Teddy Roosevelt is best known for his “Big Stick” foreign policy in the Caribbean. This so-called gunboat diplomacy was aimed at intervening in the Caribbean to secure US interests and to keep Europeans away from the Panama Canal Zone. The “Big Stick” policy itself grew expensive and the American public had grown tired of stories of Marine abuses, conflict, and corruption. The stubborn dictators and poor citizenry of these island nations frustrated Americans who felt they were helping educate their neighbors on becoming democratic. The Great War especially had a psychological role in ending American desire for getting involved in the region. America realized it needed to reshape foreign policy, and fast.
A Kinder, Gentler America
Today, Teddy’s cousin Franklin gets most of the credit for creating the new policy known as the Good Neighbor policy. The effort to generate goodwill among the Latin neighbors is generally associated with FDR, yet most of the ground work was done by his Republican predecessors.
Presidents Harding and Hoover were instrumental in softening America’s foreign policy. Under Hoover, the Clark Memorandum had rejected Teddy Roosevelt’s Big Stick policy, saying it was not a complement to the Monroe Doctrine. In fact, it was the opposite. Some, like President Hoover, agreed that the Roosevelt Corollary was a perversion of the original Monroe Doctrine.
Under President Harding, the United States began to extricate themselves from the region by beginning to withdraw troops from Nicaragua.
Hoover Makes the U.S. a "Good Neighbor"
Hoover followed up these efforts by engaging in a seven week good will tour of Latin American republics, bringing with him cautious optimism of a friendlier America. He did so all the while riding in a Navy battleship, raising more than a few suspicious eyebrows.
Efforts at warming relations with the Caribbean increased with the arrival of the Great Depression. Hoover pushed up plans to withdraw troops and advisers from Haiti earlier than planned in 1932. By 1934 there was no more U.S. presence in Haiti. Challenges to the new non-interventionism arose when several Caribbean nations defaulted on loans, to which the U.S. responded with overwhelming silence.
F.D.R. Officially Ends Gunboat Diplomacy
It is true that the dreaded Smoot-Hawley Tariff hurt the progress that had been made, devastating Caribbean markets with excessive tariffs, and this is where FDR comes into the story. With Harding and Hoover’s kinder, gentler policy in full swing, newly-elected Franklin Roosevelt was able to push for the Reciprocal Trade Agreement which lowered the tariffs and opened new markets. A year later he officially rejected the Platt Amendment, a relic from the U.S. occupation of Cuba. The era of big stick diplomacy had completely arrived at an end.
So arriving late on the scene, the second President Roosevelt had managed to etch his name on the policy his predecessors worked to create.
Recommended Further Reading and Sources:
The United States and the Caribbean Area
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