Roosevelt’s “Big Stick” Foreign Policy

When Roosevelt succeeded McKinley as president, he implemented a key strategy for building an American empire: the threat, rather than the outright use, of military force. McKinley had engaged the U.S. military in several successful skirmishes and then used the country’s superior industrial power to negotiate beneficial foreign trade agreements. Roosevelt, with his “big stick” policy, was able to keep the United States out of military conflicts by employing the legitimate threat of force. Nonetheless, as negotiations with Japan illustrated, the maintenance of an empire was fraught with complexity. Changing alliances, shifting economic needs, and power politics all meant that the United States would need to tread carefully to maintain its status as a world power.            All images referenced in this podcast can be found at https://openstax.org/books/us-history/pages/22-summary           Welcome to A Journey into Human History.    This podcast will attempt to tell the whole human story.       The content contained in this podcast was produced by OpenStax and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.     Access for free at https://openstax.org/details/books/us-history           Podcast produced by Miranda Casturo as a Creative Common Sense production.       No part of this podcast is made with generative AI         Voice narration provided by computerized text-to-speech through voicemaker.in       For those who prefer ad free listening other options of support are available.          https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/a-journey-into-human-history--5860966/support