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The Journal of Military History 67.3 (2003) 956-957



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The New World Power: American Foreign Policy, 1898-1917. By Robert E. Hannigan. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8122-3666-1. Maps. Notes. Index. Pp. xiii, 365. $49.95.

In The New World Power, Robert E. Hannigan attempts to explain the fundamental course, objectives, and methods of American foreign policy during the nation's "rise to world power" from the late 1890s to its entry into World War I in 1917. Basing his work on extensive research in American archives and manuscript collections and on thorough examination of the scholarly literature on critical events and the foreign policies of other nations, Hannigan focuses on the ideas and actions of Presidents William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson and of certain of their most important advisors, for example Colonel Edward M. House.

The common theme in all four presidencies, according to Hannigan, was a "search for order," defined in terms of Social Darwinian concepts of race, gender, nationality, and culture. In practical terms, American leaders sought to shore up an international system that they viewed as favorable to the gradual expansion of American political and economic influence around the globeā€”one in which "mature," "responsible" white western powers maintained peace among themselves while guiding the "immature" peoples of the nonwestern world toward order and enlightenment. In discussing economic expansionism, Hannigan parallels the interpretation of William Appleman Williams and his followers, but he also sees American statesmen as having pursued broad political and ideological goals rather than being driven by purely economic interests.

Surveying American policy by region, Hannigan recounts familiar events: the war with Spain; the securing of the Panama Canal; the military interventions in the Caribbean and Mexico; Dollar Diplomacy; the pursuit of the "Open Door" in China; the establishment of the Pan American system; America's role in promoting international arbitration, a world court, and ultimately a league of nations; and Wilson's progression from neutrality to a war to "make the world safe for democracy." His unique contribution is his largely successful effort to relate each of these episodes and policies to his [End Page 956] common theme of the pursuit of a world order congenial to American interests and to the advancement of civilization as American leaders defined it.

Hannigan touches only marginally on American military affairs in the period. He takes note of the influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan on naval policy and American interest in the Caribbean, and he describes Wilson's naval building program of 1916 as directed as much against Britain and Japan, among other powers, as against Germany. Other military issues receive little mention even when they had considerable effect on diplomacy, as did for example the United States failure to provide adequate defense for the Philippines. A reader of this book could profitably consult along with it James Abrahamson's America Arms for a New Century and Brian Linn's Guardians of Empire to fill in the military side of the picture. Nevertheless, this volume is a significant synthesis of American foreign relations in the period and deserves the attention of anyone interested in what we now call national security policy.

 



Graham A. Cosmas
Arlington, Virginia

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