This is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor.

Here's John Bachelor.

I welcome Professor Evan Atlas. Here's John Bachelor.

I welcome Professor Evan Ellis, the Latin American Research Professor for the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

And Professor and I are going to take the role of journalists questioning

presidential candidates about the Americas. Once upon a time my reading and

the professor will help me with this.

The Americas dominated foreign policy thinking in Washington, D.C.

This would be prior to the first war, when the United States was seen as and also ran in European affairs

but a dominant question of freedom, liberty, the republic, and the Monroe Doctrine for the Americas.

So with Teddy Roosevelt, we have a transition figure.

He began his time in Washington as a reformist for the civil service he'd worked in New York.

However, his appointment to be the Assistant Secretary of the Navy gave him a world

platform and he used it especially when it with regard to making remarks about the Spanish

empire and then there was the transition as we well know with the Spanish-American war where Roosevelt was part of the

success of the McKinley administration to jettison the Spanish Empire from the Western Hemisphere. That was then.

Consequence to that, Teddy Roosevelt because of the tragedy of McKinley's death and

assassination. Teddy Roosevelt became president. his death and assassination,

Teddy Roosevelt became president,

and then the building of the Panama Canal

and the annexation of property from Colombia

and the OAS and the rise of the South American and

...