Copyright by Hillel Ofek 2018 The Dissertation Committee for Hillel Ofek Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: A Just Peace: Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and the Moral Basis of American Foreign Policy Committee: Thomas Pangle, Supervisor Peter Trubowitz, Co-Supervisor Eugene Gholz Devin Stauffer Jeremi Suri Jeffrey Tulis A Just Peace: Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and the Moral Basis of American Foreign Policy by Hillel Ofek Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Dedication To my parents, Boaz and Nehama Ofek. Acknowledgements The questions and ideas presented in this work grew out of years of learning from extraordinarily gifted and erudite teachers. I was fortunate that several of them agreed to serve on my dissertation committee. I am greatly indebted to my dissertation advisors, Thomas Pangle and Peter Trubowitz, for their thoughtfulness and patience from the early to the final days of this project. Starting and finishing this work depended on their wisdom and magnanimity. While writing my dissertation, I more than once felt a vague sense that my arguments needed more precision and clarification. I admit that, sometimes, I was inclined to muddle through. So I am grateful that I had a dissertation committee of exceptionally discerning readers—Eugene Gholz, Devin Stauffer, Jeremi Suri, and Jeff Tulis—to bring out the problems, big and small, in a way that improved this work and, I am sure, will help me even more in the future. Thanks also to William Inboden and Mark Lawrence of the Clements Center for History, Strategy and Statecraft, which enriched my graduate career with lectures and lunches, and brought me into contact with some of the university’s (and the world’s) most impressive students and scholars. Finally, for their encouragement and support, I wish to thank my parents and my siblings, Ariel, Ayala, and Orr. v A Just Peace: Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and the Moral Basis of American Foreign Policy Hillel Ofek, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2018 Supervisors: Thomas Pangle and Peter Trubowitz This dissertation attempts to demonstrate the relevance and significance of American presidents' moral arguments to their foreign policy decisions. An interpretive approach that treats as important what presidents say is important to them suggests that so-called “normative” questions about rightful intervention may represent earnest and provocative moral foreign policy imperatives that are the reasons for their actions. These inherently significant imperatives deserve empirical inquiry in the field of international relations, which tends to vacate moral opinions of any agency in order to fit them into generic, deterministic mechanisms. As a contrast to this tendency, this study analyzes the pivotal decade of the 1890s, and in particular the major foreign-policy controversies of Grover Cleveland and William McKinley. What emerges from this exploration is that, even in the frenzy of his situation, each president deliberately sought, and argued for, a policy consistent with his understanding of international justice. vi Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: The Normative-Positivist Divide in International Relations............................. 13 The Rise of Structural Determinism ....................................................................... 13 The Normative Debate About Intervention ............................................................ 17 Communitarianism .................................................................................... 20 Humanitarianism ....................................................................................... 27 The Positivist Study of Morality in Foreign Policy .................................................. 31 Two Deterministic Approaches to Moral Action in Foreign Policy ............... 32 Instrumentalism: Morality as Strategy ................................................ 32 Reductionism: Morality as Epiphenomena.......................................... 37 The Foundational Efforts to Tame the “Moral Force” in Foreign Policy ....... 43 Conclusion ................................................................................................ 57 Chapter 2: Interpreting the Moral Basis of Foreign Policy ................................................ 60 Taking Ideas Seriously ........................................................................................... 61 The Interpretive Approach to Foreign Policy .......................................................... 65 Interpreting the Strategic Shift: 1893–1901 ............................................................ 74 Conclusion............................................................................................................ 83 Chapter 3: The Communitarianism of Grover Cleveland ................................................. 85 The Annexation of Hawaii (1893–1895) ................................................................ 89 The Context .............................................................................................. 90 vii Cleveland’s Case Against Hawaiian Annexation ........................................... 98 The Anglo-Venezuelan Boundary Dispute (1894–1897) ....................................... 111 The Context ............................................................................................ 114 Cleveland’s Case for Intervention in the Anglo-Venezuelan Dispute ........... 118 The Cuban Rebellion (1895–1897) ...................................................................... 144 The Context ............................................................................................ 147 Cleveland’s Case Against Intervention in Cuba .......................................... 150 Chapter 4: The Humanitarianism of William McKinley ................................................ 170 The Cuban Crisis (1897–1898) ........................................................................... 176 The Context ............................................................................................ 178 McKinley’s Case for Intervention.............................................................. 180 The Acquisition of the Philippines (1898–1900) ................................................... 218 The Context ............................................................................................ 219 McKinley’s Case for Annexation of the Philippines .................................... 229 Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 251 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 265 viii Introduction In urging ratification of the United States Constitution, the American Founders ar- gued that national security is “the most powerful director of national conduct.”1 Judgments about war and peace define the regime’s character and determine the extent to which a re- public can enjoy domestic peace without degrading domestic liberty. Given the unique chal- lenges to “nations the most attached to liberty,” they reasoned that national security depends on an executive office invested by a responsible individual with independent powers.2 Abra- ham Lincoln, who harnessed and manipulated these powers with tremendous effect, encap- sulated the inseparable connection of foreign and domestic policy when, in his Second Inau- gural, he called the nation to seek and cherish “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”3 While the nation’s Founders provided a timeless exhortation for all future presidents, history suggests that there is no timeless category of “a just and lasting peace.” There is, ra- ther, only some particular and transient moment of peace, conditioned in part by the judg- ments of the executive in charge of foreign policy. Presidents must navigate distinct foreign challenges and opportunities not by mechanically applying some axiom of a just and lasting 1 Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper No. 8. In Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Fed- eralist Papers (Signet Classics) (Yale University Press, 2003). 2 Federalist Papers No. 70, 72, 74–75. In Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. 3 Abraham Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1865. R. R. Mathisen, The Routledge Sourcebook of Religion and the American Civil War: A History in Documents (Taylor & Francis, 2014), 427. 1 peace, but by deciding the character of their own just peace—one that advances the national interest in conformity with what they believe is morally right. To be sure, no leader acts without some laxity in moral principle. Presidents face powerful incentives to act according to individual or collective interests that, on their own, do not entail any well-considered moral beliefs. These factors constitute the impressive range of structural, institutional, systematic, and psychological explanations for foreign policy in the field of international relations (IR). However, these theories do not, and do not purport, to discern the complicated mix- ture of moral and strategic justifications that constitute how a president’s self-understood