So I will begin with an exploration of the Rooseveltian worldview.  This worldview was multidimensional but at the same time thoroughly coherent and cohesive.

Theodore Roosevelt believed in the superiority of Western, and particularly Anglo-American, civilization.  He viewed imperialism, at least its U.S. and British varieties, primarily as a force for the advancement of this superior civilization and the betterment of the human condition—and not as a vehicle for economic exploitation.  Roosevelt closely monitored the United States’ experience in the Philippines, finding in it unambiguous evidence of the high-minded benevolence of American imperialism.

Roosevelt also believed in the necessity of active U.S. engagement with the world.  As one of the great powers, the United States was affected by important events occurring around the globe; hence, Roosevelt considered it not only fruitless but also harmful to U.S. interests to try to shield the country from major overseas developments.  And the United States needed not only to engage but to take initiative; it needed to seek to influence and to shape important overseas events to its advantage rather than simply observing them passively and reacting to them later.  Considering the deeply entrenched and potent legacy of President George Washington’s farewell address of 1796 urging Americans to “steer clear” of foreign entanglements, TR’s belief in active U.S. internationalism stands among the most radical departures of his presidency.

Although the President defined U.S. interests in a global context, he did so very thoughtfully and discriminatingly.  In Roosevelt’s scheme, the Western Hemisphere—particularly the Caribbean region, where he saw U.S. hegemony as a self-evident strategic imperative—and the western Pacific were the two areas of the world most vital to the United States.  In other areas Roosevelt was especially alert to situations where there was conflict or the potential for conflict among two or more of the great powers.  While a steadfast proponent of the “just war” doctrine, Roosevelt harbored no illusions about the horrors and the unpredictable consequences of war and considered it his moral obligation to do all that he realistically could to prevent or to stop unnecessary great power wars.  Moreover, in defining vital interests, Roosevelt accorded a much lower priority to economic concerns than to strategic ones.  Thus, maintaining the Open Door policy throughout China was not a vital American interest in Roosevelt’s eyes; harmonious U.S.-Japan relations were far more important to TR and always took precedence.

Roosevelt looked upon arbitration as a useful device for resolving international disagreements—but only if they did not involve questions of vital interests, territorial integrity, or national honor.  When a dispute did fall into one or more of these three excluded categories, he was adamant that the United States must be free to act as it saw fit.  And not only free but sufficiently strong militarily—for ultimately, TR clearly recognized, it was power more than any other factor that determined the course of international affairs.

Consistent with this perspective, Roosevelt adhered to the doctrine of peace through strength, according to which the most civilized and most righteous nations should always be well-armed and should take particular care to build up and preserve a preponderance of naval power in order to be able to deter aggression and defend their interests.  TR considered the United States and Great Britain—which shared, in his view, a duty to extend civilization and an attachment to the principles of freedom and self-government—to be the two most civilized and most righteous nations.  Moreover, he realized, the two countries’ strategic interests tended to coincide.  Britain, therefore, was an essential friend for America.

Indeed, the cornerstone of Rooseveltian statecraft was the cultivation and solidification of a special relationship between the United States and the British Empire.  TR was both a proud American nationalist and, in important respects, an internationalist.  But as his presidency moved along, and as his devotion to U.S.-British unity was continually reinforced by events, he became in a sense an Anglo-American nationalist as well.   Without reservation, therefore, Roosevelt considered the unrivaled power of the Royal Navy to be an asset to the United States, and in his private correspondence he frequently proclaimed his support for the maintenance by Britain of its overwhelming naval superiority.

The one other power President Roosevelt came to view as highly civilized was France.  Roosevelt’s previous misgivings about that country were largely mitigated by the establishment in April 1904 of the Anglo-French entente cordiale, which he very quickly came to perceive as a crucially important bulwark against German military adventurism.  From 1905 on TR had a very positive outlook on French diplomacy.

In contrast, Roosevelt perceived Germany, Russia, and Japan as potential enemies of the United States.  Not only did their interests often clash with those of the U.S., but they had not yet attained America’s (or Britain’s or France’s) level of civilization.
TR viewed Germany as aggressive and militaristic and as having respect for the United States only insofar “as it believes that our navy is efficient and that if sufficiently wronged or insulted we would fight.”

