Transcript spectrum.troy.edu

The Early 1900s

Drago Doctrine

Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine

Debt and the Dominican Republic

Dollar Diplomacy and Nicaragua

Cuba
Roosevelt Corollary to the
Monroe Doctrine (1904)
“Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count
upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to
act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political
matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear
no interference from the United States. Chronic wrongdoing, or
an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of
civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require
intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western
Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe
Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in
flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of
an international police power.”
Woodrow Wilson and the Gospel
of Democracy


Manifest Destiny: the providential place of the
US in the order of things and a right to expand,
and with a mission
"We have it in our power to begin the world all
over again" (Thomas Paine, as quoted on 40 of
2nd edition).
Woodrow Wilson and the Gospel
of Democracy
Innate assumed superiority (see quote on 43, 2nd
edition) Plus: racial dimension (51)
A focus in the Caribbean
Wilson: "I am going to teach the South American
Republics to elect good men!" (as quotes in
Smith, 51)
 An interlude between the Imperial Era and the Cold
War Era
No longer playing the “European Game” in terms of
overt intervention
US hegemony still the target.
Context: The Great Depression
 An interlude between the Imperial Era and the Cold War
Era
 No longer playing the “European Game” in terms of overt
intervention
 US hegemony still the target.
 Context: The Great Depression
The “Good Neighbor” Policy
 “I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the Good
Neighbor--the neighbor who respects his obligations and
respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world
of neighbors” (FDR, 1933 inaugural address, Smith 2000:68).
 “Now there are no little nations” (common Latin American
response)
The “Good Neighbor” Policy
 Military withdrawal
 The US refrained from invention (“No state has the right to
Basics: The Good Neighbor Policy
intervene in the internal or external affairs of another”—
statement agreed upon at the inter-American meeting in
1933 in Montevideo, Uruguay).
 SecState Cordell Hull: “the United States government is as
much opposed as any other government to interference with
the freedom, the sovereignty, or other internal affairs or
processes of the governments of other nations…no
government need fear any intervention on the part of the
United States under the Roosevelt administration” (Smith
2000:69).
Quotes to Ponder
 In the campaign, Roosevelt accused the Republican
administration of placing “money leadership ahead of moral
leadership” and noted “Single-handed intervention by us in
the internal affairs of other nations must end; with the
cooperation of others we shall have more order in this
hemisphere and less dislike” (reference to interventions in
Haiti and Dominican Republic) (source: Smith 2000:68).
 “That is a new approach that I am talking to these South
American things. Give them a share. They think they are
just as good as we are and many of them are” (FDR, 1940 as
quoted in Smith 2000:63).
 “He’s a son of a bitch, but at least he’s our son of a bitch”