all right this is open stacks us history chapter 22 section 4 roosevelt's big stick foreign policy so probably more so than any other president teddy roosevelt when he came to power in 1901. off of the assassination of william mckinley was probably the biggest advocate for u.s empire and the guiding principle behind his foreign policy was the saying speak softly and carry a big stick which more or less meant that you know the united states should at first be diplomatic but prepared right prepared for conflict even maybe even show off that you're prepared for conflict here's a kind of a famous picture of roosevelt right speak softly but carry big stick a big stick refers to a very strong and powerful military so be very diplomatic when you negotiate with other nations but make sure that they know that you have the military means if it results to force so it's not a um it's kind of a bullying position without actually openly using violence at first but resort to it if necessary and perhaps the biggest accomplishment under teddy roosevelt was the construction of the panama canal now ever since the days of alfred timahand in the late you know even before that in the 1800s 1700s even you know when the um when the new world was first chartered like in the days of columbus and following afterwards there was a long-standing desire for what was called a northwest passage and that was a water route that could get you from the atlantic to the pacific well not long after there was a strong desire to build a oh first of all i should say there was no northwest passage that existed in the way that a lot of explorers hoped for there was no direct water out to get from the pacific to the atlantic you had to sail all the way south of south america but with technological improvements it soon became a reality that you could create a man-made river across central america and central america was the desired area because that's where the smallest land mass lie that would be the easiest place to construct a man-made river that would allow one to go from the atlantic to the pacific you know without having to sail all around south america the desire to do so was done for military reasons to protect interest from the atlantic the pacific and also economic for trade so there are a lot of good reasons to build a canal in central america i don't have a map of the entire north and south america but if we look at this map here this territory right here would be central america that um if the united states let's say had a ship in new york and wanted to sail to california uh typically without a canal you'd have to sell all the way around this way but if you can construct then maybe we'll use blue here if you can construct a man-made river that cuts across right here well that you know diminishes the travel time that's required by a significant amount so now shipping lanes can more or less uh you know come from up here in new york and rather than having to sail all around can simply just cut through there again to protect any sort of u.s military interest but also to trade goods and you know make more profit now the united states actually wasn't the first country to seek out to do this france had actually failed to build a canal they had a lot of problems with disease malaria yellow fever and seeking that france was not able to do it especially teddy roosevelt but the united states wanted to jump in the problem was that the proposed canal was rejected by the colombian government so the u.s proposed to build a canal in colombia it was rejected by colombia and so this presented a problem to the united states who simply wanted to get this done colombia was exercising its national sovereignty its right to rule itself and so instead what the united states did was to encourage a sectional revolution a panamanian revolution this was panama breaking away from colombia which it was a part of at the time endorsed by the u.s right the idea was that and you can see these nations here here's columbia uh actually no you can't see that let me scroll down uh this is columbia right here uh maybe let me use a different color here go columbia uh and this is panama and at the time panama and columbia were one columbia said no united states you can't build a canal through our country the united states said well look we'll go to the people here in panama this section will encourage a revolution and if the united states supports it then panama agrees to let the united states build a canal and that's essentially what happened the united states was successful though because it was much better at dealing with disease like malaria and yellow fever the us brought in things like nets and specific medicine and by 1914 the panama canal was constructed and so you know this desire to to have a water route that connected the atlantic and the pacific uh you know which was a desire for countries again for 200 300 years was finally made a possibility by the united states and panama against the wishes of colombia uh in 1914 which made it a reality roosevelt also issued stronger control specifically over latin america oops the roosevelt corollary was a public position held by teddy roosevelt and the united states that the u.s has a right to exercise control over latin america this was actually a um kind of a newer version of the monroe doctrine which was made in the 1820s which more or less stated the same thing the monroe doctrine is more about the western hemisphere hemisphere uh belongs only to the us right the the real desire here was not just to exercise control over latin america which is what it did in the very immediate thing but really the motivating factor here was to limit other european power you know really the united states did not want to have any other european power to have influence in either north and south america and there are actually two different examples that we've covered in this the purchase of alaska is one get russian influence out uh and the panama canal right it was just as important to build the canal as it was to not allow a country like france to build it that is really the last thing that the united states wanted to do so by exercising more control over latin america what the united states was trying to do is limit the influence of other european powers there the united states already saw the united states exercise more control over cuba panama and places like the dominican republic however this exercise of control was not always endorsed by latin america in fact a lot of latin american countries came to resent american involvement saying no we're still independent we'll we're sovereign you the united states don't have a right to intervene or interfere with our business the united states did anyways because more or less those countries couldn't prevent it you see a couple of examples here the plat amendment in cuba the use of the roosevelt corollary in dominican republic puerto rico panama canal zone and there are many many many other examples of the united states doing this this prompted future presidents right to initiate the good neighbor policy so this was a 1930s policy to respect more of latin america so there's no such thing as the bad neighbor policy but one kind of way that you can interpret the roosevelt core layer was the us was being sort of a bad neighbor to its policies and of course some of these policies in uh getting into the affairs of latin america were um uh were not endorsed by those nations uh lastly one of our or the last sort of significant contribution we'll talk about roosevelt in terms of foreign policy was his role in the russo-japanese war uh russia was an old power you know russia had been uh kind of king of the hill following the french revolution they were the only nation uh great britain to a certain extent to resist uh napoleon and uh his incursions right the russians stopped napoleon and so the russians were considered a major power for that reason but japan was kind of a new power and up-and-comer and during this conflict everybody expected russia to win there were also a lot of um views related to racial supremacy that people couldn't couldn't think that a non-european nation could defeat a european nation on the battlefield but however in this war japan one right and this sort of begins an uneasy uh tension between japan and the us in the pacific and really what foreign policy after that is going to be related to is to limit japan's influence of course this builds up all the way until 1941 which is the bombing of you know pearl harbor which gets the united states involved in uh in world war ii uh roosevelt was given the nobel peace prize for so roosevelt got the nobel peace prize for bringing peace and he negotiated a peace between japan and russia japan being the winner but roosevelt wanted this war to end because he was afraid that japan was going to win and take a lot more so he was trying to limit the power of the japanese this also included intimidating japan oops by sailing the what was called the great white fleet by sailing that around the pacific ocean you know this would have been roosevelt's proverbial big stick right to ensure that the japanese knew the americans had the military force if their ambitions got too large now of course they didn't get too large at this particular time but you know eventually those uh the ambitions or the conflict between the us and japan does eventually come to uh you know to a war but that's much later on in the 1940s