American Experience

David McCullough
on TR's World View

Well, he believed to his boots that virtue and strength were not disjunctive, and it was fine to be good, but it was better to be good and strong, too. And he believed that we should be a strong country and, by that, he meant military strength. He was a great admirer of the writings of Admiral Mahan, who preached the importance of sea power, but, he didn't need a great deal of preaching about that. He felt it anyway. And he wanted a two-ocean navy. He wanted a navy that could come and go to the Pacific or the Atlantic He felt that history had left us no choice; we had to be a power in the world, we had to be a force in the world, like it or not. And the country better face up to that. And, in keeping with this notion of sea power on both oceans, worldwide, was the dream of a -- an isthmian canal, a Panama Canal, as it became.

Well, by his interpretation of events, the Colombians -- and Panama, of course, then was part of Colombia -- were being extremely high-handed and arbitrary and what right had they to stand in the way of progress? From their point of view, he was being extremely high-handed and arrogant and what right did he have to tell them how to conduct their business? I don't think there's any question that he would not have approached one of the great European powers that way. He wouldn't have dealt as he did with Colombia with, say, Britain or France or Germany. He is showing some of his less attractive sides in this affair and it was unfortunate that he was so impatient. His impatience came to the fore as a great disadvantage in this situation and had he been a little more diplomatic and patient, probably an acceptable agreement could have been worked out with Colombia. Instead, this sort of comic opera, Panama revolution, that took place, which would never had happened without our participation in it -- either direct or oblique -- created the new nation of Panama. We then dealt with Panama instead of having to deal with Colombia, which seemed all very neat and clever but would lead to big problems in time to come.

This is the essence of gunboat diplomacy. Every time one hears of gunboat diplomacy, one can imagine the old cartoons that appeared at the time of the Panama revolution showing the American gunboat, and eventually gunboats, arriving in force to make sure it all came off. It's too bad. It's a shame that our political and diplomatic handling of the situation wasn't as effective, as thoughtful, as professional an understanding of the nature of the terrain as was our engineering in building the canal.

It upset many people in his own administration and he kept trying to justify it, he tried to defend himself, argue what the legality of it was, and finally-- later on -- in a speech he made in California, he said, "I took Panama and let Congress debate that while I went ahead and built the canal." But "I took Panama" is really about as accurate a way to say it as anyone could have and he said it himself.