Foreign policy
In the analysis by Henry Kissinger, Roosevelt was the first president to develop the guideline that it was the duty of the United States to make its enormous power and potential influence felt globally. The idea of being a passive "city on the hill" model that others could look up to, he rejected. Roosevelt, trained in biology, was a social Darwinist who believed in survival of the fittest. The international world in his view was a realm of violence and conflict. The United States had all the economic and geographical potential to be the fittest nation on the globe. The United States had a duty to act decisively. For example, in terms of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States had to prevent European incursions in the Western Hemisphere. But there was more, as he expressed in his Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine: the U.S. had to be the policeman of the region because unruly, corrupt smaller nations had to be controlled, and if United States did not do it, European powers would in fact intervene and develop their own base of power in the hemisphere in contravention to the Monroe Doctrine.
Roosevelt was a conservative realist in his foreign policy approach. He deplored many of the increasingly popular idealistic liberal themes, such as were promoted by William Jennings Bryan, the anti-imperialists, and Woodrow Wilson. Kissinger says he rejected the efficacy of international law. Roosevelt argued that if a country could not protect its own interests, the international community could not help very much. He ridiculed disarmament proposals that were increasingly common. He saw no likelihood of an international power capable of checking wrongdoing on a major scale. As for world government:
I regard the Wilson–Bryan attitude of trusting to fantastic peace treaties, too impossible promises, to all kinds of scraps of paper without any backing in efficient force, as abhorrent. It is infinitely better for a nation and for the world to have the Frederick the Great and Bismarck tradition as regards foreign policy than to have the Bryan or Bryan–Wilson attitude as a permanent national attitude.... A milk-and-water righteousness unbacked by force is...as wicked as and even more mischievous than force divorced from righteousness.
On his international outlook, Roosevelt favored spheres of influence, whereby one great power would generally prevail, such as the United States in the Western Hemisphere or Great Britain in the Indian subcontinent. Japan fit that role and he approved. However, he had deep distrust of both Germany and Russia.
The American annexation of Hawaii in 1898 was stimulated in part by fear that Japan would dominate or seize the Hawaiian Republic. Similarly, Germany was the alternative to American takeover of the Philippines in 1900, and Tokyo strongly preferred the U.S. to take over. As the U.S. became a naval world power, it needed to find a way to avoid a military confrontation in the Pacific with Japan.
In the 1890s, Roosevelt had been an ardent imperialist and vigorously defended the permanent acquisition of the Philippines in the 1900 campaign. After the local insurrection ended in 1902, Roosevelt wished to have a strong U.S. presence in the region as a symbol of democratic values, but he did not envision any new acquisitions. One of Roosevelt's priorities was the maintenance of friendly relations with Japan. From 1904 to 1905 Japan and Russia were at war. Both sides asked Roosevelt to mediate a peace conference, held successfully in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
Though he proclaimed that the United States would be neutral during the Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt secretly favored Imperial Japan to emerge victorious against the Russian Empire. In California, anti-Japanese hostility was growing, and Tokyo protested. Roosevelt negotiated a "Gentleman's Agreement" in 1907. It ended explicit discrimination against the Japanese, and Japan agreed not to allow unskilled immigrants into the United States. The Great White Fleet of American battleships visited Japan in 1908. Roosevelt intended to emphasize the superiority of the American fleet over the smaller Japanese navy, but instead of resentment, the visitors arrived to a joyous welcome. This goodwill facilitated the Root–Takahira Agreement of November 1908 which reaffirmed the status quo of Japanese control of Korea and American control of the Philippines.
Following the Boxer Rebellion, foreign powers, including the United States, required China to pay indemnities as part of the Boxer protocol. In 1908, Roosevelt appropriated these indemnities for the Boxer Indemnity Scholarships, which funded tens of thousands of Chinese students to study in the U.S. over the next 40 years.
Success in the war against Spain and the new empire, plus having the largest economy in the world, meant that the United States had emerged as a world power. Roosevelt searched for ways to win recognition for the position abroad. He also played a major role in mediating the First Moroccan Crisis by calling the Algeciras Conference, which averted war between France and Germany.
Roosevelt's presidency saw the strengthening of ties with Great Britain. The Great Rapprochement had begun with British support of the United States during the Spanish–American War, and it continued as Britain withdrew its fleet from the Caribbean in favor of directing most of its attention to the rising German naval threat. In 1901, Britain and the U.S. signed the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty, abrogating the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty, which had prevented the U.S. from constructing a canal connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean. The long-standing Alaska boundary dispute was settled on terms favorable to the U.S.; as Roosevelt later put it, this "settled the last serious trouble between the British Empire and ourselves."
As president, Roosevelt primarily directed the nation's overseas ambitions towards the Caribbean, especially locations that had a bearing on the defense of his pet project, the Panama Canal. Roosevelt also increased the size of the navy, and by the end of his second term, the U.S. had more battleships than any country other than Britain. The Panama Canal, when it opened in 1914, allowed the U.S. Navy to rapidly move back and forth from the Pacific to the Caribbean to European waters.
In December 1902, the Germans, British, and Italians blockaded the ports of Venezuela to force the repayment of delinquent loans. Roosevelt was particularly concerned about the motives of German Emperor Wilhelm II. He succeeded in getting the three nations to agree to arbitration by tribunal at The Hague, and successfully defused the crisis. The latitude granted to the Europeans by the arbiters was in part responsible for the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, which the President issued in 1904: 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.
Two possible routes for an isthmus canal in Central America were under consideration: through Nicaragua and through Panama, which was then a rebellious district within Colombia. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to approve the Panamanian alternative, and a treaty was approved, only to be rejected by the Colombian government. When the Panamanians learned of this, a rebellion followed, was supported by Roosevelt, and succeeded. A treaty with the new Panama government for construction of the canal was reached in 1903. Roosevelt received criticism for paying the bankrupt Panama Canal Company and the New Panama Canal Company $40 million (equivalent to $1.12 billion in 2024) for the rights and equipment to build the canal. Critics charged that an American investor syndicate divided the large payment among themselves. There was also controversy over whether a French company engineer influenced Roosevelt in choosing the Panama route for the canal over the Nicaragua route. Roosevelt denied charges of corruption. In January 1909, Roosevelt, in an unprecedented move, brought criminal libel charges against the New York World and the Indianapolis News known as the "Roosevelt-Panama Libel Cases". Both cases were dismissed by U.S. District Courts, and on January 3, 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the lower courts' rulings. Historians are sharply critical of Roosevelt's criminal prosecutions of the newspapers but are divided on whether actual corruption took place.
In 1906, following a disputed election, an insurrection ensued in Cuba; Roosevelt sent Taft, the Secretary of War, to monitor the situation; he was convinced that he had the authority to unilaterally authorize Taft to deploy Marines, if necessary, without congressional approval.
Examining the work of numerous scholars, Ricard reports that:
The most striking evolution in the twenty-first-century historiography of Theodore Roosevelt is the switch from a partial arraignment of the imperialist to a quasi-unanimous celebration of the master diplomatist.... [Recent works] have underlined cogently Roosevelt's exceptional statesmanship in the construction of the nascent twentieth-century "special relationship". ...The twenty-sixth president's reputation as a brilliant diplomatist and real politician has undeniably reached new heights in the twenty-first century... yet, his Philippine policy still prompts criticism.
On November 6, 1906, Roosevelt was the first president to depart the continental United States on an official diplomatic trip. Roosevelt made a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico. He visited the Panama Canal worksite and attended diplomatic receptions in both Panama and Puerto Rico.
