History Buff's Guide to the Presidents (40 page)

The treaty that secured the Louisiana Purchase did not specify the exact land area involved. Jefferson and Madison assumed that the deal also included the territory of Florida, until the ruling government of Spain eventually informed them otherwise.

3
. THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S CONTINENTAL DIVIDE

PANAMA CANAL (1903–14)

“By far the most important action I took in foreign affairs during the time I was President,” figured Theodore Roosevelt, “related to the Panama Canal. Here again there was much accusation about my having acted in an unconstitutional manner, a position which can be upheld only if Jefferson’s action in acquiring Louisiana can also be treated as unconstitutional.” Roosevelt’s defensive tone stemmed from accusations that he had violated Colombia’s sovereignty and abused his authority as commander in chief. But as far as Roosevelt was concerned, it was a crime against humanity to stand in the way of progress.
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Since the 1500s, European powers had dreamed of slicing the narrow isthmus connecting North and South America. A canal would cut voyages by as much as eight thousand miles and spare sailors the treacherous journey around “the Horn,” where the incompatible Atlantic and Pacific churned against Argentina’s Antarctic tail.

The two possible canal routes were across the wider but flatter Nicaragua or up and over the narrower but higher ridge of Panama. In the late 1800s, a French company tried slicing through Nicaragua, only to make minimal progress at the cost of more than twenty thousand dead employees, mostly from yellow fever and malaria.

The Colombian province of Panama was the only viable option in Roosevelt’s view, and the United States was the only country capable of accomplishing the task. Seeking total control of the project, he offered Bogotá millions of dollars for a right-of-way through their northern region. Though wracked by corruption, poverty, and civil wars, the Colombian government refused to cooperate with Roosevelt. Well known for his contempt for Latin America as a whole, he denounced the Colombians as “impotent” and a “lot of jackrabbits.” He contemplated invading the country and taking the isthmus by force.
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On November 3, 1903, the people of Panama did the work for him, staging an independence movement against a government they had long seen as repressive. Roosevelt wasted no time in giving them assistance, ordering the gunboat USS
Nashville
to the eastern coast of Panama to protect “American interests” in the area. Other vessels from the U.S. fleet were soon on their way. The Panamanians achieved victory in two days, and within hours, the White House was calling for de facto recognition of the new nation. Days later, the Republican-led Senate granted full diplomatic recognition.

An ensuing treaty gave the United States authority over a “Canal Zone” ten miles wide through the heart of the small country, for which Panama was to receive $10 million in gold plus $250,000 yearly rent. The French company that owned building rights in the region collected a cool $40 million. The Bogotá government received nothing, a point that satisfied Roosevelt immensely.

Predictably, Colombia was infuriated, but many Americans were equally appalled. The
New York Evening Post
called the acquisition of the Canal Zone “a vulgar and mercenary venture.” Others feared the creation of an American empire, recalling the very recent and violent subjugations of Hawaii and the Philippines. Congress, including Republicans sympathetic to Roosevelt, believed he had grossly overstepped his authority, and many suspected he had secretly staged the Panamanian revolt. Democrats vowed to block the canal treaty with Panama, but to no avail.
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In the end, Congress capitulated because the public widely favored an American-built, American-controlled corridor through the continents. For the public and their president, the incalculable benefits to trade and naval power easily outweighed concerns over Colombian dignity and constitutional particulars. On February 23, 1904, the Senate ratified the agreement between Washington and Panama City, and the digging began.

In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first sitting president to visit a foreign country when he traveled to Panama. While inspecting the canal dig in person, he decided to help the laborers by operating one of the steam shovels for a while.

4
. FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT’S ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

LEND-LEASE (MARCH 11, 1941)

By Christmas 1940, only Britain remained standing. The rest of Europe was either neutral or under the double yoke of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Poland and France had fallen in six weeks, Norway in a month, Holland and the Baltic States in a week, Denmark in a day. Meanwhile, the empire of Japan had already gored Manchuria and was winding its way down the China coast.

Contrary to popular belief, Franklin Roosevelt was not eager to throw his country into the conflagration, especially on behalf of a China run by warlords and a Britain concerned with saving its own empire. The president well remembered the consequences of serving an ungrateful Europe in the First World War and losing 110,000 Americans and billions of dollars in defaulted loans in the process. But by 1940, the price of neutrality was overbearing. Trade partners and friendly nations were collapsing one by one, prolonging the interminable Great Depression. The question arose, how to save the world without sacrificing the country.

The genius of Lend-Lease was that badly needed supplies—not American lives—were risked to aid the British and Russians in the war against Germany. This M4 Sherman tank was one of thousands that British tankers used to protect Middle East oil fields.

