The United States has had something of a strained relationship with the practice of foreign policy in its history. It has ranged from that of a young nation wanting only recognition to a reluctant world leader.

Those periods came in three distinct, logical segments -- the isolationist Early Federal Period; an abortive try at Imperialism; and the era of the US as a Global Power.

The Second Epoch -- Imperialism

America's early isolationism gave way to commercialism after the Civil War, causing it try its hand at old-fashioned imperialism. American industry boomed and markets soared, so much so that industrialists began looking for overseas markets for products.

The European powers still practiced imperialism as a way to achieve captive markets and resources.

The practice tempted the US. Not only would an American "empire" satisfy industrialists, it also played to a push for expansion and modernization within the US Navy. Led by Alfred Thayer Mahan -- whose book Influence of Sea Power on History indicated that all great nations, in fact, had empires with big navies to support them -- the navy saw imperialism as a way to move beyond its Jeffersonian mission of coastal protection and river warfare.

But "imperialism" was a dirty word in the United States, which, of course, had broken from the British Empire. Proponents of such a plan centered on the phrase "new internationalism" to describe the new direction of American foreign policy.

They also used as a pretext for action the protection of American business interests that were already going global -- such as sugar producers in Hawaii and Cuba.

Cuba provided an immediate entrée into New Internationalism. The United States had previously been interested in annexing Cuba. But prior to the Civil War its potential as a slave state was a non-starter for northern states.

By the 1890s, however, empire trumped other concerns, and a Cuban insurrection against Spain was made to order. Cuba was one of the last vestiges of the Spanish Empire, and nationalists there had waged an intermittent insurgency against Spanish troops for much of the late 19th Century.

Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, fierce competitors and mouthpieces of American industrialists, published spurious reports of Spanish atrocities in Cuba. They stressed that Americans in Cuba were in jeopardy.

Those reports pushed American public opinion toward war with Spain, and soon they had one more reason. In early 1898, President William McKinley sent the USS Maineto Havana Harbor as a show of force and protection for American interests in Cuba. When the Maine exploded, Americans quickly accused the Spanish of treachery; later examination revealed the Maine was victim of a boiler malfunction. McKinley, never an imperialist, urged caution. No matter, Americans were steeled for war, which Congress declared in April.

Active warfare in the Spanish-American War took very little time; a day's fighting in May destroyed the Spanish Pacific Fleet in the Philippines (which were still part of the Spanish Empire), and two day's fighting in Cuba ended Spanish resistance. But the war left the US with more problems than commercial solutions.

In the Philippines, Filipino insurgents had been eager to help Americans toss out Spanish troops. But when they discovered Americans had no intention of leaving, they began fighting US troops. The Filipino Insurrection took Americans by surprise and ended only after soldiers killed more than 100,000 of the insurgents.

Anti-imperialists at home forced a change in how the US would treat Cuba. It would not occupy the island, but neither would it allow it to have complete autonomy. The Platt Amendment in 1903 mandated that Cuba would make no foreign or economic policy without US approval.

And in China, where the US wanted a share of the commerce going to European imperial powers -- but without the troubles of having an empire -- US Secretary of State John Hay negotiated the Open Door treaty. Through it, the US and European powers acknowledged each others' right to trade without borders in China.

American leaders conducted a foreign policy they thought would bring the US the commercial connections it needed while keeping the neutrality it wanted. The world situation would not allow that for long.