  By the closing years of his presidency, his long-standing doubts about the emotional stability and rationality of Kaiser Wilhelm II and suspicions about the nature of German society in general had hardened.  “The German attitude toward war,” Roosevelt lamented in a letter of February 1907 to a British friend, “is one that in the progress of civilization England and America have outgrown.”

Regarding tsarist Russia—viewed by TR more as a long-term than as a short-term menace—Roosevelt foresaw “nothing of permanent good . . . , either for herself or for the rest of the world, until her people begin to tread the path of orderly freedom, of civil liberty, and of a measure of self-government.” In its diplomacy, Russia was guilty of “appalling, . . . well-nigh incredible mendacity”; and a Russian victory over Japan in their war of 1904-1905 “would have been a blow to civilization.”

As the foregoing quotation suggests, the case of Japan was somewhat more complex in Roosevelt’s perception.  In a letter of June 1905, TR admiringly called the Japanese “a wonderful and civilized people, . . . who are entitled to stand on an absolute equality with all the other peoples of the civilized world.”   Moreover, Roosevelt heartily approved of (and informally linked America to) the Anglo-Japanese alliance.  Yet even while he was pursuing a cooperative and friendly U.S.-Japanese relationship, the President was uncertain about Japan’s motives and ultimate intentions.  Thus, as he wrote to Whitelaw Reid, his ambassador to Great Britain, in June 1906, “my policy with Japan is to be scrupulously polite, to show a genuine good will toward her, but to keep our navy in such shape that the risk will be great for Japan if it undertakes any aggression upon us.”

Roosevelt’s disparate assessments of the six great powers were reflected in his thinking about the balance of power.  It would be inaccurate to assert that he saw “balance” as the key to stabilizing all areas of possible great power conflict.  He did indeed desire such balance between Russia and Japan in Manchuria. But when Great Britain or the United States was a party to a dispute with another power, balance was the President’s minimum objective.  A better guarantee of peace was an imbalance decidedly favorable to Britain or America or the two of them combined.  As the world’s most civilized countries, England and the United States would not abuse a position of military supremacy; and such supremacy would ensure against miscalculation on the part of a more selfish, less civilized, less mature power. Thus, Roosevelt was convinced, a preponderance of British or American strength in any region of the globe constituted a safeguard, not a danger.

Although Roosevelt was an ambitious statesman, he possessed a keen sense of limits as well.  “Practical idealism” was among TR’s most important working principles, and—just as in his dealings with domestic affairs—he constantly endeavored to mesh realism and idealism in his foreign policy.  “We can only accomplish good at all,” he wrote to the trusted diplomat Henry White in 1906, “by not trying to accomplish the impossible good.”
Military, cultural, geographical, international political, and domestic political realities combined to define the limits of the possible in Roosevelt’s mind.  The greater the stakes, however, the more willing the President was to test those limits by taking political, diplomatic, and military risks in an effort to attain his objectives.

A well-informed, carefully constructed, well-integrated, complex, sophisticated Rooseveltian worldview provided the conceptual foundation for a coherent, dynamic, successful presidential foreign policy.  But such an outcome naturally would also require a high level of proficiency in the area of execution.  There too Roosevelt would prove equal to the challenge.

Rooseveltian Statecraft

The style in which President Theodore Roosevelt practiced the art of statecraft suited his personality and facilitated the attainment of his foreign policy objectives.  At the core of Rooseveltian statecraft were presidential domination, personal diplomacy, and the quintessentially Rooseveltian (and often misunderstood and caricatured) “big stick” diplomacy.

Two excellent secretaries of state, John Hay and Elihu Root, worked under Roosevelt, and time and again the President availed himself of their services.  Beyond Hay and Root, Roosevelt developed a network of foreign policy advisers and operatives that included numerous Americans, a few Britons, and the French ambassador to the United States.

This sizable and varying network facilitated the informal, personal diplomacy conducted by the President, which in turn facilitated presidential domination of foreign policy.  Roosevelt would solicit the counsel of and assign diplomatic missions to different individuals at different times, as it suited his needs. And he generally would interact with them informally; even with the small number of overseas U.S. diplomats in whom Roosevelt had great confidence, important communications tended to be in the form of private letters dispatched outside the established channels.  This approach helped Roosevelt maintain a tight grip on the reins of American diplomacy throughout his presidency.

