266 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION
supervise over a long and indefinite period. Undoubtedly
this disavowal represented the prevailing sentiments of the
American people.
Ironically, the attempts to achieve stability in the Caribbean
through a variety of indirect controls often became the bloody
and unproductive military affairs the policy was designed to
avoid. Again there were military interventions and occupa
tions, sometimes against native resistance, and the same prob
lems of institutional change was forced upon the United States.
William Howard Taft did not forget that intervention was
a poor remedy for Caribbean instability, a lesson Cuba may
easily have taught him. As heavy-handed and, in the long run,
unprofitable as Dollar Diplomacy was, it was Taft's clumsy
alternative to reformist military occupations. By "substituting
dollars for bullets," or capital investment and financial super
vision for Army occupation, and (hopefully) prosperity for
rebellion, Taft looked for a more politically acceptable answer
to Caribbean instability than the Army could provide. Dollar
Diplomacy was the idiom of the bank, not the drill field.
It reflected the ideals of middle-class, productive, civilian
America: social peace, profits, progress, and the spread of
civilization.
Dollar Diplomacy's political component was also a rejection
of the Cuban experience, for the support of de jure native
governments became increasingly preferable to outright Ameri
can political control. In practice, this diplomatic stance did
not make the United States reaction to civil war less am
biguous, nor did it reduce the likelihood of intervention; an
established government's ability to defend itself (and foreign
property) continued to be an important criterion for winning
or losing American support.
Although Dollar Diplomacy cut the domestic political risks
of intervention, it was unable to correct the economic condi
tions which helped insure that the United States would be
drawn into the Caribbean civil wars of the next thirty years.
Here the Cuban experience was ignored at two levels. The
growth of American businesses, as in Cuba, provided perfect