The Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War of 1898 represented a major step away from generations of a foreign policy that, for the most part, emphasized isolationism with respect to most areas beyond the continental United States. The war was the first major military engagement beyond the American territory since the Mexican-American war in 1846-1848. This led to an assertion of United States interests throughout the Caribbean and into the western Pacific region, laying the groundwork for major shifts in policies, culminating in (and after) the First World War. As a result of defeating Spain, the United States eventually established control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and then Midway, Guam, Wake Island, and (American) Samoa. At the same time the United States annexed Hawaii as well. The war's outcome led to a huge increase in the United States naval budget and United States military involvement in the Philippines, resulting in a three-year war (1899-1902) to pacify the Filipino people. The Spanish-American War accelerated policies promoting overseas investments, later referred to as "dollar diplomacy" under President Taft. Prior to that, this expanded policy could be seen in the Open Door Policy regarding China from 1899 to1900. It could also be seen in President Theodore Roosevelt's engineering a revolt in Panama against the Colombian government and then negotiating for the Panama Canal Zone and construction of the Panama Canal. These events were stepping-stones to Theodore's Roosevelt's corollary to the Monroe Doctrine and the United States assertion of a sphere of influence over the Caribbean for strategic reasons. Following from that policy position came United States intervention in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Mexico, and the purchase of the Danish West Indies (renamed the Virgin Islands) to keep German influence out of the region. Roosevelt was impacted by Alfred Thayer Mahan's "Influence of Sea Power on America," which called for a large navy, control of the Caribbean, and construction of an interocean canal in Central America. Roosevelt's decision to send the Great White Fleet (the majority of the United States Navy) around the world, and especially to Japan, was a bold step to assert United States claims to the role of a major player in international diplomacy, as had been his mediation of the Russo-Japanese War two year earlier. The culmination of two decades of policy changes came with President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points and assertion of leadership on the world stage following the First World War. Yet the outcome was the general ineffectiveness of the United States at the Versailles negotiations after the war (1919). The subsequent United States retreat to a neoisolationism, a consequence of Americans' disillusionment with its aggressive foreign policies, can be seen as the end of the first phase of the United States major changes in foreign policy as a