As practiced by its architect, big stick diplomacy had at its foundation five central principles.  The first was the possession of a formidable military capability, which during the opening decade of the twentieth century meant, especially, a large, well-equipped, well-trained U.S. Navy.  “Diplomacy,” Roosevelt declared before a Naval War College audience in July 1908, “rests on the substantial basis of potential force.”   The second principle was to act justly toward other nations. The third was never to bluff, and the fourth was to strike only if prepared to strike hard.  Fifth and finally, big stick diplomacy required its practitioner to allow an honorable adversary to save face in defeat.

The episode routinely cited as the epitome of Rooseveltian big stick diplomacy—the U.S. acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone—is in reality a very imperfect example.  For TR’s success in this instance was as much a product of exasperation and opportunism as it was of calculation and initiative.  In addition, the President did not extend himself to shield Colombia, the big loser in the affair, from humiliation.

By September 1903, frustrated with Colombia and well aware of the strong and rising secessionist ferment in Colombian-ruled Panama, TR and Secretary of State Hay encouraged this secessionist movement—but only in private and even then only by indirection.  Beginning on October 17, the President ordered U.S. naval vessels to sail toward Panama—not to take an active part in the revolution, but, as stipulated in a U.S.-Colombian treaty of 1846, “to ‘maintain free and uninterrupted transit’ across the isthmus and to prevent the landing of any armed force, whether Colombian or Panamanian.”   The bloodless Panamanian rebellion was carried out in less than three days, ending on November 6.

The United States promptly granted recognition to the new Panamanian government and beefed up its naval presence in the area to prevent Colombia from overturning Panama’s separation; there would be no further pretense of American neutrality.  The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, granting the United States sovereignty “in perpetuity” over a ten-mile-wide canal zone and making Panama a virtual protectorate of the U.S., was signed on November 18, 1903, and ratified by the Senate on February 23, 1904.

Roosevelt was extremely proud of his statesmanship relating to the acquisition of the canal zone, believing that he had absolutely nothing to hide, and that he not only had advanced the interests of the United States but also had thwarted Colombia’s attempt to impede the progress of humanity.  He would never cease to defend his actions vigorously, most notably in the autobiography he published in 1913.
There were three truly classic displays of Rooseveltian big stick diplomacy.  In chronological order, they were directed at Germany, Great Britain, and Japan.

Joint Anglo-German military action against Venezuela for the purpose of debt collection beginning in December 1902 led to a German-American confrontation.  Blaming Germany for the expedition, and seeing the expedition as a challenge to the Monroe Doctrine, President Roosevelt dispatched a battleship squadron to the waters near Venezuela, insisted on arbitration (for which the Venezuelan government was calling), and privately issued in mid-December and in early February two timely and stern ultimatums to the German government.   By the middle of February 1903, Germany had agreed to Roosevelt’s demand for arbitration, and the crisis had ended.  Adhering to all the tenets of big stick diplomacy, TR had found Germany’s conduct unjust and unacceptable, had readied the necessary military forces, had personally issued unambiguous warnings, and by keeping those warnings private had made it possible for Germany to back down without losing face.

The story of the resolution of the Anglo-American quarrel over the Alaskan-British Columbian boundary reveals a determined American statesman adroitly utilizing personal diplomacy and big stick diplomacy to attain the result he was seeking.  In 1902, viewing the Canadian claim as entirely unjustified, Roosevelt dispatched troops without fanfare to the disputed region.  Then, the President employed numerous personal agents in a complex, multipronged diplomatic offensive aimed at achieving a settlement that would uphold the essential elements of the U.S. position without undermining his quest for ever stronger Anglo-American ties, accomplishing this very difficult objective in October 1903.  It was a virtuoso performance.

