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D.Dollar Diplomacy
1) William Howard Taft to succeed TR as president
2) Felt he could replace militarism (Big Stick) with
more subtle and effective business investment
(replace dollars for bullets)
a. Use foreign policy to protect Wall Street
investments abroad
b. Use Wall Street investments abroad to finance
foreign policy
3) Pump US $ into Caribbean to decrease reliance on
European $
4) Political influence to follow the money
E. Dollar Diplomacy in Caribbean
1) US investments in Cent. Amer.:
a. $41 mil. in 1908
b. $93 mil. in 1914
c. Money went to RR, mining, plantations
2) Failure: had to send military to support US
business interests in Honduras and Nicaragua
against political resistance.
3) Both Dollar and Big Stick Diplomacy were needed
in two countries
F. Dollar Diplomacy in China
1) Plan to extend US influence of Open Door Policy
(want to gain at expense of everyone else)
2) Secretary of State Philander Knox secured US
financing of large new RR in China
3) Knox tried to neutralize other (Russia and Japan
built and owned) RRs already existing
a. US and international banks to buy RRs
b. Banks to turn them over to China
3) Zimmerman Telegram
4) U.S. hope end war quickly, insure itself major role
in ensuing peace.
4) Wilsons idealism: make world safe for
democracy, war to end wars
K.Wilsons peace ideals: The Fourteen Points
1) Jan. 1918 Wilson goes to Congress and sets
ground rules for peace
2) First 13 points designed to remove causes of war
& boundary changes
a. freedom of seas
b. open diplomacy (end secret diplomacy)
c. reduction of armaments
d. return of Alsace-Lorraine to France
e. creation of independent Poland (previously
partitioned by Prussia, Russia, Austria)
f. National self-determination of peoples: right for
people to decide for themselves how and by
whom they would be controlled (self-rule)
Mainly for people of Austrian, Ottoman empires
g. Mediation of competing colonial claims
3) 14th Point: League of Nations = organization to
keep world peace (Wilsons most valued point)
L. Struggle for ratification of the Versailles Treaty in
United States
1) Wilsons mistake
a. 2/3 of Senate had to approve treaty and Senate
controlled by Republicans
b. excluded Republicans from peace negotiations
c. campaigned against them in 1919 elections