ABSTRACT
From 1909 to 1933, at the behest of Roosevelt and Taft's "dollar diplomacy" and Wilson's "missionary diplomacy," US Marines would spend twenty years in Nicaragua, imposing or trying to impose US policies and in the process undermining much of the development achieved under Zelaya. While working in the Tampico oilfields, Augusto Cesar Sandino grew progressively angrier with reports of US intervention in Nicaragua and its blockage of Liberal rule. US foreign policy of the twentieth century manifested economic and political expansionism, strategic insecurity because of the rise of competing naval powers and the recent extension of US territory, and a chauvinistic bent that bred disrespect for other peoples and their rights. Apparently sensitive to the winds of opinion, Harding felt considerably less comfortable with interventionism than his three predecessors, although he did not dramatically reverse US policy. In so doing it created an unanticipated difficulty—the anti-interventionist rebellion led by Sandino.
