The Path of Empire: A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power

by Carl Russell Fish

In 1902 Germany induced Great Britain and Italy to join her in an attempt to collect the amount of some of these claims from Venezuela. A joint squadron undertook a "pacific blockade" of the coast. Secretary Hay denied that a "pacific blockade" existed in international law and urged that the matter be submitted to arbitration. Great Britain and Italy were willing to come to an understanding and withdrew; but Germany, probably intent on ulterior objects, was unwilling and preferred to take temporary possession of certain ports. President Roosevelt then summoned the German Ambassador, Dr. Holleben, and told him that, unless Germany consented to arbitrate, Admiral Dewey would be ordered at noon ten days later to proceed to Venezuela and protect its coast. A week passed with no message. Holleben called on the President but rose to go without mentioning Venezuela. President Roosevelt thereupon informed the Ambassador that he had changed his mind and had decided to send Admiral Dewey one day earlier than originally planned; he further explained that in the event the Kaiser should decide to arbitrate, as not a word had been put on paper, there would be nothing to indicate coercion. Within thirty-six hours Holleben reported that Germany would arbitrate. Only once before, when Seward was dealing with Napoleon III concerning Mexico, had forcible persuasion been used to maintain the Monroe Doctrine.

It was perfectly clear that if the United States sat idly by and allowed European powers to do what they would to collect their Latin American debts, the Monroe Doctrine would soon become a dead letter. It was not, however, so plain how American interference could be justified. The problem was obviously a difficult one and did not concern the United States alone. Latin America was even more vitally concerned with it, and her statesmen, always lucid exponents of international law, were active in devising remedies. Carlos Calvo of Argentina advanced the doctrine that "the collection of pecuniary claims made by the citizens of one country against the government of another country should never be made by force." Senior Drago, Minister of Foreign Affairs in the same country in 1902, urged upon the United States a modification of the same view by asserting that "the public debt cannot occasion armed intervention."

President Roosevelt handled the matter in his messages of 1903 and 1904. "That our rights and interests are deeply concerned in the maintenance of the [Monroe] Doctrine is so clear as hardly to need argument. This is especially true in view of the construction of the Panama Canal. As a mere matter of self defense we must exercise a close watch over the approaches to this canal, and this means we must be thoroughly alive to our interests in the Caribbean Sea." "When we announce a policy... we thereby commit ourselves to the consequences of the policy." "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."

To prevent European intervention for the purpose of securing just claims in America, then, the United States would undertake to handle the case, and would wield the "Big Stick" against any American state which should refuse to meet its obligations. This was a repetition, in a different tone, of Blaine's "Elder Sister" program. As developed, it had elements also of Cleveland's Venezuela policy. In 1907 the United States submitted to the Hague Conference a modified form of the Drago doctrine, which stated that the use of force to collect contract debts claimed from one government by another as being due to its citizens should be regarded as illegal, unless the creditor nation first offered to submit its claims to arbitration and this offer were refused by the nation against which the claim was directed. The interference of the United States, therefore, would be practically to hale the debtor into court.

Around the Caribbean, however, were several nations not only unwilling but unable to pay their debts. This inability was not due to the fact that national resources were lacking, but that constant revolution scared away conservative capital from seeking constructive investment or from developing their natural riches, while speculators loaned money at ruinous rates of discount to tottering presidents, gambling on the possibility of some turn in fortune that would return them tenfold. The worst example of an insolvent and recalcitrant state was the Dominican Republic, whose superb harbors were a constant temptation to ambitious powers willing to assume its debts in return for naval stations, and whose unscrupulous rulers could nearly always be bribed to sell their country as readily as anything else. In the case of this country President Roosevelt made a still further extension of the Monroe Doctrine when, in 1905, he concluded a treaty whereby the United States agreed to undertake the adjustment of the republic's obligations and the administration of its custom houses, and at the same time guarantee the territorial integrity of the republic. This arrangement was hotly attacked in the United States as an indication of growing imperialism, and, though it was defended as necessary to prevent the entrance of new foreign influences into the Caribbean, the opposition was so strong that the treaty was not accepted by the Senate until 1907, and then only in a modified form with the omission of the territorial guarantee.

For the United States thus to step into a foreign country as an administrator was indeed a startling innovation. On the other hand, the development of such a policy was a logical sequence of the Monroe Doctrine. That it was a step in the general development of policy on the part of the United States and not a random leap is indicated by the manner in which it has been followed up. In 1911 treaties with Nicaragua and Honduras somewhat similar to the Dominican protocol were negotiated by Secretary Knox but failed of ratification. Subsequently under President Wilson's Administration, the treaty with Nicaragua was redrafted and was ratified by both parties. Hayti, too, was in financial difficulties and, at about the time of the outbreak of the Great War, it was reported that Germany was about to relieve her needs at the price of harbors and of control. In 1915, however, the United States took the island under its protection by a treaty which not only gave the Government complete control of the fiscal administration but bound it to "lend an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independence and the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty."

Since 1898, then, the map of the Caribbean has completely changed its aspect. The sea is not an American lake, nor do the Americans wish it to be such. In time, as the surrounding countries become better able to stand alone, direct interference on the part of the United States will doubtless become less than it is today. There is, however, practically no present opportunity for a non-American power to establish itself and to threaten the commerce or the canal of the United States.

Few people in the United States and perhaps fewer in the countries involved realize from what American influence has saved these small states. A glance at Africa and Asia will suggest what would otherwise have been the case. Without the United States and its leadership, there can be little doubt that giant semi-sovereign corporations owing allegiance to some great power would now possess these countries. They would bristle with forts and police, and their populations would be in a state of absolute political and of quasi-economic servitude. They might today be more orderly and perhaps wealthier, but unless the fundamental American belief in democracy and self-government is wrong they would be infinitely farther from their true goal, which involves the working out of their own civilization.

The Caribbean is but a portion of the whole international problem of the Americas, and the methods used by the United States in solving its problems seemed likely to postpone that sympathetic union of the whole to which it has been looking forward for a century. Yet this country has not been unappreciative of the larger aspects of Pan-Americanism. In 1899 President McKinley revived Blaine's project and proposed a Pan-American congress. To popularize this idea, a Pan-American Exposition was arranged at Buffalo in 1901. Here, just after he had expounded his views of the ties that might bind the continents together, McKinley was assassinated. The idea, however, lived and in the same year a congress was held at the City of Mexico, where it was proposed that such meetings be held regularly. As a result, congresses were held at Rio de Janeiro in 1906 and at Buenos Aires in 1910, at which various measures of common utility were discussed and a number of projects were actually undertaken.

The movement of Pan-Americanism has missed achieving the full hopes of its supporters owing not so much to a difference of fundamental ideas and interests as to suspicion and national pride. The chief powers of southern South America—Argentina, Brazil, and Chili—had by the end of the nineteenth century in large measure successfully worked out their own problems. They resented the interference of a power of alien race such as the United States, and they suspected its good intentions in wielding the "Big Stick," especially after the cavalier treatment which Colombia had received. They observed with alarm the strengthening of the grip of the United States about the Caribbean. United in a group, known from their initials as the "A.B.C." powers, they sought to assume the leadership of Latin America, basing their action, indeed, upon the fundamentals of the Monroe Doctrine—the exclusion of foreign influence and the independence of peoples—but with themselves instead of the United States as chief, guardians.