The Threat Behind Trump’s Praise of McKinley & Roosevelt
Foreign Affairs
The president says he wants to be peacemaker—but his heroes were warmongers.
In his inaugural address, U.S. President Donald Trump said, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”
But in the dawning moments of his second term, Trump claimed the Panama Canal and Greenland and coveted Canada as the 51st state. His declarations on Canada and Denmark, which retains sovereignty over Greenland, represent public threats against close NATO allies.
Trump referenced only two presidents in that inaugural address: William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. There is something ominous in these choices: McKinley for the general spirit with which he imbued America and Roosevelt for the particular way that spirit manifested under his leadership.
1898, as Stephen Kinzer shows in The True Flag, was a year of struggle for the American soul. That year, America faced a choice: remain a former colony mindful of its past and respectful of other nations’ sovereignty, or become an expansionist power, discard its conscience, and pursue colonialism and coups.
America’s expansionist ambitions overrode concerns of conscience, and Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico would, in rapid succession, become the first to feel the results of that struggle for America’s soul. The president who decided that struggle was William McKinley. The current president, who said he wants his legacy to be “the wars we never get into,” showed reverence, in the same speech, for the president who led America into expansionist wars.
In 1898, McKinley called for 200,000 men—an enormous number at that time—to volunteer to fight in foreign conflicts. First, he stole Hawaii. Then he sent American troops to liberate Cuba from Spain. Congress passed the Teller Amendment which promised the Cubans that “The United States hereby disclaims any . . . intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over [Cuba]”. It clearly stated that “the people of the island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent”.
The Americans quickly dispatched the Spanish, as promised, and then quickly dispatched with the promise. McKinley announced that the U.S. now ruled Cuba according to “the law of belligerent right over conquered territory,” which came as a surprise to the Cubans who didn’t know they had been conquered.
The Philippines had recently suffered a similar fate. Historian William Polk records the promise, allegedly made to the Philippine resistance by U.S. officials, that America “neither needs nor desires colonies.” While admitting that he could not speak for his government, the ranking U.S. officer at talks between the American military and the Filipino rebels, Commodore George Dewey, promised the resistance that “there is no doubt if you cooperate with us and assist us by fighting the common enemy, that you will be granted your freedom the same as the Cubans will be.”
He told the truth. The Philippines were treated just as the Cubans would be. The U.S. defeated Spain, and the Philippines declared independence. The U.S. then purchased the Philippines from Spain for $20 million and shifted its mission from liberation to occupation and the “benevolent assimilation” of the Philippines. That $20 million was a bargain: Guam was thrown in, as was Puerto Rico after U.S. troops landed on the island.
It is McKinley’s spirit of expansionism that seems to animate the first days of Trump’s second term. On day one, Trump signed an executive order that celebrated how McKinley “heroically led our nation to victory in the Spanish-American War.” The legacy of Teddy Roosevelt is also influencing Trump’s foreign policy agenda.
Roosevelt, Trump said in his address, did “great things… including the Panama Canal.” Trump referred to Roosevelt as the president during the canal’s construction and warned that if the “unfair and injudicious” treatment of American ships is not corrected, “we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question.” In his inaugural address, Trump promised that “we’re taking it back.”
It isn’t just the Panama Canal itself that harkens back to Roosevelt, but the expansionist tactics that Trump seems ready to employ.
According to David Sanger in the New York Times, Trump seems to be encouraging the movement in Greenland to separate from Denmark. That movement has been growing in recent years, and is a key issue in this April’s elections in Greenland in which, Forbes reports, “the costs and benefits of a closer post-independence relationship with the U.S. will surely be a point of discussion.” Greenland could end up holding a referendum, voting for independence (which the U.S. would quickly recognize), and then signing its own agreement with the United States.
That is a modern version of what Roosevelt did in Panama. There was no Panama prior to the Panama Canal. It was a province of Colombia, and the Colombian government was unwilling to surrender its own sovereignty over the canal zone.
So, Roosevelt created a small band of revolutionaries who, without actually enacting a revolution, simply declared Panama an independent country. In Overthrow, Stephen Kinzer reports that when a Colombian army commander demanded a train to take his troops to Panama, the U.S. cabled ahead to warn of his journey, and he and his men were arrested upon arrival. The very next day, the U.S. recognized Panama as an independent nation and sent a fleet of warships to protect its new ally. Work on the Panama Canal could now begin.
There is an echo of McKinley’s spirit and Roosevelt’s strategy in the early Trump White House. For a president who said that the success of his administration would be measured by “the wars we never get into,” there is an ominous undertone in his reverential invocations of presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.