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The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
American Foreign Policy: Progressive Imperialism
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Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast. I am Jeremiah Regan.
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And I'm Juan Davalos. We're back with American Foreign Policy lecture number three, Progressive Imperialism.
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With the advent of the Progressive Era, we see a shift in American domestic policy that also flows into American foreign policy. And the idea that government's primary purpose is to protect the lives, liberty and property of American citizens and that it ought not to interfere in the policies of other nations is replaced by an idea that humanity is improving, civilization is developing, and we need to do everything we can, national boundaries not regarded to further the progress of humanity.
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That's right. In this course, we cover all these topics more briefly. But if you'd like to go into a much deeper dive onto the ideas of the Progressives, what motivated their ideas, and how those ideas play out in American history. Starting in the Progressive Era, we have a whole course dedicated to the ideas of Progressivism, the American Left, From Liberalism to Despotism, taught by Professor Slack, that's.
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Available in podcast form. Or you can watch the course at Hillsdale. Edu course that gives you access to quizzes and all the supporting documentation as well as. So enroll in American Left From Liberalism to Despotism at Hillsdale. Edu course and let's turn to lecture.
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Number three of American Foreign Policy, Progressive Imperialism.
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In this lecture, we're going to cover a much shorter time period, roughly the period between 1898 and the outbreak, or at least through the end of World War I, but not the aftermath of World War I. And we'll explain why shortly and what is to come. This is a short but eventful period in American foreign policy. It's a period of great change. And in order to understand the change, you first have to understand the principles or the thought or the theorizing behind that change. And to understand that, you have to understand the Progressive Era, and I mean progressive with a capital P. Progressivism is first and foremost an intellectual movement, as I said. Now this is a class on foreign policy, so we can't go into great depth or detail into Progressivism. But if we were to summarize it very quickly, we would say that it is motivated by a notion that the Founders ideas are outmoded, that their 18th century ideas, at best suited to 18th century conditions, they're no longer able to keep up with the complexity of modern life, modern politics, especially modern economics and the Progressive understanding. At best, the Founders account of individual natural rights, the separation of powers, checks and balances, social compact theory, government by consent. At best, the that stuff was valid for the 18th century, for another time, a simpler time, and it's invalid for today. At worst, it may never have been valid at all. It may be simply the product of a prejudicial age which wasn't enlightened enough to really understand the truth. We don't have to resolve that issue here. All we need to know is their view that trying to administer Modern America, that is their modern America. Late 19th century America on the founders 18th century precepts or wasn't possible or it certainly wasn't ideal. It was bound to produce all kinds of inefficiency, error, sluggishness and so on. Now, like many of the issues that we talk about in this course, progressivism is primarily a domestic matter. It's a matter of domestic politics, but one that has foreign policy implications. And one of the core arguments of the progressives is that modern life being complex, it needs to be administered by experts. This is where you get the beginning of the administrative state of bureaucracies staffed with enlightened subject matter experts who just know what to do in a complex situation and ought to be able to administer government without reference to checks and balances, legislative niceties, and a lot of the constitutional provisions that you and I take for granted. These people know better and they'll do the right thing. They will be nonpartisan and they will administer justice fairly based on nonpartisan expertise. That at any rate is the boast or the claim of progressivism. Now, in expanding this idea to foreign affairs, right, the main point for us to consider is that progressivism lays aside or even rejects the Founders notion that non interference is an obligation of one sovereign government, of any sovereign government against any other. You may, as an American sit in a sophisticated American city in a well appointed house with all the latest modern conveniences and think, wow, I'm near or at the pinnacle of civilization. And isn't it sad that people in other poorer, less advanced countries don't have what I have? You may think that, but you would not from that be justified in thinking, well, therefore I ought to go in and take over these countries and rule them for their benefit, because I can bring them up to a standard of civilization that I've already achieved and that they're lagging behind. Now the founders, of course, as I'm saying here, would say no, you don't have any right to make that claim or to make that leap of logic. The progressives are a lot less circumspect and more than willing to make the claim. Now I've referenced a few times the year 1898, a pivotal year. What happens in 1898? Well, it's the Spanish American War. The basics of the Spanish American War. I mentioned earlier some famous slogans from American history such as millions for defense, not one cent for tribute, 54, 40 or fight. Well, here's another one. Remember the Maine. So the Maine is a battleship in the United States Navy. Traditionally, the United States always named battleships after US States was destroyed in Havana Harbor. To this day, it's a matter of controversy what exactly destroyed the USS Maine. At the time, a big portion of American public opinion and a