A New Player.

During the early decades of the twentieth century the United States emerged as a world power. The wisdom and propriety of how it wielded its newfound power in the 1910s have been much debated. Proponents of the U.S. military and international economic policies of that decade have asserted that the country used its influence to promote democracy and economic growth. Critics of those same policies have described them as self-interested military and economic imperialism.

Dollar Diplomacy.

In a world that had been dominated by the great European powers for four centuries, the United States sought its share of international influence and world markets. American interventionism during the 1910s took two forms: military action and political- economic intercession. These methods, dubbed "Dollar Diplomacy" during the presidency of William Howard Taft, continued under his successor, Woodrow Wilson. In...