Equally impressive was Roosevelt’s handling of the crisis in U.S.-Japan relations that was sparked by the San Francisco school board’s passage in October 1906 of a resolution segregating Asian schoolchildren, and was stoked by the continuing immigration to the United States of substantial numbers of Japanese laborers.  TR’s well-conceived, multifaceted approach entailed pressuring the Californians to end the blatant discrimination (and accompanying violence) while emphasizing to Japan his disapproval of Californian behavior; working with Japanese officials to find an amicable way to halt the flow of Japanese workers to the American mainland; and strengthening and exhibiting the U.S. Navy both to deter Japan and to prepare for war should it prove unavoidable.  In Roosevelt’s single most illustrious act of big stick diplomacy, he sent the American battleship fleet (the “Great White Fleet”) on a fourteen-month world cruise beginning in December 1907.  Not a threatening word was spoken—indeed, Japan invited the fleet to its shores and extended it a grand welcome in October 1908—but the warning that America was strong and ready was unmistakable. 

Meanwhile, a “Gentlemen’s Agreement”—structured in such a way as to spare Japan humiliation—finally brought the immigration problem under control by the middle of 1908.  Then, in November of that year, the signing of the Root-Takahira Agreement, demonstrating to the world the achievement of respectful and friendly relations between the United States and Japan, marked a climactic triumph for the President’s Japanese policy.  Roosevelt immodestly but very accurately summed up his accomplishment in a letter to his close English friend Arthur Lee in December 1908: “My policy of constant friendliness and courtesy toward Japan, coupled with sending the fleet around the world, has borne good results!”

In any meaningful evaluation of President Roosevelt’s diplomatic record, it is necessary to emphasize that his foreign policy aspirations were extremely ambitious.  Although TR pursued these aspirations simultaneously, seeing them as overlapping and mutually dependent parts of a whole, it may be useful to single out the following five as particularly important: (1) building and solidifying a singularly special relationship between the British Empire and the United States; (2) establishing U.S. hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the Caribbean region; (3) sharply expanding the international role played by the United States; (4) contributing to peaceful and stable relations among the great powers of the world; and (5) contributing to the progress of civilization.

Essential to the pursuit of this far-reaching foreign policy agenda, the President fully understood, was a powerful U.S. Navy. Between 1901 and 1905 Roosevelt pushed Congress into authorizing the construction of ten battleships among more than thirty total warships.  Then, after slowing down temporarily, TR responded to the dreadnought revolution and to increasing tension in U.S.-Japanese relations by calling for a stepped-up pace of naval building, with an emphasis on adding dreadnoughts to the battleship fleet.  The world cruise of the Great White Fleet not only waved a big stick at Japan, but also functioned as a magnificent public relations spectacle that extracted from an antagonistic Congress in 1908 an authorization for two dreadnoughts (Roosevelt astutely had demanded four) and a commitment to fund two per year in the future.  By 1907 the U.S. Navy, the world’s sixth in size in 1901, had grown into the second largest.  Moreover, by aggressively overseeing the implementation of a radical program of naval reform, President Roosevelt had greatly improved training (especially in gunnery), readiness, and overall efficiency.  The proud outgoing President, as Stephen Howarth observes, “was fully aware that he personally could take the main credit for placing the United States’ fighting ships in their new high position.”

Building and strengthening an Anglo-American special relationship was, as noted earlier, the cornerstone of Rooseveltian statecraft.  During the period 1901-1903, the President furthered the cause of Anglo-American amity in several ways.  Most significant was the well-considered, hands-on presidential diplomacy that achieved a resolution in October 1903 to the very sensitive and complicated Alaskan boundary dispute, previously discussed.  As he continued throughout his presidency to pursue his goal of building a strong special relationship between England and the United States, TR would encounter no more hurdles of such magnitude.  As he claimed retrospectively in 1911, the agreement on the Alaskan border “settled the last serious trouble between the British Empire and ourselves.”

Advances in Anglo-American relations during the early years of Roosevelt’s presidency paralleled and contributed to his progress in asserting U.S. hegemony in and around the Caribbean. First, the U.S.-British Hay-Pauncefote Treaty of November 1901 cleared the way for the United States to build, fortify, and control a trans-isthmian canal.  Then, as has been explained, Roosevelt opportunistically acquired the Panama Canal Zone from newly independent Panama in November 1903; the digging of the canal, of which the U.S. Navy would be a primary beneficiary, could now proceed.