large portion of elite opinion alleged that the Maine had been deliberately destroyed as an attack on the United States. A lot of people now believe that it was in fact a boiler explosion and an accident and not an act of deliberate sabotage or foreign attack. But in any event, in the context of 1898, the ship blew up and sank and it caused a great amount of action outrage throughout the United States. There's more background to this that we don't necessarily need to go into. Some however important things to remember are that this is one of the rare times when a war was essentially forced on a President by Congress. Now, those of us alive here in the 21st century remember many instances of presidents unilaterally using their power to start a war. Although for whatever reason, we never call them wars anymore. They're either police actions or interventions or some kinds of things we're not used to. Congress we're used to, in fact, Congress being skeptical and Presidents having to go to Congress and ask for an authorization. Again, another breakdown in the constitutional practice is nobody, we don't declare war anymore. It's right there in the Constitution that Congress has the power to declare war. Well, the last time we did it was December 11, 1941, right after Pearl Harbor. We've been at war many times since without them ever being declared. We've replaced the declaration of war with the so called aumf Authorization of the use of Military Force. In any event, what happens at this time is there is a kind of war fever among certain parts of the general public. And that war fever is reflected in Congress and it's reflected in certain newspapers. I'm sure these two phrases will not be unfamiliar to you. They are jingoism, which means a kind of expression of war fever in the popular press and yellow journalism. These are most associated with William Randolph Hearst, the great press baron of the day, who owned a huge chain of newspapers around the United States and agitated strongly for the United States intervention in Cuba. I'M going to mention another movie, and that is Citizen Kane, which is a thinly veiled biographical account of William Randolph Hearst. Orson Welles plays Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper magnate. And in a scene set in 1898, Kane boasts to his senior staff that he will provide the war, meaning that his newspapers will whip American public opinion to a frenzy where they will demand war with Spain, which is more or less what William Randolph Hearst's examiner newspapers around the country did and got Congress to pressure the McKinley administration to go to war with Spain. Now, again, Spain is a European power, obviously, of which Cuba was still a colonial possession. In 1898, the United States wins that war rather quickly. Among the more famous episodes from the war are a young man who would soon be President of the United States, named Teddy Roosevelt. As a colonel of the regiment known as the Rough Riders. In his charge up San Juan Hill becomes a great hero. And as a result of the defeat of Spain in the Spanish American War, the United States now finds itself for the first time with its own colonial possessions. That is to say, unlike American expansion on the North American continent, in which the United States mostly, albeit not entirely, acquired land that was all but empty, but never before had the United States acquired as territorial possessions societies with completely existing settled population, also of a very different culture, language, political background, and so on from the existing American people. There was no question of, for instance, American settlers going in and resettling Cuba and making it American. When you acquire Cuba, you've also acquired the Cuban population and all of its political, cultural, religious and so on institutions. So in addition to Cuba, out of the Spanish American War, the United States also acquired Puerto Rico, which is still a territory of the United States, and most importantly, the Philippines, a very large country, an island chain in the Pacific. Now, for the first time in its history, then, the United States is an imperial or colonial power. These words are still anathema to the American people. But to use other words would be to mask or blur the reality of what had happened. And this is a fundamental change in American foreign policy. It is all but impossible to imagine the Founders looking at the outcome of the Spanish American War and seeing Americans ruling directly non American territories as essential colonies of the United States and expecting the Founders to approve of that. I can't see how to square that circle. So various progressives and some non progressives end up trying to govern the Philippines and govern Cuba along progressive lines, the most famous being William Howard Taft, who would also eventually become President of the United States and eventually after that become Chief justice of the supreme court. Now, Taft was not a progressive, but I would still argue that the mere act of having an American citizen act as Governor General of a colonial province has at least a progressive twinge to it. In any event, much of what the United States tried to do in these acquired territories according to progressive doctrine was bring them up to American standards of civilization. Or that is to say, what the Americans of the time believed were American standards of civilization. Bring up their economies, their industries, their societies and their political practice up to what the people trying to do the work considered to be acceptable modern standards. That is to say, they looked at these countries paternalistically. That didn't pan out. As we know. In fact, most of these countries are still quite a bit poorer and quite a bit different than the United States, despite decades of effort. But that was the thought behind progressivism, and some effort was put into it. And again, for our purposes, the real question we need to ask or be thinking about is to what extent was that consistent or inconsistent with the Founders vision of how American foreign policy should be conducted? I personally don't think that this one is that tough a call. I don't think the Founders would have believed that the United States was justified in holding these places as colonial possessions and in interfering with their internal affairs, even with the best of intentions.
