³The Emergence of America as a World Power:
Some Second Thoughts²

Early in 1901 a foreign diplomat declared that, during his brief residence in Washington, he had observed two different nations- the United States before the War with Spain and the United States after that conflict. This remark has been quoted frequently to indicate the profound impact of the contest with Spain upon American feign policy. According to this interpretation, the "splendid little war," as that inveterate phrasemaker John Hay called it, did more than terminate the bloodshed in Cuba and liberate the island from Spanish misrule. It also constituted a decisive factor in transforming the continental republic into an overseas empire, an empire with possessions in not only the Caribbean and the central Pacific but also the western Pacific and the South China Sea.

There can be little doubt that the years 1898 and 1899 formed some sort of watershed in the growth of the role of the United Sates in world affairs. The passionate debate between the imperialists and the anti-imperialists impressed upon men at the time that the republic had to choose between tradition and innovation. The foes of colonies warned that to embark upon the path of empire would undermine the cherished policy of isolationism and thrust the country into the
maelstrom of international rivalries. Such a departure from old ways would bring needless complications abroad, impede the reform movement at home, enhance the influence of the military in national affair, and fly in the face of the democratic heritage. Contemporary historians likewise concluded that an important change had occurred. In 1903 John Bassett Moor, already an experienced diplomat and recognized student of international law, contributed to the seventh volume of the Cambridge Modern History a chapter entitled "The United States as a World Power
(1885-1902)." In the winter of 1906-7, Archibald Cary Coolidge, professor of European history at Harvard University, delivered at the Sorbonne a series of lectures which he subsequently published as The United States as a World Power. And in December, 1907, there appeared as the final narrative volume in the "American Nation" series, which was a co-operative enterprise designed to synthesize the findings of the first generation of the self-styled scientific historians, a book written by John H. Latane of The John Hopkins University, bearing the title of America as a World Power, 1897-1907. For the next half-century most writers, scholarly or popular, dated the emergence of the United States as a world power from the late 1890's and attributed to that new status varying degrees of change in American foreign policy.

Then, in 1960, the eminent diplomatic historian, Thomas A. Bailey, warned against the dangers of repeating clichs and questioned whether the United States had suddenly burst for the as a world power to the thunder of Commodore George Dewey's guns in manila Bay on May 1, 1898. In his presidential address before the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, Bailey argued that the United States had been a word power since July, 1776. He defined a world power as "a nation with sufficient power in being, or capable of being mobilized, to affect world politics positively and over a period of time." He pointed out that in territory, population, natural resources, military strength, and moral force the United States met that definition. He also noted that in the century after independence the young republic had exerted its influence in all parts of the glove-in Europe, Asia, and Africa, as well as in the Americas. It had held aloft the torch of democracy and self-determination; it had broken down the commercial exclusiveness of Japan, it had become a granary for Europe. Statesmen of the major powers regarded the United States as
part of the global equipoise; citizens of backward nations benefitted from the endeavors of American educators and missionaries. 'The giant of the Western Hemisphere did not live unto itself'

Bailey's address was timely but not entirely convincing. It is healthy, of course, to have old concepts challenged. His distinction between a world power and a great power is helpful, although on might question his secondary argument that the United States joined the ranks of great powers at the close of the Civil War. And certainly historians would do well to take a long look backward, to make sure of the actual role of the young republic in world affairs before 1898, if they are to
describe accurately its position after that date. But in his won backward glance Bailey seems to have created an occasional straw man ready to be demolished. No reputable scholar maintains that the destruction of Spain's decrepit squadron in Manila Bay and of her more modern vessels off Santiago two months later, in itself, catapulted the United State s to world power status. Such metamorphoses do not occur overnight. Similarly, it remains tot be demonstrated that before 1898 the European chanceries very often considered seriously the response of the government in Washington to the power struggle outside the Western Hemisphere. The Franco-Prussian War, the
clash over the Black Sea Straits, and the contest for empire in Africa are cases in point. As late as 1895, Russia, Germany, and France brought extreme pressure upon Japan during the peace negotiations with China without worrying about the reaction in America.

Two developments in the 1890's made the United States a different world power from the kind Bailey describes for the century after 1776. The first was the annexation of distant colonies which gave the nation a stake in the equilibrium of East Asia largely for economic reasons-the fear of closed markets and desire for railroad and mining concessions-a concern for the future of China grew rapidly in the decade between President Grover Cleveland's indifference to the Sino-Japanese fighting over Korea in 1894-95 and President Theodore Roosevelt's peacemaking in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. This concern might have come about even if there had been no crusade to free Cuba, but it was certainly hastened by the decision to retain the Philippines. The second development, stemming from the first, was a belief among the people that the country's position had changed-for better or for worse. One cannot read widely in the writings of contemporaries, businessmen, educators, clergymen, politicians, and military strategists-without detecting a new note of confidence, a new awareness of leadership, a new realization of the role the
replica might play on the global stage. These broadened horizons were evident in newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, consular reports, trade journals, and congressional debates. That the American people accepted the consequences of being a world power is, however, another matter....

