Americans have long believed that the United States does not enter foreign conflicts or wars unless "forced" to do so. For example, George W. Bush commented in his 2001 inaugural address that America had gone out into the world to protect, not to possess; and to defend, not to conquer. Do you agree or disagree with this statement related to American foreign policy from 1880–1920? Give examples to support your position. To be clear: This response should focus only on the period from 1880-1920, Bush’s statement is merely to prompt your thinking about a philosophy of foreign policy.

I disagree with the following statement: “from 1880-1920, the United States did not enter foreign conflicts and wars unless ‘forced’ to do so.”The United States’ unforced involvement in foreign conflicts was highlighted during the Spanish-American war. Beginning in 1898, the US military fought in foreign lands, even as the sovereignty of the United States remained unthreatened. When Spain allegedly caused an explosion on the USS Maine in 1898 that killed 250 Americans (although subsequent investigation proved the USS Maine exploded not as a result of a Spanish attack but because of a boiler room accident), US President William McKinley and congress declared war on Spain and sent military forces to help the US eventually win control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. It’s hard to argue that the US was “forced” into waging multiple military campaigns to wrest islands from Spanish control, just because a single US ship exploded. Dating back to the fifth-century political writings of St. Augustine, ‘just war theory’ traditionally holds that a military response to enemy aggression should be proportionate with the amount of enemy aggression: “Let necessity, therefore, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you.”In the case of the Spanish-American war, the casualties from the USS Maine incident paled in comparison to the subsequent, US-instigated battles that killed thousands of Spanish. Far from being “forced” into fighting, the United States escalated conflicts with Spain for the purposes of helping bring about Cuban independence and of securing access to resources and territory in the Philippines and Puerto Rico. The United States’ interventionist, expansionist foreign policy in the late 1890s suggests it was not fighting out of necessity.
Further Reading: Musicant, Ivan, “Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century,” (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998).
Bishop of Hippo St. Augustine, The Political Writings of St. Augustine, (Regency Publishing, September 1, 1996) p.183.
Roosevelt, Theodore , The Rough Riders, (New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1899).

The forty years that this question addresses saw the transformation of the United States from a regional to a world power, and some of the incidents that took place during this transformation lead me to conclude the statements offered by Bush in his inaugural address cannot be objectively true. President McKinley’s decision to occupy the Philippines in 1899 was couched in language that European citizens would have recognized, referring as it does to notions of “White Man’s Burden,” the supposed obligation of white men to “educate” peoples who many Westerners viewed as "savages," not fit to govern their own country. Similarly, while America has only seldom sought to colonize regions on different continents, the closing of the frontier in 1899 is remembered by many Native Americans as the conclusion of over 100 years of American rampages across their lands. But no nation in the world is guiltless when it comes to pursuing its interests abroad, and a more productive way of considering America’s record over this period is perhaps to compare it with other powerful nations of the time.
Even well into the twentieth century, European countries were seeking to expand their territorial empires by force, with the Austrian conquest of two Baltic States in 1908 as the most recent example. By contrast, colonial actions have always been far harder to justify in The United States because of its strong traditions of isolationism dating back to the founding fathers. The two-party system means that any colonialist action pursued by the one is liable to vigorous condemnation by the other, as McKinley discovered when endeavoring to push his plan for the Philippines through Congress. America’s absorption in 1887 of Hawaii took place in the context of a rebellion by the Hawaiian Patriotic League, a popular group within the kingdom who favored Americanization. Even in the case of the war for Cuban independence, an incident where American intervention was far easier to justify, it took a definite provocation, the sinking of the USS Maine, before America resorted to war with the Spanish.
America’s most significant intervention abroad during this period, its sending of an expeditionary force to France during World War I was not about territorial gains or even about advancing America’s interests in Europe, with American businesses having benefitted greatly from the increased demands from both sides for loans and resources. Rather, it was about maintaining the Concert of Europe—the power balance between European nations—and even about advancing non-imperialistic principles, as evidenced by President Wilson’s 14 Points, which called for self-determination for all nations.