Also in 1903, the British government began encouraging the United States to play a more active part in the affairs of Latin America.  The following year, spurred by chaotic conditions in the Dominican Republic, TR issued the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming the obligation of the United States to counteract “gross wrongdoing” in the hemisphere: “If we intend to say ‘Hands off’ to the powers of Europe, . . . we must keep order ourselves.”

Roosevelt actually was very reluctant to exercise this new international policing authority, and he initially resisted the Dominican government’s overtures for U.S. intervention.  By the beginning of 1905, however, the President believed it was imperative to act, and he arranged to establish a U.S. customs receivership in the Dominican Republic.  And when partisan politics impeded Senate ratification of the Dillingham-Sanchez Protocol, the President fell back on his broad constructionist constitutional principles and through an executive agreement with the Dominican government instituted a modus vivendi embodying the terms of the protocol.  In the Dominican Republic the U.S. customs receivership was kept limited by Roosevelt and functioned very well, enabling the Caribbean nation to repay debts owed to foreigners and to finance government operations.  Finally, early in 1907, the Senate ratified a slightly modified U.S.-Dominican treaty.

For their part, Britain’s leaders provided tangible evidence of their support for the greatly expanded U.S. role by almost completely withdrawing British naval forces from the Caribbean region, leaving the protection of British colonial and other interests there in American hands.  “South of us,” TR could write with conviction to King Edward VII in March 1905, “our interests are identical with yours.”

TR’s Dominican intervention was one of only two he undertook under the terms of the Roosevelt Corollary.  The second, lasting from September 1906 until January 1909, was in Cuba and was entered into with particularly strong reluctance.  Even with both the Cuban government and the leaders of an armed uprising against it requesting U.S. military intervention, Roosevelt exhausted the possibilities for diplomatic mediation before ordering forces ashore and setting up a provisional government.  Roosevelt certainly had no imperial designs on Cuba; as he privately told Secretary of War William Howard Taft in January 1907, “our business is to establish peace and order on a satisfactory basis, start the new government, and then leave the Island.”   And, in essence, the U.S. intervention adhered to the President’s blueprint.

As is suggested by both the infrequency and the restraint with which he intervened under his corollary, Roosevelt considered it a priority to try to minimize Latin American resentment and suspicion of the United States.  His most proactive initiative in this regard was Secretary of State Root’s highly successful goodwill tour of seven Latin American countries during the summer and early fall of 1906.  And after this trip, at the direction of the President, Root continued to work hard and effectively on behalf of better U.S.-Latin American relations.

In light of President Roosevelt’s admirable record in the area of Latin American policy, it seems worthwhile to ask why the image of a heavy-handed and widespread interventionism persists in the popular mind, and continues to be sustained even by some scholars.  Part of the explanation is the controversy still surrounding the U.S. acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone.  Another, and probably more important, part of the explanation springs from the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.  It is true that the Roosevelt Corollary provided theoretical cover for the rampant U.S. interventionism in Latin America of the 1910s and 1920s.  But this was decidedly not its purpose, and it seems inappropriate to fault Roosevelt for the subsequent misuse by others of his prescription for encouraging orderly development in the hemisphere and persuading outside powers to stay away.  The interventionist dollar diplomacy of William Howard Taft (and of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge) departed sharply from the approach of TR, who, while naturally desiring a level international playing field for U.S. business, conducted a foreign policy that elevated U.S. strategic interests and the “progress of civilization” (which required respect for and upright conduct toward weaker nations) far above the promotion of American economic advantage.   Likewise, the “moral interventionism” practiced in Latin America by Woodrow Wilson deviated markedly from the less ambitious, less intrusive, more respectful policy carried out by Roosevelt and Root.  Yes, Roosevelt’s Latin American policy was paternalistic, but charges of graver misdeeds are historically inaccurate and should, at long last, be put to rest.

