United States History, 1877-
S. Foreign Policy, 1901-1941
United States foreign policy between 1901 and 1941 can be characterized as generally confident, sometimes aggressive and, occasionally, even cautious. The first twenty years of the century saw the U.S. leadership pursue confidently interventionist strategies in dealing with other countries. The next decade-a-half witnessed a clear modification toward cautious non-entanglement if not outright isolationism. With the election of Franklin Roosevelt to the White House a gap grew between the isolationist American public and an increasingly internationalist policy. This gap temporarily disappeared with Japans attack on Pearl Harbor and Americas entry into World War II.
Period of Confident Intervention, 1901-1919
Theodore Roosevelts arrival as
president could not have been less auspicious, coming as it did at the hands of an
assassin who ended the life of President William McKinley. While others may have doubted
Roosevelt's abilities, the new president gave no indications that such doubts ever
troubled his over-sized self-confidence.
|President Theodore Roosevelt relished the strenuous life almost as much as he enjoyed his status as a media celebrity. Horseback riding was a favorite pastime and helped boost his image as the "Cowboy President." (Smithsonian Institution)|
|He moved aggressively to realize the long-held U.S. goal of building (and
controlling) an inter-oceanic canal through Central America. For U.S. policy-makers the
best choice lay through the northern end of the Republic of Colombia; the Colombian
government, however, proved resistant to the notion of surrendering territory to the
American government. Roosevelt promptly supported a highly suspect independence
movement within the northernmost Colombian state of Panama and hastily recognized
the government of a pro-canal American sympathizer there. Panama began its fight for
independence from Colombia on November 3, 1903. Read the preamble and first three articles
of the Hay-Bunau-Varilla
Treaty granting the U.S. the rights to the Panama Canal.
Note the date the treaty was originally negotiated as well as the remarkable
statement in Article I.
Alarmed at the prospect of European intervention in the internal affairs of Latin American nations, Roosevelt also toughened and extended the historic Monroe Doctrine (1824) with his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. After clicking on the following link, first read the editors note then scroll down and read the text of the "Roosevelt Corollary" as delivered to Congress in 1904. (See the section entitled "Policy Toward Other Nations of the Western Hemisphere.") What did Roosevelt promise would happen if Latin American countries invited foreign aggression? What assumptions does he make regarding the relative status of the U.S. in comparison with its Latin American neighbors?
Roosevelt further confidently intervened in world affairs by practicing a unique form of
presidential diplomacy. In 1905 he personally led negotiations to end a war between Japan
and Russia, resulting in his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A year later he
successfully handled a similarly explosive colonial conflict between France and Germany.
Overall, Roosevelt sought to strengthen the U.S. Navy and solidify previous gains
in the Pacific.
President Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy was much like his predecessors but
informed more by paternalism than aggressiveness and opportunism. Much of Wilsons concerns focused on Asia
where the rising Japanese Empire competed with the old European empires for dominance in
China. Seeking to maintain an open
door for American trade with China, Wilson, like both his predecessors and
successors in the White House, struggled to balance the dangers of either European or
Japanese dominance in that region.
Period of Cautious Non-entanglement, 1920-1937
Traditionally historians have assigned the label of isolationist to
American foreign policy in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Clearly the mood of the American people became more and more isolationist as the
years went by. The decision to reject the
League of Nations certainly gave the appearance that U.S. policy was isolationist, as
well. Yet, recent historians have emphasized
the continued role America played in world affairs.
What best describes the policy of the period, then, is cautious non-entanglement. Policymakers sought not isolation but a free
hand to operate, according to diplomatic historian Walter LaFeber. Two notable foreign policy achievements from the
era tend to bolster this view.
The dangerous 1930s
international economic collapse of the 1930s helped to create an ever more dangerous
world. Beginning in the 1920s, totalitarian
fascist parties rose to power throughout Europe promising both economic resurgence and
protection from the communists. Benito
Mussolini in Italy, Adolf Hitler in Germany and Francisco Franco in Spain each rose to
power by exploiting fears of the left. In the
case of Germany and Italy, a combination of calculation, ideology and megalomaniacal
leadership would drive those nations toward ever more explosive confrontations with nearby
states. Meanwhile, a similarly militaristic
coterie gained power in Japan and set that increasingly powerful nation down the path of
Franklin Roosevelts Struggle to Return to Internationalism, 1937-1941
The American people remained staunchly isolationist although the president tried to rouse
them with the famously cautionary
speech" of 1937. Meantime, facing equally ant-war public sentiment, the
governments of Britain and France charted a diplomatic path of appeasement in order to
keep peace with Hitler. The low point of this policy of appeasement arrived with the
Peace Conference with Hitler, 1938 . Desperately gambling for peace at any price,
the British and French countenanced the take-over of western Czechoslovakia under the
terms of the Munich treaty. The folly of appeasement became undeniably clear the
following year when Hitler's war machine roared into Germany's neighbor to the east,
Poland, starting World War II in Europe.
. Desperately gambling for peace at any price, the British and French countenanced the take-over of western Czechoslovakia under the terms of the Munich treaty. The folly of appeasement became undeniably clear the following year when Hitler's war machine roared into Germany's neighbor to the east, Poland, starting World War II in Europe.
At first Roosevelt proclaimed U.S. neutrality while doing what he could to assist the French and British. In 1939 the president persuaded the Congress to pass the "cash and carry" amendment to the earlier, tougher neutrality laws preventing the U.S. from getting any material to the Allies. Then, as the rest of the world looked on in shock, the Germans (having already disposed of Poland and Belgium) knocked France completely out of the war in June of 1940. Realizing that Britain stood alone against the Nazis in Europe, under Roosevelt's leadership U. S. "neutrality" became "measures short of war." Just after the fall of France, Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed an agreement to lease British naval bases in the Caribbean to the U.S. in exchange for fifty older American naval destroyers in the so-called "bases for destroyers deal." Early the following year (1941) FDR managed to get appropriations through the Congress for a "Lend-lease" program to funnel war supplies to the British. In June, 1941, the Germans made the unwise decision to attack the Soviet Union, thus bringing the Red Army into the war against Hitler. Thereafter, both the British and Russian war efforts benefited from America's "Lend-lease" assistance. A few weeks after Germany widened the war to include the Russians, Roosevelt and Churchill met and signed the Atlantic Charter, a most remarkable step for a "neutral" nation. The Charter outlined America's overall attachment to the ideal of self-determination and freedom but more pointedly declared that the "disarmament of [aggressor] nations is essential." The leaders signed the Charter in August, the same month that a poll showed that less than twenty percent of the American people supported entering the war. Yet, more telling, that same month nearly seventy percent reported being "willing to risk war with Japan" rather than allow the Japanese Pacific expansion continue unchecked. The Japanese High Command would provide the final decisive event with the surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. Afterward, President Roosevelt led a determinedly unified people to war.