formation of a series of policies that could be shown to be moral as well. The fact that they also served the specific economic interests of the United States can be evaluated in retrospect, as will be seen hereafter. Nevertheless, Theodore Roosevelt's basis for forming foreign policy in Latin America was whether nations could be held to the same moral code as individuals. Indeed, Theodore Roosevelt appears to have been the first American president to see the presidency as a principal vehicle for forming foreign policy on one hand, and on the other to realize what it was to lead a world power. Accordingly, he viewed American interest and security in terms of what might endanger it, and did not hesitate to act (i.e., intervene) when the balance of power seemed to be a problem for the interests of the United States. The United States' willingness to support annexing the Philippines, the Teller Resolution and Platt Amendment respecting Cuba, the Hay-Paunceforte, Hay-Herran, and Hay-Buena-Varilla Treaties that anchored American control of the building of the Panama Canal, and the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (each of which was embedded into American policy from 1901 to 1904) all reflected an impulse toward imperialism that Theodore Roosevelt had and that he was able to transfer successfully to the American public.
Imperialistic successes of the United States in Latin America actually began with the close of the Spanish-American War in 1898, whereby Spain, of which Cuba had been a colony since the earliest years of New-World European exploration, "recognized the independence of Cuba and ceded Puerto Rico to the United States, thus losing her last possessions in the New World . . . [T]he United States, as the result of its victory, emerged as a great power, dominant in the Caribbean, and destined to play an increasingly important role in world affairs" (Martin and Lovett 305). It was during this period that the Teller ...