From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (55 page)

While acting with the great powers, the United States was also quite sensitive to its own interests and sought some degree of independence. An unspoken reason for sending U.S. troops was to help protect China from further foreign encroachments. McKinley ordered the Americans to act separately from the powers when they could and cooperate when they must. He insisted that they treat the Chinese firmly but fairly. In general, U.S. troops comported themselves well. The United States sought to use its influence to prevent the conflict from spreading beyond northern China and the peace settlement from resulting in partition. Even while the foreign troops were gathering for the expedition to relieve the siege, Hay in July 1900 issued another statement, this one nothing more than an affirmation of U.S. policy. This second Open Door Note made clear the United States' intention to protect the lives and property of its citizens in China, its commitment to lifting the siege of Beijing, and its determination to protect "all legitimate interests." It expressed concern about the "virtual anarchy" in Beijing and hope that it would not spread elsewhere. The words that drew the most attention then and since affirmed that the policy of the United States was to promote "permanent safety and peace to China, preserve Chinese territorial and administrative entity . . . and safeguard for the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese empire."
⁹⁶

The Open Door Notes have produced as much mythology as anything in the history of U.S. foreign relations. Although he knew better, Hay encouraged and happily accepted popular praise for America's bold and altruistic defense of China from the rapacious powers. These contemporary accolades evolved into the enduring myth that the United States in a singular act of beneficence at a critical point in China's history saved it from further plunder by the European powers and Japan. More recently, historians have found in the Open Door Notes a driving force behind much of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy. Scholar-diplomat George F. Kennan dismissed them as typical of the idealism and legalism that he insisted had characterized the American approach to diplomacy, a meaningless statement in defense of a dubious cause—the independence of
China—which had the baneful effect of inflating in the eyes of Americans the importance of their interests in China and their ability to dictate events there.
⁹⁷
Historian William Appleman Williams and the so-called Wisconsin School have portrayed the notes as an aggressive first move to capture the China market that laid the foundation for U.S. policy in much of the world in the twentieth century.
⁹⁸

As historian Michael Hunt has observed, the original Open Door Notes, while important, amounted to much less than has been attributed to them. The United States by issuing the notes was looking out for its own interests; any benefit to China was incidental. McKinley and Hay had little concern for China. Hay was contemptuous even of those Chinese who sought to befriend the United States and did not bother to consult them before acting on their behalf. To the great anger of the Chinese, he did not challenge the despised unequal treaties. The United States took for itself $25 million of the huge indemnity imposed upon China. It participated in forcing the Chinese to accept permanent stationing of Western military forces between Beijing and the sea, additional evidence of China's impotence, and increased its own military forces there.
⁹⁹
It did not even rule out the acquisition of its own sphere of influence. "May we not want a slice, if it is to be divided?" the ever alert McKinley inquired.
¹⁰⁰

The notes had little immediate impact for China or the United States. The United States, in Hunt's words, had taken a "token nod at the future possibility of the China market," but it did little subsequently to promote trade with China. The first note did not even address the important issue of investments in spheres of influence.
¹⁰¹
The powers' response to the first note was qualified and evasive, something Hay for political expediency managed to twist into "final and definitive." The second time, a wiser secretary of state did not ask for a response. The notes did less to save China from partition than the fact that the Europeans and Japan for their own reasons chose not to push for it. The Open Door Notes satisfied the need for action at home and threatened no one abroad. Their issuance did signal the beginning of an independent U.S. role in East Asian politics, a
course fraught with difficulties and destined to occupy a central place in twentieth-century American foreign policy.

A
LTHOUGH SHORT IN DURATION
and relatively low in cost—at least for the victor—the War of 1898 had significant consequences. For Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, it exchanged one colonial master for another and brought changes in the form of external control. Spaniards viewed it as "the Disaster," a defeat that raised basic questions not simply about the political system but also about the nation and its people. The "question for us . . . the only and exclusive question," a popular magazine observed, "is one of life and death, . . . of whether we can continue to exist as a nation or not." "Everything is broken in this unhappy country," a Madrid newspaper added, "all is fiction, all decadence, all ruins."
¹⁰²
Although the Disaster did not spark a revolution or even major political changes, it accentuated the class and regional divisions that would lead to the Spanish Civil War.

"No war ever transformed us quite as the war with Spain transformed us," Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, wrote in 1902.
¹⁰³
"The nation has stepped forth into the open arena of the world." Wilson's statement was filled with the hyperbole that marked many contemporary assessments, but it contained more than a grain of truth. As a result of the war with Spain, the United States became a full-fledged member of the imperial club, assuming a protectorate over Cuba and taking Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines as outright colonies. Its acquisitions in the Pacific made it a major player, if not the dominant power, in that region. With the Open Door Notes and the China Relief Expedition, it became an active participant in the volatile politics of East Asia. The War of 1898 reinforced Americans' sense of their rising greatness and reaffirmed their traditional convictions of national destiny. It sealed the post–Civil War reconciliation of the Union. By 1898, the South had come to terms with its defeat in the Civil War and eagerly accepted the conflict with Spain to prove its loyalty. The North came to recognize the nobility of Confederate sacrifice. Certain that the Civil War had reaffirmed America's mission in the world, former Union and Confederate soldiers eagerly took up the cause of
Cuba Libre
.
¹⁰⁴

The War of 1898 did not produce a realignment in the global balance of power, but it did mark the onset of a new era in world politics. The revolutions in Cuba and the Philippines and the conflicts that followed set the tone for a sustained struggle between colonizers and colonized, one of the major phenomena of the twentieth century. The war brought the end of the Spanish empire and sealed the demise of Spain as a major power. It represented both symbolically and tangibly America's emergence as a world power. The War of 1898 drew European attention as few other events of the decade. Europeans erred in believing that the United States would immediately become a major player in world politics. It possessed the capability, but not yet the will, to act on a global basis. They correctly recognized, however, that it had emerged from war as the seventh great power.
¹⁰⁵
Indeed, although it was by no means clear at the time, the War of 1898 also marked the beginning of what would come to be called the American Century.

