Birth Of A Superpower

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But so, too, as the Latin American states discovered to their dismay, was the Roosevelt Corollary to that doctrine, which the President proclaimed in 1904. If we do not want third powers to take action against wrongdoing regimes in our hemisphere, the President stated, "then sooner or later we must keep order ourselves." What that meant was that the U.S. was claiming for itself the right to intervene in the affairs of hemispheric nations when those nations aroused the displeasure of Washington.

It was not just the misbehavior of Central and South American governments that concerned Roosevelt in this volatile region. He was also eager to prevent any foreigners from gaining a concession to build the canal that he wanted the U.S. to build. When the Colombian government turned down a proposed deal for a 100-year lease of territory in its province of Panama, the President threw his weight--and the weight of a naval landing party--in favor of one of the perennial Panamanian uprisings aimed at gaining independence from Colombia. Twelve days after Washington recognized the new nation of Panama, in November 1903, it signed with deep satisfaction a canal treaty with Panama that was identical to the one rejected by Colombia.

While the U.S. was secure now in its Atlantic realms, it was being forced to increase its attention to China and the Pacific. The U.S. had long possessed trading and missionary interests in East Asia and now of course occupied the Philippines, so it naturally had cruisers and gunboats in those waters. But it was not the biggest player in the region. Russia, France and Britain had significant battleship squadrons in the Far East. The fastest-growing naval force of all belonged to Japan, which was increasingly suspicious of Russia's creeping territorial controls in Manchuria. In February 1904, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur on the coast of China. The 20th century struggle for dominance of East Asia had begun in earnest.

The Russo-Japanese War was another gift from the gods to Roosevelt. He had long worried about czarist ambitions in Asia, as he worried about German ambitions in the Atlantic. He was full of admiration for the Japanese armed services as they steadily vanquished the larger Russian armies on land and smashed the Russian fleet in the epic battle of Tsushima in May 1905. But the President did not want complete Japanese domination of the Far East either, and so he actively lobbied both sides to turn to the peace table. Since Britain was diplomatically allied to Japan, and France to Russia, neither was an acceptable arbitrator. And the Kaiser's Germany was trusted by no one. By default the U.S. became the natural mediator. Roosevelt persuaded the two nations to send representatives to the U.S. for negotiations to be conducted in Portsmouth, N.H., where he took the deepest interest in cajoling, often bullying, the two belligerents into ending the war. For his role, T.R. was awarded the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize.