Theodore Roosevelt
Term: (1901-1909)
Roosevelt took the African proverb "Speak softly and carry a big stick" to heart. President Roosevelt initiated construction
of the Panama Canal, and won a Nobel Peace Prize for acting as arbiter at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. When
problems arose over Japanese immigration and education, he reached a Gentleman's Agreement whereby existing
Japanese immigrants would receive fair treatment in education, and Japan would cease to send more immigrants over.
Roosevelt sent the U.S. Navy, his "big stick," to tour the world.
Foreign Events of Theodore Roosevelt
President Roosevelt introduced a dramatic change to the
foreign policy of the United States. One of the pressing
problems was the need for a canal across the Americas.
During the Spanish American War the U.S.S. Oregon sailed
from the West coast of the United States to Cuba. However,
by the time she completed the voyage, the war was already
over. It took a series of treaties to receive the land for the
canal, and although the canal was not officially opened until
1921, it was completed long before then.
Roosevelt resorted to big-stick diplomacy most
conspicuously in 1903, when he helped Panama to secede
from Colombia and gave the United States a Canal Zone.
Construction began at once on the Panama Canal, which
Roosevelt visited in 1906, the first president to leave the
country while in office. He considered the construction of the
canal, a symbol of the triumph of American determination and
technological know-how, his greatest accomplishment as
president. As he later boasted in his autobiography, “I took
the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to
debate the canal, but to debate me.” Other examples of
wielding the big stick came in 1906 when Roosevelt occupied
and set up a military protectorate in Cuba and when he put pressure on Canada in a boundary dispute in Alaska.
He knew that taking on the Philippine Islands as an American colony after the Spanish-American War had ended
America's isolation from international power politics—a development that he welcomed. Every year he asked for bigger
appropriations for the army and navy. Congress cut back on his requests, but by the end of his presidency he had built the
U.S. Navy into a major force at sea and reorganized the army along efficient, modern lines.
Several times during Roosevelt's first years in office, European powers threatened to intervene in Latin America,
ostensibly to collect debts owed them by weak governments there. To meet such threats, he framed a policy statement in
1904 that became known as the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. It stated that the United States would not
only bar outside intervention in Latin American affairs but would also police the area and guarantee that countries there met
their international obligations. In 1905, without congressional approval, Roosevelt forced the Dominican Republic to install
an American “economic advisor,” who was in reality the country's financial director.
Theodore Roosevelt was also a moderator between other countries.
When he learned that both Russia and Japan sought peace, he
organized a conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he
forced the Russians and the Japanese to compromise. Roosevelt was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this work in 1906. Roosevelt
showed the soft-spoken, sophisticated side of his diplomacy in dealing
with major powers outside the Western Hemisphere. In Asia he was
alarmed by Russian expansionism and by rising Japanese power. In
1904–05 he worked to end the Russo-Japanese War by bringing both
nations to the Portsmouth Peace Conference and mediating between
them. More than just to bring peace, Roosevelt wanted to construct a
balance of power in Asia that might uphold U.S. interests. In 1907 he
defused a diplomatic quarrel caused by anti-Japanese sentiment in
California by arranging the so-called Gentlemen's Agreement, which
restricted Japanese immigration. In another informal executive
agreement, he traded Japan's acceptance of the American position in
the Philippines for recognition by the United States of the Japanese conquest of Korea and expansionism in China.
Contrary to his bellicose image, Roosevelt privately came to favor withdrawal from the Philippines, judging it to be militarily
indefensible, and he renounced any hopes of exerting major power in Asia.
During his second term Roosevelt increasingly feared a general European war. He saw British and U.S. interests as
nearly identical, and he was strongly inclined to support Britain behind the scenes in diplomatic controversies. In secret
instructions to the U.S. envoys to the Algeciras Conference in 1906, Roosevelt told them to maintain formal American
noninvolvement in European affairs but to do nothing that would imperil existing Franco-British understandings, the
maintenance of which was “to the best interests of the United States.” Despite his bow toward noninvolvement, Roosevelt
had broken with the traditional position of isolation from affairs outside the Western Hemisphere. At Algeciras, U.S.
representatives had attended a strictly European diplomatic conference, and their actions favored Britain and France over
Germany.