Big Stick Policy

"Big Stick Policy" was a phrase attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), who described his guiding philosophy in dealing with Latin America as "Speak softly and carry a big stick." More than any U.S. leader, Roosevelt argued that forceful diplomatic policies and occasional landings of U.S. troops were necessary to preserve U.S. strategic interests in Latin America, especially in the Caribbean and Central America, and to safeguard foreign lives and property when national governments were unable or unwilling to carry out their obligations. Roosevelt integrated the policy into the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Latin American critics charged that the professed reasons for employing the Big Stick—a form of gunboat diplomacy—were guises to conceal U.S. efforts to create an "informal empire" in Latin America and especially in the Caribbean and Central America, to advance the interests of U.S. business. Although he insisted his purpose lay in upholding law and order in places where local governments would not or could not do so, Roosevelt used the Big Stick in Cuba (1902–1903, 1906–1909), Panama (1903), the Dominican Republic (1904–1905), Central America (1906–1907), and in the Venezuelan debt crisis of 1902–1903. In Central America Roosevelt's purpose was both laudable and political: to create a mechanism for peaceful settlement of disputes and to chastise the anti-U.S. government in Nicaragua for its alleged meddling in the internal affairs of its neighbors. In some cases the policy served to rouse greater antipathy toward the United States throughout the region and led to even deeper U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of several Caribbean and Central American republics.

See alsoClark Memorandum; Monroe Doctrine; Roosevelt, Theodore; Roosevelt Corollary; United States-Latin American Relations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collin, Richard H. Theodore Roosevelt's Caribbean: The Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Latin American Context. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

Healy, David. Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1917. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988.

Langley, Lester D. The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1900–1934. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.

                                      Lester D. Langley