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Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being and we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu. that's podcast hillsdale edu or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you find your audio.
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Now I mentioned the Monroe Doctrine in the last lecture and we now have to add something to that that's important because Teddy Roosevelt as President added something to it, namely the so called Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. It both affirms a principle of non intervention and affirms the principles of the Monroe Doctrine or claims to, while at the same time allowing a sort of loophole for saying that the United States reserves the right to intervene for vague reasons of national emergency or even conditions on the ground in given countries. Now, I don't know about you, but I take those two ideas to be intention. What I do know is that the Roosevelt Corollary is later used to justify many interventions by the United States in Central and South America, but especially Central America. These are the kinds of things that interventions that most Americans have forgotten. American interventions in Nicaragua, for example, I mean going all the way back 100 years ago, not American support for the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, which we could talk about in another lecture. So from the perspective of the original text of the Monroe Doctrine, and I think the original intent of the Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary greatly weakened it, greatly enlarged the United States idea of what justified its freedom of action and therefore justified interventions that would be hard if not impossible to justify on the original understanding of the Monroe Doctrine. And all of that again was done or argued in the name of progressivism, in the name of a kind of superior knowledge about the Americans of their time, or specifically the American elites, American leaders, American statesmen of their time, their superior knowledge, their superior expertise, their ability alleged to put that expertise to use to create better outcomes, including beyond their own borders. So you can see the principle of non intervention really being chipped away here. By far the most famous event of this period that we'll have to spend a little time on is World War I. This is the classic example of what Washington would have regarded, at least according to a literal interpretation of his words, as a European quarrel in which the United States had little to no interest. The causes of World War I are very complicated, but may be boiled down to an age old problem in international politics. That is to say, when one power rises to a point where of greatness or power such that it strikes fear into the hearts of other powers, they bandwagon and coalesce against it. In this case, of course, we're talking about Germany. Germany at that time was not the Germany that we know today, not a united country. It was a number of small countries with a similar culture, all speaking German. Most of which had formerly been part of the Holy Roman Empire, and which were not unified together until the second half of the 19th century, which forms the basis of the Germany that we know today. And then, once united, suddenly had all of the trappings and makings of a great power. A very large population, extremely favorable territory with a lot of natural resources, a highly intelligent, industrious population that supported one of the world's strongest manufacturing economies. As I said before, Britain had a strong head start on the manufacturing economies of the rest of the world. But Germany very rapidly came up, and by virtue of being so much bigger than Britain, looked to be quickly more powerful than Britain. The rise of Germany so reshuffled the diplomatic map of Europe that Britain and Russia, which had long been at odds throughout the 19th century over questions of foreign policy in what we call south or central Asia, Afghanistan, India, now found themselves on the same side, not because they had necessarily resolved any of those issues that had had them at odds for so many decades, but because their joint fear of Germany was greater than the issues that had once separated them. Well, we know the rest. The Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria, Hungary, is assassinated in Sarajevo. The Austro Hungarians appeal to the Germans for help. The Germans being a much larger, greater power, they demand satisfaction from Serbia because it was Serbian anarchists who killed the heir to the throne. The Serbs appeal for help to Russia as their fellow Slavic nation, but one much larger and much powerful. So a quarrel between smaller nations drags in larger nations and a budding alliance between Britain, Russia and France that had been emerging because of the rise of German power suddenly finds itself activated against the potential for war. Now, July 1914 is probably the most studied month, the most analyzed 30 days in the history of the world, for a very simple reason, that this is the month during which all the diplomatic correspondence, all the telegrams and exchanges flew back and forth between