America would never pursue the systematic colonization practiced by European nations, but it shed all inhibitions about meddling in the affairs of countries it deemed strategically important. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, added a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that the United States would intervene in any Latin American or Caribbean country whose government it deemed not to America’s liking. “The United States of America has not the option as to whether it will or it will not play a great part in the world,” Roosevelt would argue. “It must play a great part. All that it can
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