Harry Targ
Sixty-six years ago, I wrote a paper for a college class on President Theodore Roosevelt’s “Great White Fleet.” For some reason that assignment came to mind a few days ago, but I had to do an electronic search to recall what was the “Great White Fleet.”
It turns out that Theodore Roosevelt, former Secretary of the Navy, later President, advocated what history books call the “Spanish/American War,” occupying Cuba, and Puerto Rico and sending the US military to “liberate ” the Philippines in 1899. As President, Roosevelt launched 16 battle ships , painted white, in international waters between 1907 and 1909. Some 14,000 sailors participated in the travels. Congress initially objected to the expenditure but TR, the booster of US military empire on the world stage ignored the legislative branch as the ships sailed the Atlantic and Pacific, stopping at various ports of call. The message was clear. The United States was the new imperial power.
During a presentation in Norway in 1910 after his presidency Roosevelt
praised the U.S. for leaving Cuba as promised after the 1898 war to return
only temporarily because of “….a disaster…a revolution” such
that…. we were obliged to land troops again.” The President proudly declared
that: “And before I left the Presidency Cuba resumed its career as a
separate republic, holding its head erect as a sovereign state among the other
nations of the earth. All that our people want is just exactly what the Cuban
people themselves want—that is, a continuance of order within the island, and
peace and prosperity, so that there shall be no shadow of an excuse for any
outside intervention.” (“The Colonial Policy of the United States,” An
Address Delivered at Christiania, Norway, May 5, 1910).
Earlier on January 18, 1909, to the Methodist Episcopal
Church (“The Expansion of the White Races”) Roosevelt applauded the increasing
presence--he estimated 100 million people—of “European races” throughout the
world. The indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere have been
assimilated with their “intruders” with the result “that the Indian population
of America is larger today than it was when Columbus discovered the
continent and stands on a far higher plane of happiness and efficiency.”
And to highlight the missionary message Roosevelt added: “Of course the best that can happen to any people that has not already a high civilization of its own is to assimilate and profit by American or European ideas, the ideas of civilization and Christianity, without submitting to alien control; but such control, in spite of all its defects, is in a very large number of cases the prerequisite condition to the moral and material advance of the peoples who dwell in the darker corners of the earth.”
My remembrance of the “Great White Fleet” was sparked by a recent article about President Trump’s December 2025 proposal that the US allocate $275 billion dollars for the construction of a “Golden Fleet” of 15 nuclear powered battle ships. Trump said that the Golden Fleet would “help maintain American military supremacy, revive the American shipbuilding industry, and inspire fear in America’s enemies over the world” (Brett Wilkins, “Trump’s $275 Billion Battleship Fleet Set to Be ‘Most Expensive US Warshiips Ever,” Common Dreams, August 4, 2026.). Wilkins quotes Congressional Budget Office estimates that the first ship would cost $23 billion and each subsequent ship would cost $18 billion.
Looking back 120 years, we can speculate about the
possible consequences of Theodore Roosevelt’s arming and sending overseas the
US navy. While no single policy can explain all of world history in the
twentieth century since the fleet set sail, the world since then experienced
two world wars, the United States participation in over 200 military
interventions in many countries, millions killed in wars and other interventions, and the
world still remains filled with violence, racism and hate. In addition, many
Americans still accept the premises of an American Exceptionalism and white
racism stated and exemplified by President Roosevelt and today President Trump.
And as William Appleman Williams wrote originally in a
1980 article in The Nation, August 2, 1980):
“There is no way to understand the nature of our predicament except by confronting our history as an empire. That is the only way to comprehend the Iranian demand that we acknowledge our long-term interference in their affairs, the widespread anger about our acquiescence in the progression of Israel’s settlements on the West Bank, the Russian charge that we apply one standard to them and another to ourselves and the deep resentment of us among the peoples of the poor countries. The only way we can come to terms with those matters is to look our imperial history in the eye without blinking, flinching or walking away into the wonderland of Woodrow Wilson’s saving the world for democracy.”
As the Williams quote suggests Roosevelt’s “Great
White Fleet” and Trump’s “Golden Fleet” are connected.
Image from Code Pink
