Over the course of the 1890s, the United States shifted from a continental defense model toward a hemispheric one. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) was a leading proponent of this shift. Lodge was convinced that the United States needed to build a blue-water navy, acquire maritime bases overseas, establish its predominance in Central America, and push US influence out into the Pacific. The first test of this vision came not against Spain or Germany in the Caribbean, but against the possibility of British and Japanese influence over Hawaii in 1894–95. Domestic political and economic considerations acted mainly as a constraint on Lodge’s vision rather than as a basis for it. The main impetus was strategic, as he looked to safeguard an extended security zone for the United States in Atlantic, Pacific, and Caribbean waters. As he put it, “I would take and hold the outworks, as we now hold the citadel, of American power.”

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