How did Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt personify American Foreign Policy

How did Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt personify American Foreign Policy?
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The Warrior and The Priest looks into the lives, Presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, and Theodore Roosevelt. Cooper uses the analogy of a warrior to describe an honorable man of war similar to Roosevelt. On the contrary, the priest is like an intellect who challenges the warrior through devious means (Cooper, 1983:223). The Presidents had divergent foreign policies, but a comparative look into their policies also shows that they personified foreign policy. Roosevelt had a difficult child hood suffering from physical handicap (Cooper, 1983:6), and his affinity towards militarism was in reaction to the father’s failure to participate in the Civil War. Cooper supposed that militarism had little impact on President Wilson, but religion play a bigger role. Nonetheless, the book surmises that although the two presidents had different ideologies, they were remarkably similar as they sought to increases America’s influence throughout the world.
To Wilson, America represented democratic ideals, which would then, be the basis for America’s engagement in world politics. Thus, one of his endeavors was to persuade Congress on the need for America’s entry into the League of Nations and respect for each country’s sovereignty (Cooper, 1983:301). Similarly, Roosevelt was internationalist in his approach to using Presidential power. “The naval post also gave him the first experience at administration of large scale organization,” (Cooper, 1983: 38). The Spanish American war had positive impact political fortunes as he rose to prominence in the Republican Party (Cooper, 1983:39).
Roosevelt was mostly a realist who used the balance of power to personify America’s foreign policy, as seen in the mediation of the Russo Japanese war in 1905 (Cooper, 1983: 74). The role of America in international relations could not be relegated to that of a peripheral role given that that the balance of power was in favor of America, and Roosevelt favored a more assertive foreign policy than many in his party leaders (Cooper, 1983:360). Wilson sought to ensure that international politics focused on peace as the basis of ethics whereby, advancing America’s national interests would go together with a universal system of law. Nonetheless, both presidents were both realists and idealists, and it is Roosevelt’s idealist beliefs that would be a source of contention with Woodrow Wilson (Cooper, 1983:271).
Woodrow Wilson expanded America’s foreign policies to include intervention especially in Latin America, even before WWI based on democratic ideals. Equally, Roosevelt felt that the was no need to separate national and democratic ideals in America, and this would then influence foreign policy(Cooepr,1983:144) The interventionist policies of previous Republican adminis...