While Congress was in Christmas recess, Roosevelt used his last “fireside chat” of the year to offer a solution. He proposed to provide Britain and others with the weapons and material required to fight—guns, warships, transports, tanks. When the war was over, repayment would be made in kind. The nation was to become “the great arsenal of democracy,” the economy would prosper, and the world could dutifully defend itself.

The response was overwhelming. Cables, calls, and letters poured into the White House, more than Roosevelt had ever received in his career. Nearly every correspondence expressed total approval and support. When an isolationist Congress reconvened, Roosevelt presented them with the Lend-Lease program, technically in violation of U.S. neutrality laws but already too popular to stop.
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During the course of the war, the United States provided over $50 billion in goods and services to forty countries (equivalent to $850 billion in 2012 dollars), most of it in the way of food and fuel. Britain received nearly half. The Soviet Union, joining the Allies later in 1941, received a quarter, amounting to about 7 percent of what the Soviets produced on their own. Third and fourth in line were Free France and Nationalist China.

The greatest beneficiary was the United States, which injected its economy with much-needed funding, collected concessions from its partners, ramped its industry toward a war footing, and kept the country out of the conflict for a year. Lend-Lease also established a sense of cooperation among the Allies, replacing the bitter cycle of suspicion that prevailed during the Great War. Roosevelt would rightly look back at the program as one of the finest accomplishments of his presidency, and he ranked his “Arsenal for Democracy” address among the best speeches he ever made.
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At the end of the war, the Soviet Union disputed how much it owed the United States for Lend-Lease and did not agree to a payment settlement until 1990.

5
. HARRY TRUMAN’S WESTERN WALL

NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (APRIL 4, 1949)

Ideally, the Soviet Union and the United States would have withdrawn completely from Europe after World War II. But there is something about global war that tends to dent people’s faith in one another. In hindsight, the best solution was a long waiting period, where neither side had to give up a meter of ground. The entity that made it possible was referred to as the Iron Curtain, and contrary to popular perception, its first solid manifestation was American-made.

Created six years before the Warsaw Pact and twelve years before the Berlin Wall, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was born out of fear. But it had the unforeseen benefit of allowing Western Europe and the United States to move forward, away from the question of how to make peace with either Germany or Josef Stalin, and toward a military, political, and economic partnership that has lasted to this day.

Truman and his first NATO commander, Dwight David Eisenhower, confer over the particulars of the largest military alliance since World War II. By the time Truman left office, NATO consisted of fourteen member states. President Eisenhower would add a fifteenth in 1955—a sovereign and rearmed West Germany.
Eisenhower Library

Selling this idea to the American public was not an easy task for Harry Truman. Despite a record debt, he had already requested four hundred million dollars for the defense of Greece and Turkey under his T
RUMAN
D
OCTRINE
and billions more for the controversial Marshall Plan. Now he was asking the United States to enter into its first military alliance in 150 years, an agreement that effectively obligated the country to help Western Europe if and when it was attacked again. Once more, such an alliance challenged the authority of Congress to declare war.

Truman, who was not above stretching the Constitution “when emergencies or opportunities demand that it be stretched,” assured Capitol Hill that the treaty allowed the legislature to maintain its authority, as the alliance asked for each country to come to one another’s defense “as it deems necessary.” He added that the only way to prevent another European war and to revitalize the American economy was through the close cooperation of its strongest allies.
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Fortunately for Harry, the Soviet Union obliged in playing the role of the imminent threat. Relenting on their promise to permit free elections in Poland in 1947, supporting a communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948, and blockading Berlin later that year, the “Red Menace” gradually assumed the specter of an expansionist system, one that Truman painted as more dangerous than the recently deceased Third Reich.

In 1949, Congress relented, and the United States formally joined Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, and Portugal in a union of mutual security. In 1952, traditional rivals Greece and Turkey signed on as well. In 1955, West Germany formally joined, allowing the strongest economic force to bolster an already formidable conglomeration.

Over time, NATO proved to be a balancing force in a most uneasy era. In forty-five years, Europe was the only Cold War theater where peace prevailed. Wars of ideology exploded in Africa, Asia, and South America, some of which devoured millions of lives. But the continent that had been the birthplace of the two deadliest wars in human history remained stable throughout. In celebrating the treaty’s fortieth anniversary, President George H. W. Bush would rightfully proclaim the alliance to be the “second Renaissance of Europe.”
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Established in 1949, NATO did not participate in a hostile engagement until 1994, when it fought against Serbian forces in the Bosnian War.

6
. JOHN F. KENNEDY POSTPONES ARMAGEDDON

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS (OCTOBER 14–28, 1962)

In the radioactive game of brinkmanship, Kennedy had the upper hand. Stationed in the NATO-member states of Italy and Turkey were a total of forty-five Jupiters, American intermediate-range missiles aimed directly at the Soviet Union. By March 1962, they were operational. Atop each was a nuclear warhead one hundred times more powerful that the uranium device detonated over Hiroshima.
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