#3 - Buyer’s Remorse (September 2022)
The letter below has everything a historian could hope for in a source. The subject clearly describes his thinking at a critical moment and as a bonus uses a memorable turn of phrase. It is even typewritten! (Something those who have struggled with handwritten document can appreciate.) Indeed, the letter might be too perfect a source. Historians cite this letter in virtually every work touching on naval or Pacific strategy during the Roosevelt administration, causing me to wonder whether we might not be giving it undue weight? Do Roosevelt’s actions and other evidence confirm that what he said in the “Heel of Achilles” letter truly reflected his thoughts at the time? Those are the questions I am asking for the relevant chapter of Acts of Madness, but for now let’s put those aside to concentrate on this fascinating letter.
The significance of the letter is that it indicates a dramatic reversal in Roosevelt’s strategic views. Less than a decade before, he had been enthusiastic about virtually every aspect of imperial expansion: naval bases, great power geopolitics, and the sort of cultural imperialism exemplified by Rudyard Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden” or the statue of Roosevelt that once stood outside of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the weeks before the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt had gone to extreme lengths to ensure that the Asiatic Squadron of Commodore George Dewey would be ready to attack Manila. Later, during his first term as president, Roosevelt mounted a vigorous defense of US Army actions in the Philippines.
So what changed by 1907?
The watershed moment was the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, which revealed the extent of Japanese power and assertiveness. Though there had been some recognition of Japan’s strength by Roosevelt and others before then, the decision about whether the United States should retain the Philippines in 1898 had generally centered on calculations in relation to the European powers. Though the United States could hope to compete favorably against those even more distant states, Japan was a different matter. The Russo-Japanese War made clear that it could easily take the Philippines long before the United States could muster any meaningful reinforcement to the islands, an advantage that could also be exploited as leverage in a diplomatic crisis.
At the time of this letter, Roosevelt was painfully aware of this, as he was just completing the diplomatic and political clean-up from just such a crisis. The improbable origin of the 1906-7 war scare was the San Francisco school board. Its order to segregate Chinese and Japanese students in the city’s schools was only the first of a number of similarly racist laws, ordinances, and violence that caused a serious diplomatic rift with Japan, which also resented the pro-Russian tilt of the US-mediated Treaty of Portsmouth. Early in the 1906-7 crisis, Roosevelt had appealed to West Coast state and local authorities to moderate their actions. He refers to his inability to sway these local politicians at the top of the third page.
Indeed, though the shift in the military balance of power in the western Pacific might have been the proximate cause of Roosevelt’s reassessment of the Philippines, the overarching theme of this letter is frustration with domestic political constraints. Roosevelt had not changed his mind about the strategic and cultural desirability of imperialism, only whether the United States could successfully carry out what he and his friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge had earlier called their “large policy.” Emblematic of this resistance was the chair of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, Eugene Hale, who is briefly referenced in the letter. Hale was something of a nemesis to Roosevelt, for despite years of presidential lobbying and being a fellow Republican, Hale resisted the ambitious battleship building program that was one of Roosevelt’s top priorities. Within the litany of grievances expressed in this letter, perhaps the reluctance to fund capital ships is the one linked most closely to his reluctant conclusion that the Philippines were a “heel of Achilles.” In short, this letter is an example of a statesman trying to reconcile what he believed to be best with what domestic political support would bear.
(Copy of letter from Theodore Roosevelt to William H. Taft, Oyster Bay, New York, 21 August 1907, Box 166, Elihu Root Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington, DC)
