In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson said that the United States should stay out of “entangling alliances” with other nations. For almost a hundred years, the country followed that path.
However, by the time Theodore Roosevelt was president, the U.S. was becoming a world power. It had won the Spanish-American War. It now controlled Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. They were all former colonies of Spain. Roosevelt believed the U.S. should take its place as a world leader. He did everything in his power to make that happen.
