Question

why did U.S. policymakers set strategic foreign policy goals in the 1890s? What where the specific goals and how did the U.S. government implement these goals in the Caribbean Basin from 1898 to 1903?

Answer 1

U.S. foreign policy history is a short summary of significant developments in U.S. foreign policy from the U.S. Revolution to the present. The main topics are becoming an "Empire of Liberty," promoting democracy, extending across the mainland, supporting liberal internationalism, challenging World Wars and the Cold War, fighting global terrorism, creating the Third World, and building a powerful world economy.

American Foreign Policy in the 1890s American foreign policy during the 1890s was based on many factors that each acted as an individual justification for our country’s behavior as a whole. Racism, nationalism, commercialism, and humanitarianism each had its own role in the actions America took against other nations.

During this span of time, most Americans were highly racist. White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants, aka WASPs were the predominant culture in the nation. They scorned the black people now free and all the immigrants from Europe who came to our country. They made it very difficult for anyone with the slightest differences, whether they were American citizens or not.

Throughout the 1890s, the U.S. Government became increasingly likely to rely on its military and economic power to pursue foreign policy goals. The most prominent action during this period, the Spanish-American War, resulted in U.S. rule of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, as well as increased influence over Cuba. These territories captured in the Spanish-American war had a varied response toward U.S. occupation. In the Philippines, American forces faced armed insurgency, while in Puerto Rico, working-class and Progressive Puerto Ricans saw the United States as a successful counterweight to local sugar industry elites.

The nations in the Caribbean Basin are too small and poor to merit an acquisitive policy or to constitute a direct threat to the United States; the threat that has moved the United States was that more powerful adversaries from Europe or Asia could forge a relationship with a small nation that would permit it to be used as a base to attack or harass the United States or its neighbors. When the threat diminishes, U.S. interest diminishes. That accounts for the apparent cycle between preoccupation at moments of intense geopolitical rivalry and neglect at times of geopolitical calm.

U.S. foreign policy towards the Caribbean Basin was the summary of the responses to issues as to whether or not the United States should have a "unique connection" with the area and what that means ; questions as to how to prevent instability, prevent foreign penetration, defeat anti-American rebels, encourage peaceful political change, encourage financial growth, protect human freedoms, etc.

Answers to these questions have differed from one administration to the next, and particularly when there is a change in the party in power. But the differences have never been as much as the administration claims at its beginning, nor as little as it suggests when its power is waning or its policy is wanting, and it seeks strength by asserting continuity or bipartisanship. Nonetheless, in identifying the threads of continuity that have tied presidents as different as Carter and Reagan, one can better appreciate the elusive concept, "national interest." In discerning the changes in policy toward similar problems, we might better establish the boundaries of real choice.

In the twentieth century, U.S. foreign policy toward the Caribbean Basin can be divided into four periods: (1) the protectorate era, 1898-1933; (2) the Good Neighbor Policy, 1933-1953; (3) the Cold War, 1953-1990; and (4) the post-Cold War era.