Fateful Transitions. Daniel M. Kliman
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in strength.”24 The steady buildup of the American fleet thereafter wrought a transformation in British perceptions of the Royal navy’s predominance. In a paper written for the first lord of the admiralty in 1899, the director of naval intelligence admitted that the Royal navy’s squadrons in North America, the Pacific, and the Caribbean had become “completely outclassed.”25 By the early years of the twentieth century, Great Britain’s loss of maritime supremacy to the United States was considered potentially global in scope. In 1901, the first lord of the admiralty observed: “if the Americans choose to pay for what they can easily afford, they can gradually build up a navy, fully as large and then larger than ours.”26 Three years later, the British naval attaché in Washington offered a similar assessment: the United States intended to become the world’s second maritime power, and might ultimately displace Great Britain as the first.27
Fears of losing maritime supremacy to Germany emerged during roughly the same period. Before 1896, the German navy—dwarfed by its British counterpart—aroused derision rather than alarm. However, the attitude within British official circles changed when the first naval bill was introduced to the Reichstag in 1897. Elites in Great Britain worried that a stronger German navy might join with the Dual Alliance—France and Russia—to offset the Royal navy’s worldwide dominance.28
Unease hardened into outright alarm as the German navy grew rapidly from 1900 to 1905. During this period, British elites began to perceive the Royal navy’s all-important primacy in European waters as increasingly tenuous. The Admiralty identified the emerging challenge to the Royal navy’s regional predominance, and recommended that the home fleet be strengthened “if it is to be on a par with the formidable German force which is being rapidly developed in the North Sea.”29 By early 1902, concerns about Germany’s potential to eclipse the Royal navy in European waters permeated much of the British government. Reflecting this, the Conservative Cabinet decided to construct a naval base on the North Sea with a fleet to “be practically determined by the power of the German navy.”30
Last, the Admiralty’s readiness to alter the venerable two-power standard speaks to changing British perceptions of the maritime balance. The two-power standard had previously meant maintaining a navy equivalent to the combined fleets of the Dual Alliance. Looking forward at the end of 1904, the Admiralty anticipated that the two-power standard would have to incorporate Germany to remain a valid measure of maritime supremacy.31
American Democracy, German Autocracy
Although the United States and Germany emerged as rising powers at roughly the same time, they differed in one fundamental respect: regime type. Whereas America was a democracy, Germany, despite parliamentary trappings, remained an autocracy. This disparity is not fully reflected in the Polity IV dataset. The United States during the prewar period receives a polity score of +10, denoting a strongly democratic regime. Germany receives a polity score of + 1 from 1895 to 1908 and +2 from 1909 to 1914.32 At the middle of the polity spectrum, it is difficult to draw conclusions about regime type. On the other hand, power centralization and domestic transparency—the additional set of criteria introduced in Chapter 2—clearly distinguish American democracy from German autocracy.
During the period of its ascendance, the United States had a decentralized political system. The House of Representatives was popularly elected. State legislators, who were directly accountable to the public, elected members of the Senate until 1913. Last, the popular vote determined the makeup of an electoral college, which in turn selected the president. The combination of a competitively elected executive and a bicameral legislature meant that America at the turn of the twentieth century had more than three checks and balances.
By contrast, Germany’s political system concentrated authority. The German constitution placed the kaiser at the epicenter of government, particularly in the realm of foreign policy. Although the Reichstag was competitively elected, and multiple parties including those hostile to the government held large numbers of seats, the chancellor was appointed and dismissed by the kaiser alone. Rather than chosen by parties with significant representation in the Reichstag, ministers served at the kaiser’s pleasure and could not even be members of parliament.33 Germany thus featured only one check and balance.
On regime transparency, the United States and Germany also sharply differed. This becomes readily evident when assessing freedom of the press. The U.S. media enjoyed constitutional safeguards. The first amendment included in the Bill of Rights provides that “Congress shall make no law…. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”34 By the mid-1890s, changes in the revenue structure of newspapers—the rise of commercial advertising—had also freed editors from financial dependence on political parties.35 The German constitution failed to enshrine journalistic freedom. As a result, the government systematically wielded charges of slander, libel, and lèse-majesté against publications that it found objectionable.36 Employing the abbreviated survey of media freedom developed in the previous chapter, the United States receives a zero—a free press—while Germany receives a four—an unfree press.
Great Britain Appeases the United States
As the United States burst onto the global scene, Great Britain opted for a strategy of appeasement. Virtually all points of tension in Anglo-American relations from 1895 on resulted in unilateral British concessions.
In July 1895, the United States intervened in the long-running boundary dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela. Unhappy with the British response, Richard Olney, the American secretary of state, issued a dispatch to the British government demanding that London agree to arbitration. Replying five months later, the Cabinet not only refused arbitration, but also denied the right of the United States to interfere in Venezuela and rejected the broader validity of the Monroe Doctrine.37 Infuriated by the British response, President Grover Cleveland submitted a special message to Congress in December claiming that in light of British intransigence, the United States would establish a commission to determine the true boundary, and if necessary, impose the commission’s findings using “every means in its power.”38
In the wake of Cleveland’s bellicose statement, the British government steadily retreated from its original position on arbitration of the Venezuelan boundary claims. Initiating informal negotiations with the United States in January 1896 implicitly conceded an American right to intervene. But Great Britain went much farther, and in February recognized the Monroe Doctrine. Arthur Balfour, at the time first lord of the treasury, declared: “there has never been, and there is not now, the slightest intention on the part of this country to violate what is the substance and essence of the Monroe Doctrine … a principle of policy which both they and we cherish.”39
Moreover, serial British concessions characterized negotiations over the scope of arbitration. Privately, the British had been willing to arbitrate with Venezuela provided that all territory within a line surveyed between 1841 and 1843 by the explorer Robert Schomburgk was excluded. Yet from the outset of negotiations, the British government backpedaled from this position, and merely proposed exempting settled areas on both sides of the line. The United States refused to exclude any territory from arbitration, and Great Britain then agreed to a preliminary enquiry to determine areas of settlement. The British suggested that ten years of inhabitation define a settlement; the Americans countered with sixty years; the resulting one-sided compromise was fifty years of occupation.40 Thus, on both the salience of the Monroe Doctrine and the actual arbitration procedure, Great Britain entirely acceded to U.S. demands.
In the years after the Venezuela crisis, the British government faced increasing pressure to rescind the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which precluded the United States from singlehandedly building a canal in Central America linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. President William McKinley’s annual message to Congress in 1898 called for action to construct a solely American canal. In January 1899, Congress began to consider legislation authorizing a canal through Nicaragua. The British soon gave way. Negotiations between U.S. secretary of state John Hay and British ambassador Julian Pauncefote concluded with an agreement in February 1900.41