Thematic Essay: The History of American Foreign Policy

V

The Spanish-American War

In 1898 the United States fought and won the Spanish-American War, a conflict that established the country as a naval power and ushered in an expansionist era in American foreign policy. Despite President William McKinley’s reluctance to enter into hostilities with Spain, the brief war helped establish a new direction for American foreign policy. Cuban resistance to Spanish rule had brought the European power close to American shores, posing a significant threat to the interests defined by the Monroe Doctrine. In order to attract readers, two American newspapers, the New York Morning Journal and the New York World, adopted a sensationalist style known as yellow journalism to depict Spanish oppression in Cuba. The news campaign aroused popular support in the United States for the Cuban people. The newspaper campaign gradually wore down McKinley’s hands-off policy. Americans with commercial interests on the island compounded the pressure on the president to do something about the situation.

McKinley had little choice but to respond. Subjected to criticism and even ridicule, McKinley finally sent the battleship Maine to the harbor at Havana, Cuba’s capital, to establish a U.S. presence, but the ship exploded in the harbor in February 1898, killing 266 men. A U.S. Naval investigative court failed to establish guilt but pointed to a mine as the probable cause. The incident brought demands for revenge, with “remember the Maine” as the battle cry. In that climate, further stimulated by sensationalism in the press, it became easy to blame Spain for the disaster. McKinley, still reluctant to go to war, sought a diplomatic solution. Caught between Cuban resistance to a cease-fire and the position of the Spanish government, in May he finally asked Congress to declare war on Spain.

The swift victory by the United States marked its rise to naval power and brought an end to the Spanish Empire. Less than three months after the war began, it was over in the Caribbean, where a U.S. naval blockade and subsequent land invasions ended the fighting in July. Secretary of State John Hay described it as a “splendid little war.” The Spanish-American War was also fought in the Philippines, where the United States worried that Spanish weakness might create a power vacuum in the Pacific. American troops triumphed in the Philippines in August 1898, but the United States then found itself battling against stubborn insurgents who wanted neither Spanish nor American rule. McKinley admitted his ignorance of the archipelago afterward, saying that when he heard from Admiral John Dewey that the Philippines was taken, he “looked up their location on the globe” because he “could not have told where those darned islands were within 2,000 miles!”

VI

An Imperial Power

The Spanish-American War left the United States in occupation of the Philippines and holding, at the turn of the 20th century, the overseas possessions Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam. A nation so recently hesitant about overseas involvement wound up adding to its territory an empire of 310,000 square kilometers (120,000 square miles) with 8.5 million people and swiftly achieved new international stature in the process. The 1898 annexation of the Hawaiian Islands further established the emergence of the United States as an imperial power.

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American entry into the imperialist race expanded its vital interests and required more frequent exercises of power overseas. In 1901 Congress refused to end the military occupation of Cuba without an agreement to permit the United States a voice in the country’s diplomatic and political affairs. The Platt Amendment, a U.S. law that stipulated such control, also stated that land was to be ceded for the establishment of a U.S. naval station at Guantánamo Bay, thereby reversing the hands-off stance taken when war was first declared. Having asserted the right to a military presence, the United States intervened militarily on three different occasions in the 1920s and exerted political influence over the island until the mid-1930s.

VII

The Open Door Policy

At the turn of the century the world’s major powers competed rigorously for influence in China. Secretary of State John Hay’s 1899 Circular Letter first articulated the open door policy, the U.S. stand on this competition for China’s market. American moralists and diplomats agreed that both the American and the Chinese people stood to lose from the attempts of Japan and major European powers to carve China into exclusive spheres of influence. In a round of diplomatic notes, Hay called on world powers to preserve Chinese territorial and administrative integrity and maintain “equal and impartial trade.” Initially specific to China, the open door’s emphasis on equal trade rights for all nations became central to foreign policy as the United States became a major economic power in the 20th century.

VIII

Roosevelt’s Big-Power Policies

The assassination of McKinley in 1901 brought to the presidency Theodore Roosevelt, a military hero with aspirations for American greatness overseas. Roosevelt forever changed international relations. Foreign policy still focused on issues of direct U.S. interest, but Roosevelt eagerly expanded the new overseas presence that he had inherited. The president took to heart Mahan’s assertion of the importance of sea power. Indeed, as secretary of the navy Roosevelt had contributed to the expansion and modernization of U.S. naval forces, and had strongly urged the United States to fight Spain for control of the Philippines. As president, Roosevelt unabashedly pursued big-power policies. Having secured control over the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, the United States under Roosevelt turned toward further expansion of its influence in Asia and Latin America.

Roosevelt’s so-called accidental presidency also inherited the open door policy of equal access to China’s markets. Roosevelt left no doubt about his priorities. He intended to preserve the policy and broaden U.S. interests in Asia. As Mahan had indicated, the strength of the navy proved essential in easing the problems of enforcement. Roosevelt’s concern with maintaining a power balance in the Pacific led him to support Japan when it launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet in Manchuria in 1904, which began the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Much to his surprise, the Japanese military defeated the supposedly superior Russian forces, thereby establishing Japan as a new power.

IX

New Challenges in Asia

After Japan emerged as a major Pacific power, it quickly became a prominent focus of U.S. foreign policy. In 1905 Roosevelt extended an offer to help mediate an end to the Russo-Japanese War, which had exhausted Japan and Russia. Roosevelt fulfilled his mission as peacemaker by negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth. The terms of the treaty fell far short of Japanese demands and subsequently convinced Japan that the United States had shortchanged it.

Tensions with Japan intensified in 1906 when the public school system in San Francisco, California, segregated immigrant Japanese children. A 1907 agreement between the United States and Japan, known as the Gentlemen’s Agreement, resolved the dispute, but tensions persisted between the two ascendant powers. Roosevelt’s decision to send American battleships on a so-called goodwill mission to Tokyo in 1907 only heightened Japan’s awareness of U.S. power in the Pacific. Distracted by events in Europe during World War I (1914-1918), the United States helped strengthen Japan’s position in Asia, recognizing it as a nation with special interests in China in the Lansing-Ishii Agreement of 1917.

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