The Queasy Side of Theodore Roosevelt’s Diplomatic Voyage

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/books/19book.html ^

[kcvl]

James Bradley’s incendiary new book about Theodore Roosevelt is not really packed with secrets. Much of the material it discusses has long been hidden in plain sight. But Roosevelt biographers often subscribe to certain orthodoxies, and one of them is this: When Roosevelt made noxiously racist and ethnocentric remarks about Anglo-Saxon greatness, so what? He was just voicing the tenets of his time.

Mr. Bradley, the author of “Flags of Our Fathers,” does not simply cite Roosevelt’s egregious talk. He presents this much-ignored aspect of Roosevelt’s thinking with sharp specificity (“I am so angry with that infernal little Cuban republic that I would like to wipe its people off the face of the earth,” Roosevelt wrote in 1906) and then goes on to make a much more damaging point, angrily and persuasively connecting Roosevelt’s race-based foreign policy miscalculations in Asia. His thesis in “The Imperial Cruise” is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt’s presidency.

“Here was the match that lit the fuse, and yet for decades we paid attention only to the dynamite,” Mr. Bradley writes. The flame to which he refers is Roosevelt’s secret diplomacy with Japan and his encouragement of Japanese imperialism. (“I should like to see Japan have Korea,” he once declared.) In a far-reaching book that also addresses Roosevelt’s misconceptions about Korea, Hawaii, China and the Philippines, Mr. Bradley places critical emphasis on the dangerous American-Japanese relationship that, he says, Roosevelt helped create.

“Knowing a lot about race theory but less about international diplomacy and almost nothing about Asia,” he writes, “Roosevelt in 1905 careened U.S.-Japanese relations on the dark side road leading to 1941.”

[kcvl]

The Imperial Cruise is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt's presidency

[kcvl]

James Bradley’s father, John Bradley, was one of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima

[SeeSharp]

The flame to which he refers is Roosevelt’s secret diplomacy with Japan and his encouragement of Japanese imperialism.

We laugh at the shameless politicization of the Nobel prize today but forget that the very first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, Teddy Roosevelt, had done everything he possibly could to precipitate the very war he got the prize for supposedly ending. All he really did was deliver Japan's terms to a defeated Russian Empire.

[OneWingedShark]

>“I should like to see Japan have Korea,” he once declared.

Why is this controversial? I mean, who DOESN’T want to see Japan have Korea?

;)

[nkycincinnatikid]

The imperialist war against Spain so beloved by the first Roosevelt led, in the Phillipines to about one million dead at the hands of the American army. What he wished for the trash in Cuba he no doubt was pleased to see done there.

[tanuki]

Wow! Thanks for posting this. I didn’t know about this book.

[Spartan79]

Knowing a lot about race theory but less about international diplomacy and almost nothing about Asia,” he writes, “Roosevelt in 1905 careened U.S.-Japanese relations on the dark side road leading to 1941.

We have a new occupant in the White House who knows a lot about race theory but less about international diplomacy and almost nothing about Asia (or anything else except Chicago politics). I'm queasy about the horrendous price this nation and out children and grandchildren may one day pay for his foolishness.

[Joe 6-pack]

You asked me not to ruin your Teddy crush...sorry :-)

[Cicero]

Well, I haven’t read the book, but it’s hard to see how Roosevelt encouraging Japan way back in 1905 could have had more than a marginal influence on what Japan did in 1941.

The Japanese were plenty imperialist (they were a warrior race with an emperor) before they ever met Teddy, who was only one of many players on the world stage of that time.

[kcvl]

Wow! Thanks for posting this. I didn’t know about this book.

The author was on IMUS this morning. He wants Roosevelt's 'Nobel Peace Prize' removed! Imus told him to get on Hannity, Beck or O'Reilly and people would help him do it.

Actually, IMUS said that people who heard about this would snatch that little WH curator up by the collar and tell him to get that out of the WH!

[kcvl]

His latest book, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War, details the 1905 diplomatic mission when Secretary of War William Howard Taft and company embarked across the Pacific to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea, at the request of President Theodore Roosevelt. Also on board was Teddy’s daughter Alice–a socialite whose reckless behavior acted as a media magnet and smokescreen for the secret negotiations of this voyage.

