Big Stick Diplomacy Analysis

Empires thrive off of defying the the principle of legitimacy. Throughout history there are numerous accounts of religious and political groups maintaining their power by restricting the voices of the people, brutalizing them, and treating them with little or no fairness. The effectiveness of these reoccurring actions become increasingly evident when analyzing McKinley and Roosevelt’s Big Stick Diplomacy. Big Stick Diplomacy was a tactic used in foreign affairs. Roosevelt coined the saying, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” when referring to his foreign policy. The U.S military would use this tactic when attempting to attain foreign land. They would speak to them softly and if the natives did not comply with their request, they would hit …show more content…
President McKinley planned on gaining control of the islands as a way to have an upper hand in international trade and train a strong naval base. The U.S military was not given consent to take over the Philippines, but the Manifest Destiny ideology led McKinley and his army to to believe that this was the only logical action that could be taken. McKinley established his imperialistic views by saying, “[…] we could not leave them to themselves - they were unfit for self-government - and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain’s was; and (4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them” (Manifest Destiny, Continued). The people of the Philippines were seen as savages. In the eyes of the U.S Government they were uneducated, uncivilized, and in dire need of disciplinary action like a parent disciplining a defiant child. With such a negative connotation on the shoulders of the Philippines, they would never be given a voice. Big Stick Diplomacy and Manifest Destiny erased the rights of the Filipino people to express their outrage and discomfort. If they did not comply with this takeover, Filipinos were raped, killed, and tortured; this is the “carry a big stick” aspect. Noncompliance led to a fatal hit by the behemoth that is the United States of America. Even those who did obey were shot and killed as an example; it was stay in line or be hit. The brutality pitted against the Philippines was not a form of democracy, but of tyranny. The first law, which says that the people must have a voice, is violated by Mckinley’s foreign policy. The U.S stripped away the God given rights of the Filipino people, which defies the principle of