From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (57 page)

Unlike his predecessors at least back to John Quincy Adams, he demonstrated a particular zest and flair for diplomacy, placing himself at the center of policymaking and setting precedents for executive dominance that became a hallmark of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy. He reveled in intimate exchanges at the top level and in the stealth and secrecy that were part of the process. He disdained the "pink tea" protocol of formal diplomacy. He delighted in vigorous walks and horseback rides that left the stuffed shirts panting in the rear. He often short-circuited regular channels, using personal friends such as British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice and his French and German counterparts, Jules Jusserand and Speck von Sternburg, the famous "tennis cabinet," as sources of information and diplomatic intermediaries.

Roosevelt was not a free agent in making foreign policy. In the days before scientific polling, it was impossible to determine what the public
thought and how public opinion affected policy. The press could provoke excitement on specific issues as with Cuba in the mid-1890s, especially in the metropolitan areas on the two coasts. When the nation was not threatened from abroad, however, the mass public, especially in the rural Midwest and South, showed little interest in foreign policy. Americans firmly believed that their country should not join alliances or assume commitments that could lead to war. Congress to some extent reflected popular attitudes and set additional barriers to presidential freedom of action. Partisan politics could play a crucial role. Especially at a time when presidents were steadily expanding their power, Congress jealously guarded its prerogatives.

Roosevelt believed that America's new role required a strong executive. He often lamented that "this people of ours simply does not understand how things are outside our boundaries." He understood that Americans would not support some of the things he wished to do in foreign policy. Borrowing from the "social control" theories of sociologist Edward Ross, he saw his role as managing and manipulating a presumably ignorant or indifferent public and Congress to do what he deemed right and necessary.
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On occasion, he used the "bully pulpit" to educate the nation about things he believed in its best interest. More often, he stretched presidential powers as far as he could without provoking outright rebellion. He frequently operated in secrecy to keep the public and Congress from knowing what he was up to. During most of his presidency, he enjoyed comfortable majorities in Congress. But in his second term he encountered stubborn opposition from fiercely partisan southern Democrats who feared he might use expanded presidential powers to challenge their racial policies and Republicans who worried about the direction of his domestic programs and his accumulation of power. Numerous times, when thwarted by congressional opposition, he used executive agreements to implement his policies. Building on precedents set by McKinley, he established a firm basis for what would later be called the imperial presidency.
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TR was not above using foreign policy for partisan political advantage. In 1904, on the eve of the Republican nominating convention, he instructed Secretary of State John Hay to make public the ringing ultimatum "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead," purportedly to force the release of an American held hostage by a local chieftain in Morocco. The ostensibly bold threat set off wild cheers at the convention and has been hailed since as an example of
the virtues of tough talk in diplomacy. In fact, Perdicaris was not a U.S. citizen. Roosevelt had no intention of using force to retrieve him. Most important, his release had already been secured by diplomacy before the telegram was sent. "It is curious how a concise impropriety hits the public," Hay chortled.
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Although Americans were sometimes uneasy with TR's activism, they delighted in his growing international notoriety and the importance it signified for their young nation. They guffawed when he uttered such outrageous statements as "If I ever see another king, I will bite him."

A quintessentially American figure and a legitimate American hero, Roosevelt has been a subject of controversy. Especially during periods when interventionism has been out of fashion, he has been denounced as a heavy-handed imperialist, insensitive to the nationalism of people he considered backward. During the Cold War years, on the other hand, he was widely praised as a realist, more European than American in his thinking, a shrewd and skillful diplomatist who understood power politics, appreciated the central role America must play in the world, and vigorously defended its interests.

Roosevelt understood power and its limits, to be sure, but he was no Bismarck. On the contrary, he was quintessentially American in his conviction that power must be used for altruistic purposes. He was very much a person of his times. Cosmopolitan in his views, he hailed the advance of Western and especially Anglo-Saxon civilization as a world movement, the key to peace and progress. He believed his most important task was to guide his nation into the mainstream of world history. He viewed "barbaric" peoples as the major threat to civilization and thus had no difficulty rationalizing the use of force to keep them in line. "Warlike intervention by the civilized powers would contribute directly to the peace of the world," he reasoned, and could also spread American virtues and thereby promote the advance of civilization.
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He was less clear how to keep peace among the so-called civilized nations. Pure power politics ran counter to the morality that was such an essential part of his makeup. In any event, he recognized that Americans' traditional aversion to intervention in European matters limited his freedom of action. The more appropriate role for the United States was as a civilizing power carrying out its moral obligations to maintain peace.
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Almost as important, if much less visible, was Elihu Root, who served Roosevelt ably as secretary of war and of state. A classic workaholic, Root rose to the top echelons of New York corporate law and the Republican Party by virtue of a prodigious memory, mastery of detail, and the clarity and force of his argument. A staunch conservative, he profoundly distrusted democracy. He sought to promote order through the extension of law, the application of knowledge, and the use of government. He shared Roosevelt's internationalism and was especially committed to promoting an open and prosperous world economy. He was more cautious in the exercise of power than his sometimes impulsive boss. For entirely practical reasons, he was also more sensitive to the feelings of other nations, especially potential trading partners. A man of great charm and wit—when the 325-pound Taft sent him a long report of a grueling horseback ride in the Philippines' heat, he responded tersely: "How's the horse?"—he sometimes smoothed over his boss's rough edges. He was a consummate state-builder who used his understanding of power and his formidable persuasiveness to build a strong national government.
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He was the organization man in the organizational society, "the spring in the machine," as Henry Adams put it.
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He founded the eastern foreign policy establishment, that informal network connecting Wall Street, Washington, the large foundations, and the prestigious social clubs, which directed U.S. foreign policy through much of the twentieth century.
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Roosevelt and Root devoted much attention to modernizing the instruments of national power. Their reforms were part of a worldwide trend toward professionalization of military and diplomatic services based on the notion that modern war and diplomacy required specialized training and highly skilled personnel. They believed that, as an emerging great power in a world filled with tension, the United States must have well-trained public servants to defend its interests, promote its commerce, and carry out its civilizing mission. The call to public service was also a way to combat the selfishness and decadence that threatened the nation from within.

