ABSTRACT
In the period from 1900-20, U.S. foreign policy was dominated by inventions in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, mainly because other Western powers already controlled most of the rest of the world, particularly in Africa and Asia. To be sure, the U.S. was not exclusive concerned with intervention and political and economic control of countries in Central and South America, since it did annex American Samoa, Hawaii and the Philippines in the late-19th Century and always expressed an interest in an open door and open market in China. Most importantly, it also intervened in the First World War on the side of the Allies in 1917-18, but for the most part it simply was not yet the global, hegemonic superpower it became after 1945, but merely a regional or hemispheric power.
In the Progressive Era, U.S. foreign policy was very active in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, but never to the complete exclusion of all other interests, although it remained primarily a regional or hemispheric power rather than a global superpower before 1945. Regime change is hardly a new experience in U.S. foreign policy, since it actually started with the coup against the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and the annexation of those islands five years later. Haiti was occupied by the United States Marines occupied it from 1915-34 and the Dominican Republic from 1916-24, which in realty was two more of the many countries in Central America and the Caribbean that were colonies of the United States in everything but name. These occupations were generally unpopular with public opinion and Congress, as the Philippines War and Mexican interventions were. Few Americas today even remember that Haiti was the second independent republic in the Americas and also an example of the most successful slave rebellion in history.
Far from promoting democracy abroad, the United States has reacted many times against the threat that democracy poses to American investments and corporate interests. In overthrowing democratic governments and supporting corrupt and pliable elites in Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, “no nation in modern history has done this so often, in so many places so far from its shores” (Kinzer, 2007, p. 2). Almost always the real motivation for this is “economic reasons—specifically to establish, promote and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference” (Kinzer, p. 3). Corporations have been the dominant influence in U.S. politics since the late-19th Century, and foreign leaders who resist them often risk being overthrown. Secretaries of State like John Foster Dulles and Elihu Root have often been agents of Wall Street and large corporate interests within the American foreign policy establishment, which prefers to deal with ‘friendly’ dictators and corrupt oligarchs rather than nationalistic, populist or radical democratic governments in the developing world.
Before World War II, American interventionism was often overt and direct, simply landing troops on the shores of some prospective banana republic and installing a ‘friendly’ government there. This is exactly what happened in Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, in some cases more than once. Although the “men who directed these ‘regime change’ operations may not have explained forthrightly why they were acting, but they took responsibility for their acts” (Kinzer, p. 5). Theodore Roosevelt was hardly shy about admitting that he sent troops to Puerto Rico and the Philippines, taking Panama from Columbia or landing in person with the army in Cuba in 1898. Indeed, more sober and pragmatic imperialists feared that he was too much of a ‘cowboy’ and perhaps unsound in his boasting about a new American Empire.
Even before the war of 1898, Cuban leaders like Jose Marti were rightly concerned that American intervention in their revolution would merely substitute one form of imperialism for another. Far from endorsing the nationalist revolution in Cuba, the U.S. government feared that its proposals for democracy, social welfare and land reform would be a threat to American investments and business interests (Kinzer 37). General Leonard Wood, in charge of the military occupation of the island, was equally blunt in his conception that the meaning of Cuban independence should be openness to foreign investment (Kinzer 42). In addition, the Platt Amendment, passed by Congress along partisan lines, gave the U.S. the power to install and remove governments, supervise its treasury and foreign policy, and to intervene militarily whenever it saw fit. Essentially, it “gave the Cubans permission to rule themselves as long as they allowed the United States to veto any decisions they made” (Kinzer 43). General Wood was not mistaken when he wrote that “there is of course little or no independence left Cuba under the Platt Amendment”, but in the end all these actions set the stage for the rise of Fidel Castro in 1959.
American foreign policy was basically the same in Puerto Rico, the Philippines and all the other dependencies and protectorates it acquired after 1898. Puerto Rico had already been granted the right to home rule and an elected assembly when U.S. troops landed there in 1898. In the Philippines, independence leaders had already written a democratic constitution and elected an assembly when the U.S. annexed the islands in 1899, resulting in a brutal war of occupation and counterinsurgency campaign in which torture and murder were commonplace. In both cases, a local democratic government would have endangered American trade and investment as well as its plans to build military bases on these islands. Although even Theodore Roosevelt had never “been enthusiastic about the Philippines operation” and doubted that the U.S, would be able to hold these islands in the event of war with Japan, who pursued the conquest to the bitter end (Kinzer, p. 55).
Officially, the Philippines War ended in 1902, although counterinsurgency operations continued in Leyte and Samar until 1907 and in Mindanao against the Moros (Muslims) until 1913. Although mostly forgotten in the U.S. today, this was actually America’s longest war, more than Vietnam or Afghanistan, but the number of troops stationed there fell from over 40,000 at its height to about 12,000 by 1907 (Silbey, p. 207). Even in 1911, U.S. military planners expected a general uprising in the Philippines if America ever became involved in a war with Japan or some other imperial power in Asia. Thanks to the conciliatory policies of William Howard Taft, however, most local elites, including those represented by Emilio Aguinaldo, accommodated themselves to American rule and were “allowed to continue their economic, political and social dominance” (Silbey, p. 208).
Woodrow Wilson always claimed that he was particularly interested in expanding democracy around the world, and insisted that he was following this policy when the U.S. intervened in Latin America or in Europe on the side of the Allies in 1917. In reality, though, the U.S. government has often regarded democracy as a grave danger to its economic, political and military interests, and the historical record shows conclusively that it has intervened repeatedly against it. It followed the same policy in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines and many other nations when they attempted to establish governments that might not have been under American control. So it did in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s when reformist governments appeared to be a threat to American investments and business interests. This is not to idealize all the nationalist or radical leaders of the developing world, since they can also be quite corrupt and repressive, but these numerous examples of regime change do indeed reveal the motivations and priorities of American foreign policy in these regions over the last 110 years.
REFERENCES
Kinzer, S. (2007).Overthrow: America’s History of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Times Books.
Silbey, D. (2007). A War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine-American War, 1899-1902. NY: Hill and Wang.
