Then, after McKinley declared war upon the Spanish in 1889, America could use imperialism to gain land and power in the world. America declared war on Spain in April 1889, not to gain land, but to assist Cuba in gaining its independence. Only later into the war, it realized how it can benefit through imperialism. The newly acquired land increased America’s resources and gave them new countries to trade with and worked as an advantage for the U.S. military as well. Turner believed that the idea of the frontier shaped the American being and their characteristics.
As a lot of Americans call it, the Spanish-American war was a splendid little war. The war caused America to gain a lot and lose very little. Even though there has been a few negative effects as the result of the war, the United States changed history by acquiring more ports, territories and by building bigger navies. American imperialism was what Americans wanted the most. They wanted to extend their political, military and economic control all over the world.
Missionaries did their job of preaching that the savages of the world need to be civilized and Christianized. Thus, the United States began to become very nationalistic, and tensions with foreign powers began to rise. Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” gave a call to the white population of the United States to reach out and ‘civilize’ the rest of the world With the White Man’s Burden and the widespread dogma of social Darwinism, the United States also started taking advantage of the fact that it could make quite a fortune by doing what it felt was ‘right’. Roosevelt’s quote, “Our endeavors overseas are not for the purpose of empire, but rather salvation.” spoke of what the ‘White Man’ was supposed to do. The United States claimed they weren’t taking advantage of the Cubans, Filipinos, and Hawaiians because of imperialistic measures, but because it was what the ‘needed’ to do.
Panama Crisis * Theodore Roosevelt, who became president of the United States in 1901, believed that a U.S.-controlled canal across Central America was a vital strategic interest to the U.S. * The Panama Canal would shorten the distance that ships had to travel to pass between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The canal would permit shippers of commercial goods, ranging from automobiles to grain, to save time and money by transporting cargo more quickly. * Failed negotiations with Colombia, which owned Panama, led to the U.S. providing funds and a naval blockade in support of Panama's revolution. In a controversial move, Roosevelt implied to Panamanian rebels that if they revolted, the U.S. Navy would assist their cause for independence.
Idea has a long history in the liberal tradition. From a universalistic moral perspective, it is necessary to ask why the rights of freedom, justice and equality are distributed by a relatively arbitrary rule (the luck of birth), rather than guaranteed to individuals. Instrumental moral argument:“The current international system is immoral so long as it continues to produce significant global inequalities (social, political and economic).”Citizens of rich states therefore have an duty to cure this situation. One way of doing this would be to allow more people to migrate in order to improve their life chances. The moral arguments are that people should be allowed to move to any country that they feel like and they should not be restrained.
The U.S is not justified in annexing the Philippines and fighting a war to keep it because it was just a chance to exploit people and land to earn power and prestige. On April 25, the United States declared war on Spain following the sinking of the Battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor sent by President McKinley to protect U.S citizens. Cuba was the first to initiate its own struggle for independence. Spain used ruthless brutal tactics to bring down the revolt where the U.S intervened due to sympathy for Cuban rebels.
During the late 19th and early 20th century, US expansionism used the same basic principle but was different from earlier expansionism in the way of geography, economics, and politics. They continued to believe that they had a God-given right to branch out. However, they expanded this Manifest Destiny so that, instead of looking just to expand and conquer the West, they were looking to conquer the entire world. Earlier, the United States had gained more land in the same vicinity and wanted to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After completing this task, rather than settling down, they continued to try and gain more land, this time into different places including Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines.
The President of Cuba said that he felt that Cuba had a moral responsibility to support the United States. This feeling originated from our earlier support of Cuba for their independence. Next, from the moment Cuba declared war on Germany, Cuba’s geographical position invited German attacks. They had to prepare their defenses. Germany’s U-boat warfare was another reason for Cuba’s entry into the war.
became a super power was that after WW2, the American government saw a need to keep a vigilant watch on countries that wanted to harm U.S. interests. After the World Wars, enemy countries saw how rich the U.S. was in resources and wanted to capitalize on those resources. Also, they saw the threat of democracy on their own way of life in which those countries' saw the spread of democracy spread further into Europe soon after WW2. (2011, Lagon, M.P.) The differences between foreign policy before and after WW2 were very different.
During an age of mass industrialization and urbanization, obtaining social justice was of vital importance because with social justice established, social control would naturally be achieved due to the satisfaction of citizens being treated equally. Progressive reformers moved to correct flaws in government and improve societal equality, but they soon found the widened divisions in American society to be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. (Out of Many, 606) Progressivism was characterized by a series of movements, each of them aimed in one way or another at renovating or restoring American society, its values, and institutions. (Out of Many, 612) The three basic social issues addressed by the Progressives were women suffrage, freedmens civil rights, and working conditions. Each group of reformers challenged the words of our founding fathers as stated in the Constitution, “…in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,…promote the general welfare…to ourselves and our posterity…,” progressives were searching for a perfect union for every individual to be satisfied with.