Just as they do predatory animals that hunt and kill their prey, EU, always is in search of his own, for then figuratively kill and devour him. Is what happened in 1898, following the Spanish-American war that sought to liberate Cuba from the Spanish yoke (and incidentally give of a) great market to the United States), Spain ceded them the Philippines for $ 20 million. Spain also recognized the independence of Cuba and ceded Puerto Rico and Guam directly to its winner. 15 But possibly one of the most notorious for this type of behavior is the construction of the Panama canal the dream of a canal which crosses the isthmus of Central America was born many years prior to the year 1903, when the Government of the United States began building the canal that we see today. The two men who had most influence on the decision of the US Government, to make another attempt at a canal through the isthmus, were Theodor Roosevelt, the President in 1901, and Alfred Mahan, a general in the Navy of the United States. Mahan had many theories of war and political power. He believed that if the United States wanted to maintain their power, they had to control the sea.
With the events of the war in Cuba in his head, he saw a great change in the importance of the Caribbean for the United States and the world. In the heart of the plane of Mahan to control the sea, was the Panama canal. Roosevelt was in agreement with the theories of Mahan. He had fought in the war against the Spaniards, and recalled the voyage of a ship (the Oregon) that came to San Francisco was 13,000 miles, and with a channel, the trip would have been more than 8,000 fewer miles. T.R. saw dangers in the possibility of other countries also control channel.