U.S. Policy Towards the Dominican

U.S. Policy towards the Dominican Republic

United States' Policy Toward Dominican Republic 1930-1945

"moral report card" on United States policy toward the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1945 is not an entirely easy one to prepare, given that for the most part, America has been inconsistent at best and bungling at worst, as regards relations with its Caribbean neighbor, and a negative grade is embarrassing for one's own country.

But in truth, overall, the U.S. did far more things "poorly" than "well." And this paper defines "morality in international relations" as consistent with the definition of "morality" - which is acting within "...conformity to ideals of right human conduct," the definition in Merriam-Webster Online.

And as to "morality" playing into the relationship between the U.S. And the Dominican Republic, America was both naive and immoral in their capitulation to dictator Trujillo, but in particular the U.S. turned its back on the concept of international morality by allowing Trujillo to get high PR marks when he agreed to allow a few Jewish refugees to settle in the Dominican Republic, even though his real motive was phony, and his behavior towards the Jews was contemptible.

What did the United States do Poorly?" Moral Report Card Grade

According to Rooda's book, 1930 was a year in which the American delegation in Santo Domingo was quite taken by surprise. In Chapter Two, U.S. Minister Charles B. Curtis, who had been in the Dominican Republic for five weeks, apparently was so out of touch with the country and its emerging political dynamics that he didn't know there was a revolution ongoing. He didn't know anything at all was underfoot, until the president of the Dominican Republic, the president's wife, the vice president, half the members of the presidential cabinet, the senate president "and a score of others" (p. 31) showed up at the door of the American compound ("legation"), requesting asylum.

What had happened that February in 1930 was that the then president, Horacio Vasquez, who took over control of the Dominican Republic when the U.S. ended its occupation in 1924, and the U.S. Marines left the island, and who was very unpopular, had lost control of his army, and hence, was in serious personal danger, and requested asylum.

When rebels began to take over parts of Santo Domingo, General Trujillo, supposedly a member of - and beholding to - Vasquez' administration, simply "ordered his army not to hinder the rebel force" (p. 32), which was a militia using weapons that were in fact supplied by Trujillo. In fact, Trujillo himself had control of a "standing army of over two thousand" highly trained troops (Ejercito Nacional Dominicano), indeed trained and armed by the Marines back in the 1920s, to supposedly protect the president; but now, ironically, the military was being used against the system that the U.S. had helped put in place. American policy backfiring; this is a failure in policy and strategy.

The events that took place immediately after Vasquez' request for asylum are a classic example of what the U.S. did poorly regarding American relations with Latin American countries.

At a time when there was rising militarism in Caribbean republics - where dictators were usurping power in Guatemala, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and in the Dominican Republic - the U.S., oddly, was transitioning into a policy of "nonintervention." In fact, when Cabot called for help from the U.S. Navy - the Navy's Special Service Squadron - to have them send a warship to remove the Vasquez party safely out of the country, the warship could not meet his request. Due to the "developing U.S. policy of nonintervention," according to Roorda, and also (p. 33) due to the fact that policy adopted in Washington was "slow to register in the State Department's foreign missions."

What the policy was really about, Roorda's book explains, was in support of trade, i.e., "U.S. business interests" (p. 34). To interfere with internal affairs in the Dominican Republic - and hence interfere with profitable business conducted by American interests in the Dominican - would be a political (domestic political) mistake; further, when the U.S. Marines departed, after in effect being an occupying force on foreign soil, they left "a tender wound, making the Dominicans extremely sensitive to any hint of U.S. interference in Dominican affairs and quick 'to resent any slight, any tactlessness' on the part of the U.S. representatives."

To conclude this portion of the paper, the question is pertinent: why was the U.S. so embarrassingly unprepared for the power grab by Trujillo in February, 1930? Roorda explains that the envoy to the Dominican Republic, John Moors Cabot, only 28 years old, misjudged "the distribution of power between the civilian chief of state and the military commander, a mistake repeatedly frequently" by American diplomats, while a nationalism fueled by militarist dictators "swept across the region" in the early 1930s. Meantime, the U.S. backed Trujillo, and even assisted him. It was all part of the American "Good Neighbor" policy: nonintervention, and support for dictators.

And the additional folly of the American "leadership" in the Dominican had an exclamation point added to it (59-60) when investigative reporter Drew Pearson published a series of articles which detailed the brutal repression administered by Trujillo in the first six months of his dictatorship, the State Department was taken "by surprise." In fact, once the State Department woke up to the reality of the bloody, savage style of power that Trujillo wielded, and investigated, they were "shocked to find that the picture is even more lurid than Mr. Pearson points it." Did the U.S. act within "conformity to ideals of right human conduct" in this matter? The answer has to be "no," America did not behave within the "ideals of right human conduct." They sold out to a dictator.

Under the title, "What did the U.S. try to do well, but wound up doing poorly?" was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) strategy to use the Dominican Republic as a safe haven for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. On page 144, Roorda explains that in the Spring of 1939, the president of Johns Hopkins University (Isaiah Bowman) was sent on a fact-finding mission to the Dominican Republic by FDR to "study the possibility" of Jewish refugees settling in the Dominican. Trujillo, who was more interested in getting positive publicity than he was in truly helping Jews flee Hitler's genocidal strategy, albeit he feared "Jews would overrun the country" (145), got a commitment from the U.S. that Roosevelt would deliver a statement "praising Trujillo."