Bradley might best be known for Flags of Our Fathers, an account about his father and the men who raised the American flag at Iwo Jima that was also made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. Speaking to a room overflowing with people, Bradley professed that Imperial Cruise began when he “wondered about the source of conflict” surrounding Pearl Harbor. In the summer of 2005, Bradley followed in the wake of the SS Manchuria’s 1905 expedition, retracing its steps and uncovering what “lit the fuse on events that we would later call World War II.”

Among his discoveries, Bradley found out that Roosevelt sent Taft to Japan in order to introduce a “secret treaty” that encouraged the Japanese to expand into Korea. However, Roosevelt did not expect that Japan would attempt to emulate America’s foreign policy of expansion thirty-seven years later with the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

By piecing together Roosevelt’s correspondence, Bradley reshapes our image of Roosevelt–the benevolent ruler and rough rider known for his adage “speak softly and carry a big stick”–into a “secret agent of the Japanese.”

http://rye.patch.com/articles/flags-of-our-father-author-james-bradley-discusses-new-book

[xkaydet65]

There's a dozen books that have included all of this and more. To name two that should be read before venturing into Bradley's tome, Akira Iyire's Pacific Estrangement, about the failure of American Japanese relations. And Sexton's classic, Soldiers in the Sun, the best description of the war against Aguinaldo.

I did a paper on the Filipino Insurrection in college and an historiography of the literature on U.S. Japanese relations in grad school. I'll take on Mr. Bradley's work when it comes out in paper. Let you know then.

[The Duke]

Teddy Roosevelt *CRAPS* bigger than James Bradley.

[elkfersupper]

Ah, Teddy Roosevelt.

I like the outdoorsman part, I sort of like the San Juan hill part, I REALLY like the part about him standing up and finishing a speech after having been shot in the chest.

But, he was a classic liberal / progressive ala Woodrow Wilson.

Consequently, he really should have been strangled in his crib.

[SoCalPol]

I just heard Bradly on John Batchelor.

Good, bad or otherwise.
The advantage of hindsight:
You know the end of the story and know what to do to chang it.

what you may do in 1905, you are dealing with what is at that point in time.

In 1905, you don’t see airplanes flying hundreds of miles,
or issues that could or would come up.

[Oztrich Boy]

It's some dumb leftist's take on history.

Japan wasn't really expansionist c1900, the two wars they fought: 1895 about Chinese control of Korea, and 1904 about Russia control of Manchuria were really about protectining the Home Islands.

Wide mass guess time: Post TR's Voyage of the Great White Fleet, c1910 the Japanese are looking forward to a 20th Century where the 19th Century Pax Britannica has been replaced by a Three Power Peace (Britain, USA, Japan).

With the combination of 1902 Anglo-Japan Treaty and the "secret treaty with Roosevelt" this looks like a reaonable possibilty.

February 1917 Britain/Japan agree on splitting the German territories in the Pacific on the Equator. This would give a Pacific balance; Japan - North West, Britain - South West, USA East and Central.

NOW along comes a racist US President to throw a spanner and demand ending of the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Treaty.

Japan loses face, the military seizes power, and sets on a policy of expansionsism, and the rest is history. Bloody Stupid Wilson!.

OK there are few rough edges there. After all I only thought of the theory five minutes ago, but I'm prepared to match it against Bradley's, whatever it is (I haven;t read the book either)

[Cicero]

If there was one single thing that led to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, I would say it was probably FDR’s decision, along with Great Britain, to cut off Japan’s access to oil supplies. The Japanese knew they either had to regain access to oil or give up their hopes of becoming a modern state.

But I would agree with you about Woodrow Wilson. He was a giant troublemaker, and certainly his stupid actions after the War in Europe led, step by step, to Hitler and the Second World War. Wilson has been greatly underestimated as a candidate for Worst President Ever (along with FDR, LBJ, Jimmuh, and now The One).

[SunkenCiv]

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[Michael Zak]

TR was an inreresting guy!