There can be no denying that overseas annexations led to and coincided with changes in American foreign policy. The addition of the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Wake and Tutulla between July 1898, and December 1899, posed unprecedented problems of administration and defense. The triumph of imperialism required the establishment of a colonial agency, the modernization of the army, the redevelopment of the navy, and the institution of inter-service planning. It also caused a reversal in long-standing attitudes toward other great
powers-England, Germany, and Russia at once, Japan a little later.

East Asia was on region where diplomacy revealed America's new position. After raising the Stars and Strips in the South China Sea and in the Mariana Islands, the United States had to watch more closely the balance of power in the Orient. The threatened partition of China, the uncertain future of Korea, and the troublesome immigration dispute with Japan confronted men in Washington with difficult decisions. It is hardly surprising that they displayed greater activity than their
predecessors. Secretary of State John Hay tried to redefine American aims in China through his circular notes of September 6, 1899, and July 3, 1900, President William McKinley ordered ground forces from the Philippines and California to join a multinational expedition assembled to relieve the legations in Peking besieged by the insurgent Boxers. Still more prophetic was the willingness of President Roosevelt five years later to extend his good offices, and ultimately his mediation, to terminate the war then raging between Russia and Japan over Korean Manchuria.
Back in 1894, President Cleveland had asserted that the conflict then in progress between China and Japan over the same lands touched no vital interest of the United States. Thus, whereas the Sino-Japanese peace in 1895 was written at Shimonoseki under pressure from Russia, France, and Germany, the settlement of 1905 was signed at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, under the auspices of the United States.

The dozen years from the Portsmouth Treaty to the entrance into the First World War saw the American government continue to enlarge its role in the diplomacy of East Asia. Through an exchange of notes with Ambassador Kogoro Takahira on November 30, 1908, Secretary of State Elihu Root sought by all peaceful means to promote the stability of the Pacific area and to support the independence an integrity of China, including equality of opportunity for commerce and industry within her borders. Each party to this exchange promised to respect the territorial possessions of the other in the Pacific; it was a bilateral non-aggression pledge that foreshadowed
on provision of the Four-Power Treaty of December 13, 1921. A year later Root's successor, Philander C. Know, tried by diplomatic measure to wrest from Russia and Japan control of two key railways in Manchuria and to place them in Chinese hands. More than Hay and Root, who preceded him, or than William Jennings Bryan and Robert Lansing, who followed him, Know endeavored to bolster his policies in East Asia by enlisting the aid of the financial community....

The United States looked like a world power, also, in its response to mounting international tensions throughout the globe. For the first time American delegates participated in European conferences to discuss problems of war and peace. They were present at the Hague in 1899 and 1907 to fight with the machinery of arbitration, meditation, and inquiry; with the means of
regulating hostilities on land and sea; and with the measures for reducing the burden of armaments. They also attended at London, in 1909-10, a gathering which labored to formulate a code of neutral rights and belligerent practices. The United States became a member of the misnamed Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1899, and eight years later Secretary Root offered a farsighted plan for a more effective international tribunal. Every administration from Grover Cleveland to Woodrow Wilson searched for a workable formula by which the compulsory arbitration of certain classes of disputes might be incorporated in bilateral treaties. But the most dramatic act on the world stage came in 1905 when President Roosevelt employed his
good offices to help to bring the Russo-Japanese War to a close and to liquidate, through a multipartite conference at Algeciras, a dangerous Franco-German quarrel over Morocco. Not until May, 1914, when Wilson permitted Colonel Edward M. House to explore in Europe possible means of averting an armed clash between the rival alliance systems did the United States against act so directly to preserve world peace. Once the World War had broken out, Wilson tried constantly to serve as a desperate effort to avoid American involvement.

To many people, in 1917, the interventions of the United States in the war seemed a logical consequence of the republic's emergence as a world power. The breakdown of traditional neutrality, the forging of economic entanglements, and the manifestation of passionate attachment to rival belligerents threatened the old indifference to the outcome of a major European conflict. Wilson was unable to apply the customary rules of neutrality without hurting Germany or to introduce a more realistic code without penalizing England. The sale of munitions and the extension of loans and credits gave American manufacturers and financiers a tangible stake in the battle while the cotton-grower and the wheat-producer feared the loss of a lucrative market on the Continent. The assiduous efforts of rival propagandist to mold American opinion and the apparent commitment of articulate groups to one side or the other frightened the President and undercut his plea of August 19, 1914, for his countrymen to be "impartial in thought as well as in action." Thus, where Roosevelt could act as a peacemaker in 1905 without any fear of having the nation embroiled if he failed, Wilson know in 1916 that failure would bring involvement. On May 27 of that year, he warned: "We are participant in the life of the world....What affects mankind is inevitably our affair as well as the affair of the nations of Europe and of Asia."

How did informed citizens of 1917 interpret American intervention? Wilson's explanation was that the status of a belligerent had been thrust upon the republic. The recent course of imperial Germany, he told Congress on April 2, was "nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States." Wilson spoke of vindication maritime rights, violations of which cost American lives, not of insuring an Allied victory or preserving a favorable equipoise in Europe and Asia. Honor, not security, was stressed. But in his much-quoted address the President discussed the aims of intervention as well as the causes, and he sketched the goals for which he asked America to give of her blood and her might. By sublimating a war to uphold national rights into a crusade for all mankind, he bolstered the notion that the United States, in the face of a global cataclysm, was responding as befitted a world power....