Roosevelt’s goals of greatly expanding the international role played by the United States and of contributing to peaceful and stable relations among the great powers were advanced most notably by his extraordinary mediation of the Russo-Japanese War and of the Moroccan crisis.  Although TR was a close and keenly interested observer of the Russo-Japanese contest right from its onset in February 1904, and although by December of that year he already was thinking seriously about trying his hand as a mediator, he did not step forward until an opportunity arose in the spring of 1905 in the wake of major Japanese military successes.  After plenty of discreet preliminary work by the President, the door was opened in May when Japan—financially strapped and militarily overextended despite its victories—requested that Roosevelt offer mediation to Russia “on his own initiative.”  Then, through the intensive and extremely adept application of personal diplomacy—using the summer White House in Oyster Bay as his base of operations—Roosevelt arranged for the convening in early August of a Russo-Japanese peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and proceeded to overcome formidable obstacles as he shepherded it to the triumphant conclusion of the Treaty of Portsmouth of September 5.  This treaty, which restored an Asian balance of power, earned TR the Nobel Peace Prize for 1906 and may have been his foremost single achievement as a statesman.  If so, Roosevelt’s equally remarkable mediation of the two-phase French-German dispute over Morocco in 1905 and 1906 would have to rank a close second.  For this highly flammable crisis very conceivably could have brought on World War I nine years ahead of history’s calendar.

Theodore Roosevelt’s work as a mediator par excellence during the two gravest international crises of his presidency also contributed to the strengthening of the Anglo-American special relationship on which he was so intent.  In both instances, he bolstered the Anglo-American connection by his resolute preservation of the Anglo-French entente cordiale.  Because England was allied with Japan while France was allied with Russia, the Russo-Japanese War imperiled the young entente, a threat exacerbated by wartime German diplomatic activity aimed at undermining the French-British link.  And for its part, the Moroccan crisis represented a frontal German assault on the entente.  So Roosevelt was motivated to become involved not only by the lofty goal of restoring or preserving peace among the powers and by the desire to wield American influence on the world stage, but also by a determination to protect the Anglo-French entente, which he considered a vital element in an international balance of power favorable to the defense and promotion of Anglo-American interests.

Nearly all of the accomplishments so far presented—particularly TR’s success in forging an Anglo-American partnership—furthered in some measure Roosevelt’s strong, idealistic desire to contribute to the progress of civilization. Policies specifically aimed at this objective were his work on behalf of the principle of arbitration, his efforts to prepare the people of the Philippines for self-government, and his encouragement of British leaders similarly to continue to pursue with confidence a wise and generous imperial policy focused on uplifting the native peoples in the dependent colonies of the British Empire.

As he proceeded over the course of his presidency to build a magnificent record of accomplishment as a statesman, the politically astute twenty-sixth President had to deal with the realities of a public tending to be ignorant of and apathetic toward foreign policy issues and a Congress tending to be narrow and unsupportive, even obstructive.  Therefore, while Roosevelt explained to the public as much as he thought was politically feasible, he often intentionally oversimplified when presenting his objectives and motives.  As for Congress, where the approval of two-thirds of the Senate was needed to ratify treaties, and where majorities in both houses were required to enact legislation and to fund naval-building and other programs, TR employed a combination of reliance on friends, reasoned persuasion, cajolery, and political gamesmanship—along with resorting to the “bully pulpit” and staging public relations spectacles (most notably the world cruise of the Great White Fleet)—in order to extract as much as possible of what he was seeking.  Usually, despite the obstacles, Roosevelt’s political skills and intelligence and persistence and savvy enabled him to prevail.  Moreover, there were some initiatives (most importantly TR’s involvement during the first phase of the Moroccan crisis in 1905) that could be carried out in complete secrecy, and there were others (most importantly the administering through an executive agreement of the Dominican Republic’s customs houses during 1905-1907) where the President found a way to circumvent congressional obstruction.

Criticisms of Roosevelt for failing to educate the public more fully and for his broad constructionist approach to foreign policy are not very convincing.  In the successful pursuit of an expansive, sophisticated, farsighted foreign policy agenda that both enhanced the United States’ position in the world and actively contributed to international stability and peace, TR did his best to educate without undermining his various diplomatic endeavors; and he operated according to a constitutionally legitimate, if controversial, theory of presidential authority.  His record as a statesman would have been extraordinary even had he enjoyed a more hospitable political climate.  Without that climate, it was all the more extraordinary.