European capitals. And it is widely acknowledged that not one single country that ended up going to war in August 1914 actually intended or wanted the war. Now, as this happened, America took a very standoffish posture. Being a former colony of England and an English speaking country, and with strong trade relations with England, There was a lot of sentiment in America that naturally took England's side, and Britain joined the war not because Britain was herself directly threatened, but out of alliance concerns and diplomatic obligations to Russia and especially France. Now, also in the United States were millions of people of German ancestry who sympathize with the country they or their ancestors had left behind, which I just should point out, points to yet another core lesson of Washington's Farewell Address, in which he anticipates that portions of the American population will be either too enamored of some foreign power or inordinately hostile to a foreign power which will incline them to take sides in foreign quarrels. So you might want to take side in a foreign quarrel because you love a given country so much, because that's where your ancestors are from. Or you might want to take sides for the opposite reason, because you hate a given country so much, because you recall that your ancestors were brutalized by that country. Whatever Washington said, these are understandable human emotions, but we should never ever let them govern American foreign policy. And for a while, the outbreak of World War I, they didn't. These passions were present and they were to some extent heated, but the government, in particular the Woodrow Wilson administration, managed to keep a fairly good lid on them. So the war, as we all know, began in August of 1940. Now, one event is of special significance that we have to mention, and that is the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in May of 1915. Now, this was a British ocean liner traveling back and forth between Britain and the United States. Remember, this is the pre airplane day. So if you wanted to go to Europe or you're in Europe and you want to come to the United States, you have to get on a ship. There's no other way. Now, Britain has long been, again, this lesson of Hamilton's comes back to us, a country that has to be a net importer of many goods and in particular of food, because as Britain industrialized, British farm output declined and Britain could no longer feed itself. Well, the problem with that, among others, is that if you're an island, the only way to import things is via ship. But ships are vulnerable out on the open ocean. And to illustrate another point that Hamilton warned us about, that is to say the arming and equipping of a military, you have to add the following consideration, which is innovation in warfare. And one of the many innovations that World War I gives us is the submarine, that is to say, a naval vessel that can travel underwater unseen and attack merchant shipping. And this is happening throughout World War I. It's a much larger problem in World War II when the technology is better and the doctrine is more fully developed. But it's a problem in World War I. Upon the outbreak of war in August of 1914, almost all commercial ocean traffic, at least passenger traffic, stopped. It was considered too dangerous. And besides, nobody in America wanted to go to a Europe that was at war. Anyway, commercial traffic, shipping of goods continued mostly because England needed to keep importing goods. And some ocean liners still traveled. Among them the Lusitania, which a German U boat sank in the Irish Sea with a large number of Americans on board. This caused great outrage into American public opinion. I might also point out that similar to the USS Maine, there has been a long controversy about the sinking of the Lusitania. That is to say, no one denies that the ship was sunk by a German U boat. The question is, what might the ship have been carrying? The Germans allege that the ship was carrying a large supply of munitions and it is in fact curious that the ship sank so quickly in about 20 minutes. Compare that with the Titanic, which took well over two hours to sink three years before. Well, other survivors reported a larger than usual explosion from what might expect from a torpedo hitting the hull. The problem with this is if the ship were carrying munitions over that was both a violation of certain American neutrality provisions and also according to the laws of war, made the ship a legitimate target for a U boat. Now, the British, of course, hotly denied this. Now, some like to point back and say the Lusitania is the reason America got into World War I. That's an obviously too simplistic explanation, if for no other reason than entry into the war by the United States didn't take place for another two years. But it certainly had a huge impact on affecting American public opinion, that is to say, turning American public opinion away from Germany and even away from neutrality and toward Britain and France. Now, Woodrow Wilson as president vowed to keep America out of the war in perhaps one of the most cynical displays of electoral politics I can think of. He in fact campaigned in 1916 on keeping America out of the war and vowed to further keep America