The Life of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Theodore Roosevelt

By Jason Sibert

For the four years of the Donald Trump Administration, foreign policy has been defined by isolation, spurring allies, praising dictators, and cancelling treaties.

There is another tradition in American foreign policy. Former Teddy Roosevelt’s efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War represents a part of that tradition. During his presidency, Roosevelt prioritized good relations with Japan. From 1904 to 1905 Japan and Russia were at war over imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. Both sides asked Roosevelt to mediate an end to the war.

TR held a conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in 1906. This creative diplomacy had a civil rights dimension. Japan was upset about anti-Japanese sentiment breaking out in California. TR supported Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, an agreement which attempted to ease tensions between our country and Japan. Roosevelt forced San Francisco to desegregate their schools, as Japanese Americans now could attend schools where they had previously been prohibited.  The United States also agreed to accept Japanese immigration and Japan did not allow any more immigration to the U.S. However, the agreement was superseded by the Immigration Act of 1924. Roosevelt also invited African American leader Brooker T. Washington to the White House during his presidency.

Roosevelt’s Nobel Prize was controversial with some, as those who protested mentioned his support of an American takeover of the Philippians in the 1890’s. TR broke from the Republican Party in 1912 and formed the Progressive Party. He advocated ideas that would be a part of his nephew’s, Franklin Roosevelt, New Deal.

It must be added that TR pondered the question of peace more as he grew older. He supported the idea that there needs to be a global order: In his Nobel prize address of 1910, he said, “it would be a master stroke if those great powers honestly bent on peace would form a League of Peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others.” It would have executive power such as the Hauge Conventions of 1899 and 1907 lacked. He called for American participation in a League of Peace. When Word War I broke out, Roosevelt proposed “a World League for the Peace of Righteousness,” in September 1914, which would preserve sovereignty but limit armaments and require arbitration.

TR was a player in the plans for a post-World War I peace. President Woodrow Wilson’s plans for a League of Nations was somewhat like his internationalism but not the same. WW rightly saw TR and Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge’s plans for post-war peace as being opposed to his own. Both Lodge and TR were worried that certain parts of the League of Nations would infringe on the U.S. Constitution. Late in life, TR wanted to make the Republican Party a party of “constrained, constructive radicalism.” He told the 1918 state convention of the Maine Republican Party that he stood for old-age pensions, insurance for sickness and unemployment, construction of public housing for low-income families, the reduction of working hours, aid to farmers, and more regulation of large corporations.

Can the U.S. build a “constrained, constructive radicalism” as we move beyond Trump?

Jason Sibert is the executive director of the Peace Economy Project