Joe Biden’s No Gunboat Diplomacy

In 1904, when American citizen Ion Perdicaris was kidnapped and held hostage by a band of rebels in Morocco, U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched seven warships to secure his safe return. That incident marks a stark contrast to the current effort to rescue the American citizens still held captive in Gaza.

As of last Wednesday, nearly two months since the start of the fighting between Israel and Hamas, Hamas fighters held at least eight American citizens hostage. Although Hamas released several Americans following the commencement of a ceasefire last week, the Pentagon said on Wednesday that “7 to 9” U.S. citizens remained in Hamas’s custody.

While negotiations are ongoing, neither Biden nor National Security Council Spokesperson John Kirby were able to offer any update on when or if the remaining American hostages will be released.

Meanwhile, just a few days before the ceasefire began, on November 25, Houthi forces (Yemeni rebels allied with Iran) fired two ballistic missiles toward a U.S. warship in the Gulf of Aden after the U.S. Navy responded to a distress call from a commercial tanker that had been seized by pirates. U.S. officials recently confirmed that the Houthis have launched at least 60 attacks on American forces since mid-October, resulting in at least 59 injuries.

Senior Pentagon officials stated in late October that the attacks had “Iranian fingerprints all over” them. One defense official explained in a background briefing that Iran is funding, equipping, guiding, and directing military partners and proxies across the Middle East, including Lebanese Hezbollah militia groups in Iran, Syria, and Yemen. It is widely believed as well that the Hamas terrorists currently holding American along with Israeli hostages were trained for their attack by Iran.

Shortly after taking office, it’s worth recalling, President Biden reversed the Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization for no known reason other than the wish to placate their Iranian sponsors and thereby induce the Iranians to resume negotiations for a new nuclear “deal,” replacing the one that Donald Trump had wisely canceled.

Even amid the attacks on U.S. troops, Biden has not restored the Houthis’ status as a terrorist organization subject to sanctions. The question thus remains: just what more will our Iranian enemies – who have sworn to destroy the U.S. (the “big Satan”) just as soon as they finish off its “little Satan” ally (Israel) – have to do to generate a more vigorous response from Biden? More specifically, how much abuse will the administration take before it stops all nuclear negotiations and seeks the destruction of Teheran’s nuclear facilities, just as the Israelis did to the Iraqi-built nuclear facility in Syria in 1981?

American presidents did not always show so much weakness in the face of a foreign aggressor who directly endangers the lives of U.S. citizens. When Ion Perdicaris was kidnaped (along with his British stepson) by one Ahmed al-Raisuni, leader of a group of bandits in Tangier, Morocco, the response by Theodore Roosevelt was far different.

As the price of the hostages’ release, Raisuni demanded that the Moroccan sultan pay a ransom of $55,000 (subsequently upped to $70,000) along with numerous political concessions (including the release of a group of political prisoners and cession of control over six of Morocco’s wealthiest districts). Raisuni also demanded that the United States and England guarantee the fulfillment of his demands.

The Roosevelt administration’s response was swift and forceful. Initially, Assistant Secretary of State Francis B. Loomis diverted seven of the sixteen American warships already stationed in the Mediterranean to undertake an ostensible “goodwill” visit to Tangier.

While landing only a half-dozen marines at the port, so as to avoid setting off a battle that would threaten the captives’ lives, the U.S. commander induced the Moroccan sultan to comply with Raisuni’s demands – with the threat that the Americans would otherwise seize the Moroccan customs houses.

But when Raisuni then stalled the negotiations with the sultan, seeking to gain even more concessions, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay announced to the Republican National Convention meeting in June (potential presidential nominees did not attend conventions in those days), “This government wants Perdicaris alive or Raisuni dead.” In other words, if the sultan failed to secure Perdicaris’s safe return, he would have to have Raisuni executed in order to avoid American punishment.

In the end, the sultan reached an agreement with Raisuni on the ransom needed to secure Perdicaris’s release, and also paid the U.S. $4,000 for the expenses that its mission had incurred.

The Perdicaris Affair illustrates how Progressive presidents of the past (as well as predecessors like James Madison) not only pursued vigorous domestic policies (for good or ill) but also made the U.S. a force to be reckoned with abroad, such that terrorists typically knew better than to challenge American power. Roosevelt’s bold course of action sent a message to the entire world not to mess with Americans, and would come to be known as “gunboat diplomacy.”

In keeping with this strategy, it was also Roosevelt who employed the threat of force to wrest Panama from the Colombian government, thus paving the way for the construction of the Panama Canal – a benefit to all nations engaged in trade with this country. It was Roosevelt, too, who sailed the “Great White Fleet” around the world to demonstrate the nation’s naval prowess.

In sum, Roosevelt exuded confidence both in the rightness of America’s cause and in its capacity to defend its interests against all threats. Even in this age of advanced weaponry, it is hard to imagine Roosevelt or his Progressive successors, from Wilson, FDR, and Truman through Kennedy and LBJ, responding so passively to the kidnaping of American citizens or military assaults against our forces stationed abroad as the Biden administration has been doing.

Roosevelt would have explained to Barack Obama, the original architect of the foolish and entirely unenforceable nuclear deal with Iran, along with his successor Biden, that making supine concessions to your declared enemies in return for mere promises to be nice only increases their demands. In the words of Rudyard Kipling, “once you start paying the Danegeld [payments of tribute that the English once made to buy off Scandinavian raiders], you never get rid of the Dane.”

David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor of Political Science Emeritus at College of the Holy Cross.