out of the war. And he was rewarded with reelection for doing so. And within a month of his second inauguration, America entered the war. Now, why did that happen? The reason again are complex. They involve Wilson's judgment of the balance of power, of an unfavorable balance of power for United States interests if Germany were to win that war and dominate the continent. They involved, in a way, issues of sentiment, I.e. perceived obligations of an American public, and especially an American elite that was still overwhelmingly Anglo descended at that time in favor of England versus Germany. And there were some progressive reasons as well, which come to the fore more in the aftermath of the war, or at least come out more clearly in the aftermath of the war than they do in the original decision to get in the war. But there was A notion that democracy itself was on the line, that this was somehow an ideological contest. Now we may leave to one side the fact that one of the Allies was the Russian Czar, who was in no sense a democrat. Russia would in any event be out of the war by the end of 1917 because of the October Communist revolution. But if one were to contrast the French and the British with the Germans, one sees in Germany a monarchy. And to the extent that it's a constitutional monarchy, it's nothing like a democracy but an aristocratic autocratic state, a kind of combination of monarchical rule, aristocratic rule and expert rule. In fact, the leading philosopher of the progressive intellectuals, Hegel, was a German, a Prussian pre German unification, who argued in favor of expert rule in the bureaucracies and said that the model for such expert rule was the Prussian bureaucracy, Prussia being one of the predecessor states of the eventually unified Germany, the most powerful and important predecessor state. And it just so happens that it was the Prussian General Staff and the Prussian bureaucracy that made the heart that constituted the heart of the German state that fought World War I. So many progressives saw in here a contrast and a contest between two systems, a kind of autocratic system and a democratic system. Now it's odd, a bit ironic, I think, that progressives who looked to Hegel as their philosophic inspiration and to expert rule on the Prussian model as something that ought to be emulated in the United States, nonetheless argued against Germany on progressive grounds because Germany was insufficiently democratic. Just thinking back to the context, though, an argument was made, however internally contradictory or ill thought through, that this was a defense of democracy somehow against autocracy. And therefore that was yet another reason for the United States to enter the war and tip the balance toward England and France or toward the west and away from Germany. Now we know the outcome, that is to say, we know that the Allies won, if a war of such stupendous losses with so little gain on either side can be called a victory. But the war was resolved in at least a nominal Allied victory. Germany gave up, signed an Armistice on November 11, 1918, and the victorious Allies gathered together at the palace of Versailles outside France, the home of King Louis xiv, the Sun King, to set the terms and conditions of the post war world. And Woodrow Wilson, the President, attended that conference. In fact, it was the first time a President of the United States had ever left the country. While sitting as president, Wilson went overseas with an ambitious agenda, essentially to redraw the map of Europe along a number of principles which he called the 14 points now, I'm not going to list them all for you. They're easy enough to find if you look them up. But I do want to share one amusing anecdote, and that is Georges Clemenceau, one of the so called Big Four at the peace conference, all of whom, except Wilson, naturally found Wilson insufferable, wryly remarked that God himself had only ten commandments. Now, as I said, what Wilson wanted to do was redraw the map of Europe along progressive lines, along new principles of political science. And it's here worth noting that Wilson himself was a political scientist. He was a PhD in political science, a university professor, the president of Princeton University, and at one point the president of the American Political Science association, that is to say, the academic governing body of the entire profession. So he came to the conference and he came to the presidency believing that he had a certain type of expert knowledge in politics that would allow issues that used to have to be resolved politically, that is through negotiation and give and take, they could be resolved simply on the basis of subject matter expertise in a nonpartisan way. That's one of the great claims, underlying claims of progressivism. And he thought he could do that internationally, no less than domestically. And attempts to redraw the map of Europe along these lines and impose a peace that will be a lasting peace. For as we know, World War I was referred to by many of its partisans as the war to end all wars, unquote. Well, we'll see in the next lecture where all of those efforts led and ultimately why they gave us another world war a mere 20 years later.
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