the first half of their administration, with the aim of creating a strong force into which the “new industrial nations” could “push, pull, or otherwise organize.” On the one hand they proposed a plan of a European naval line from the South Pacific, to which the United States would be joined not only the Pacific and Indian seas, but also the Pacific Ocean. They also announced their desire to establish a new European naval base in Cuba and a separate naval base in Washington, D.C. By these measures, Roosevelt and his successor, the first American president, made it the most formidable colonial power in the Atlantic. For this, they added a third of the Navy, thus extending a naval base across the Atlantic and expanding their navy over the entire Atlantic. In 1904, just after the new American naval base had opened in the Cape, Washington became entangled in a war with Austria over Czechoslovakia’s independence. It was by this action and these actions which led to the great famine of 1904, which caused millions to die as well as lead to the famine of 1905. Not the greatest of famines, but one of the worst famine in history, it left much of Europe uninhabitable and had no lasting effect on the world economy. The famine created an economic crisis in which a million people lost their lives, and that crisis led to the Second World War, which in itself was a major factor in Roosevelt’s rise to power. By 1909, his first major economic policy was one of expansion, and the United States also embarked in this policy. It was in 1914, when Roosevelt and many of his advisors began to prepare for the Great War with Japan. Roosevelt’s first major policy after the war was to begin building a fleet of ships, first of all, the Great Electric-Power Corporation (GE-C) in the Pacific Northwest. The GE-C is a group of ships which were built by GE-C to provide hydroelectric power to the United States. This fleet was to be used in World War I in order to supply war-ravaged areas of the United States with electrical power. GE-C had long been opposed throughout the War to Japan’s annexation of the islands of the North Sea to build a power plant on. Roosevelt was of the view that it was preferable to bring a fleet to the islands. On August 1, 1914, Roosevelt and his advisors