Fourth Party System - International Policies

International Policies

Further information: Timeline of United States diplomatic history

The Spanish-American War in 1898 precipitated the end of the Spanish Empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific, with the 1898 Treaty of Paris giving the US control over the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam, and control over the process of independence of Cuba, which was completed in 1902. Imperialism and expansion lost favor by about 1908, as the U.S. turned its attention to building the Panama Canal.

The United States took part in the repression of the Boxer Rebellion in China, in 1900 and became involved in the Mexican Revolution 1911-20.

Theodore Roosevelt, coming to the White House in 1901, stressed the importance for the US control of the Panama Canal, in which he succeeded in 1903. The Roosevelt Corollary dismissed strict American isolationism, by asserting the right for the US to stabilize the affairs of Latin American countries that violated international norms. This new policy, accompanied by the Dollar Diplomacy and the Big Stick Diplomacy, was cited by US presidents in justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba (1906–1910), Nicaragua (1909–1911, 1912–1925 and 1926–1933), Haiti (1915–1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916–1924), named Banana Wars.

The United States also appeared on the world scene in the last years of World War I. President Woodrow Wilson tried to negotiate peace in Europe, but when Germany began unrestricted submarine warfare against American shipping in early 1917 he called on Congress to declare war. Ignoring military affairs, he focused on diplomacy and finance. On the home front he began the first effective draft in 1917, raised billions through Liberty loans, imposed an income tax on the wealthy, set up the War Industries Board, promoted labor union growth, supervised agriculture and food production through the Food and Fuel Control Act, took over control of the railroads, and suppressed left-wing anti-war movements. Like the European states, the United States experimented with a war economy. In 1918, Wilson advocated various international reforms in the Fourteen Points, among them public diplomacy, freedom of navigation, "equality of trade conditions" and removal of economic barriers, an "impartial adjustment of all colonial claims," the creation of a Polish state, and, most important, the creation of an association of nations. The latter would become the League of Nations. The League became highly controversial as Wilson and the Republicans refused to compromise.. Voters in 1920 showed little support for the League and the U.S. never joined. Peace was a major political theme in the 1920s (especially because women were now voting). Under the Harding administration, the Washington Naval Conference of 1922 achieved significant naval disarmament for ten years.

The Roaring Twenties were marked, on the international scene, by the problem of the economic reparations due by Germany to France and Great Britain, as well as by various irredentism claims. The US acted as mediators in this conflict, first with the Dawes Plan in 1924, then the Young Plan in 1929.