Learning from the chaos that accompanied mobilization for war in 1898, Root had begun to reform the army when Roosevelt took office. Generally acknowledged as the father of the modern U.S. Army, he
initiated its conversion from a frontier constabulary to a modern military force and introduced the radical idea of military professionalism to a nation proud of its citizen-soldier tradition. He created the Army War College in 1903 to prepare senior officers for war. Attacking the army's antiquated and conflict-ridden bureaucracy and following European and especially German models, he secured congressional approval in 1903 for a general staff to better plan for and conduct war. By trading federal funds for increased federal control, he also initiated the difficult and politically sensitive process of building a national reserve force from state-run militias. The so-called Root Reforms aroused bitter opposition inside and outside the army. Although they did not go as far as Root and others would have liked, they represented a major step toward modernization.
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Much closer to the president's heart and more acceptable to the nation was the further expansion and upgrading of the navy. A disciple of Alfred Thayer Mahan and sea power, Roosevelt retained throughout his life a boyish enthusiasm for ships and the sea. An "adequate" navy, he declared, was the "cheapest and most effective peace insurance" a nation could buy. He brought to the task his special zeal and skill at public relations.
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Under his guidance, the U.S. Navy completed the shift from harbor defense to a modern battleship fleet, expanding from eleven battleships in 1898 to thirty-six by 1913 and rising to third place behind Britain and Germany. Direct naval appropriations during Roosevelt's tenure exceeded $900 million; the fleet grew from 19,000 sailors to 44,500. As was his wont, Roosevelt intervened personally to improve the accuracy of naval gunners. His dispatch of the Great White Fleet on its world tour in 1907 was, to him, a crowning achievement. "Did you ever see such a fleet and such a day?" an unusually exuberant (even for him!) president crowed. "By George, isn't it magnificent?" The cruise exposed major technical problems with the fleet and a serious shortage of bases in crucial areas, but it represented a coming-out party of sorts for the modern U.S. Navy.
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Roosevelt and Root also initiated reform of the consular and diplomatic services. At a time when competition for markets was a national priority, changes in the consular service aroused little controversy. Some Americans continued to see little need for diplomats—consuls were quite enough—but they were increasingly shouted down by the
voices of modernization. Diplomats as well as consuls could serve the demands of an expanding commerce. Greater foreign travel and commerce required more and better representation. Most important, as TR put it, was the "growth of our present weight in the councils of the world." The United States needed skilled professional diplomats to compete with other nations. To level the playing field, it must eliminate politics, patronage, and amateurism. "The nation is now too mature to continue in its foreign relations these temporary expedients natural to a people to whom domestic affairs are the sole concern," Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, exclaimed.
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TR took up the cause, and Root applied his considerable skills to institution-building. The unlikely combination of Massachusetts Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Alabama Democratic senator John Tyler Morgan spearheaded reform in Congress.

To remove patronage and politics, consuls and diplomats were selected by examination, carefully evaluated, and promoted on the basis of performance. As a practical business matter, the consular service was restricted to U.S. citizens. Consuls were paid better salaries and forbidden to do business on the side. Emphasis was placed on language skills. As secretary of state, Root shook the hidebound State Department from top to bottom. There was talk of specialized training for diplomats. Universities from New York to California began to create courses and programs—the Harvard Business School actually began as a venue for public service training. Following European models, geographical divisions were established in the State Department to provide the sort of expertise needed to deal with specialized problems.
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Diplomats rotated between Washington and the field. Some of the changes were undone when Democrat Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, but the process of reform was under way. To this point, U.S. diplomats had leased space for missions in other countries. Responding to the slogan "Better Embassies Mean Better Business," bankers, businessmen, and lawyers joined forces in 1909 to create improved working facilities for diplomats and consuls. In 1911, Congress authorized the State Department to buy land upon which to build new embassies.
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As the United States became more and more a nation of nations, ethnic groups played an increasingly important part in U.S. foreign relations. Some immigrant groups sought to use their rising power to influence policy on issues affecting the lands from which they had come, on occasion provoking conflict with these nations. More often, the persecution of immigrants by Americans sparked protest from the countries of their origin, threatening good relations, and with Japan raising the possibility of war.

Russia's persecution of Jews became an especially volatile issue in the early twentieth century. Large numbers of Jews had emigrated to the United States from Russia and eastern Europe. Like other immigrant groups, many sought to return to visit or stay. The Russian government viewed Jews as a major source of revolutionary activity and hence a threat to order. Fearing the return of Jews under protection of U.S. citizenship, it denied them visas. A new series of pogroms early in the century posed a more serious problem. As many as three hundred pogroms took place in the years 1903 through 1906, one of the worst at Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia, where in April 1903, forty-seven Jews were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands left homeless.
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