William McKinley presided over and in many ways guided these changes in U.S. foreign policy. More a practical politician than a thinker, he did not articulate a new vision of America's role in the world. Rather, he took full advantage of the opportunities provided by the War of 1898, responding to and helping to popularize the expansionist doctrines of duty, dollars, and destiny. He fashioned an overseas empire, rooted U.S. influence more deeply in the Caribbean and Pacific Basin, and began to stake out an independent role in East Asia. In his last months in office, he pushed for economic reciprocity and greater world involvement. Speaking at an exposition in Buffalo on September 5, 1901, he warned his countrymen that with the speed of modern communications American "isolation was no longer possible or desirable."
¹⁰⁶
A week later, he was dead, the victim of an assassin's bullet. His successor, Theodore Roosevelt, his polar opposite in personality and leadership style, would take up the challenge.

Contrary to European predictions, the United States did not become a major player in world politics immediately after the War of 1898. An avowed Anglophile, President Theodore Roosevelt flirted with the idea of an alliance with Great Britain, but he knew that such an arrangement was not feasible because of the relative security the nation continued to enjoy and its long-standing aversion to foreign entanglements. The brief flurry of enthusiasm for empire barely outlasted the war with Spain. The need to consolidate territory already acquired consumed great energy and resources. The Philippine War soured many Americans on colonies. Once an enthusiast for empire, Roosevelt himself would admit by 1907 that the Philippines was America's Achilles' heel. While busy solidifying its position in such traditional areas of influence as the Caribbean and the Pacific Basin, the United States did not acquire new colonies or involve itself in the frantic jockeying for alliances that stamped European politics before World War I. It was a great power but not yet a participant in the great-power system.
¹

The United States between 1901 and 1913 did take a much more active role in the world. Brimming over with optimism and exuberance, their traditional certainty of their virtue now combined with a newfound power and status, Americans firmly believed that their ideals and institutions were the way of the future. Private individuals and organizations, often working with government, took a major role in meeting natural disasters across the world. Americans assumed leadership in promoting world peace. They began to press their own government and others to protect human rights in countries where they were threatened. The perfect exemplar of the nation's mood in the new century, Roosevelt promoted what he called "civilization" through such diverse ventures as building the Panama Canal, managing the nation's imperial holdings in the Philippines and the Caribbean, and even mediating great-power disputes and wars. "We are
bursting today with good intentions," journalist E. L. Godkin proclaimed in 1899.
²

"What a playball has this planet of ours become," novelist Jack London exclaimed at the turn of the century. "Steam has made its parts accessible. . . . The telegraph annihilates space and time."
³
Indeed, the world had shrunk appreciably by the year 1900. Steamships crossed the Atlantic in less than a week—"giant ferryboats" traversing the "straits of New York," Americans called them.
⁴
Cable joined much of the globe. Passports were unnecessary in many areas; people moved easily from one country to another to visit or work. The revolutions in technology and transportation permitted large-scale trade and international investments. Commerce and capital moved with relative freedom across national borders. This early globalization of capitalism led some enthusiasts to proclaim a new era of world peace. Applying modern ideas to Enlightenment theories, British businessman Norman Angell in his 1910 best seller
The Great Illusion
proclaimed capitalism an inherently peaceful system that rendered unnecessary formal empires based on possession of territory and thus might eliminate great-power rivalries and make war unthinkable because of the potential cost to winners as well as losers.

Angell also recognized the destructive capacity of modern nation-states, which, in fact, along with the expansion of capitalism and technological and geopolitical changes, was opening the way to history's bloodiest century. The early 1900s represented the high-water mark of imperialism. In 1901, the great powers maintained 140 colonies, protectorates, and dependencies covering two-thirds of the earth's surface and one-third of the world's population. "No land is occupied that is not stolen," humorist Mark Twain quipped after a global tour in the 1890s.
⁵
The rise of Germany, Japan, and the United States and the demise of the Spanish empire upset the existing order and aroused uncertainty and fear among the established powers, manifested in heated colonial rivalries, a spiraling arms race, and shifting alliances. In a diplomatic revolution of mammoth
proportions, traditional enemies Britain and France joined to face the emerging threat of Germany. Britain's accommodation with its ancient rival Russia in turn aroused German fear of encirclement. The increasing rigidity of alliances and the escalating arms race raised the possibility that a crisis in the most remote part of the world could plunge Europe into conflagration.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 further jostled an already wobbly international system. Revelations of Russia's stunning weakness gave Germany a fleeting edge in great-power rivalries, adding anxiety in Britain and France. The surprisingly easy victory of an Asian nation over Europeans assaulted the theories of racial supremacy that undergirded a Eurocentric world order and excited hope among Asians groaning under imperialism. It was "like a strange new world opening up," Vietnamese patriot Phan Boi Chau recorded. "We have become increasingly enthusiastic and intense in our commitment to our ideals."
⁶