Roosevelt as Defender of Japanese Imperialism

Not Franklin, but his cousin Teddy according to this op-ed by James Bradley in the New York Times. Teddy secretly applauded the rise of what later came to be called the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperty Sphere. In fact, through his Nobel prize-winning mediation, he gave it an official stamp of approval. In the years after the Japanese-Russo War of 1905, he confided:

“All the Asiatic nations are now faced with the urgent necessity of adjusting themselves to the present age. Japan should be their natural leader in that process, and their protector during the transition stage, much as the United States assumed the leadership of the American continent many years ago, and by means of the Monroe Doctrine, preserved the Latin American nations from European interference. The future policy of Japan towards Asiatic countries should be similar to that of the United States towards their neighbors on the American continent.”

Hat tip, William Stepp.