On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump will join Grover Cleveland as one of only two American presidents to serve nonconsecutive terms. Like Cleveland, Trump won his second election due largely to the fact that his predecessor presided over a poor economy. But Trump does not seem to recognize this, treating his victory as a sweeping mandate to impose a wide range of nationalist policies.
Unfortunately for opponents of both imperialism and the military-industrial complex, these policies include a spirit of outright acquisitiveness for other sovereign lands. This is why Cleveland’s career is especially relevant today.
Trump says that America should own Greenland as an “absolute necessity,” even though its more than 50,000 residents have given no indication of wanting to be under American sovereignty. He similarly lusts over the Panama Canal, which Panama is no more likely to cede to full American control than Denmark is to peacefully relinquish Greenland. Even closer to home, he’s made comments about making Canada America’s 51st state.
Even if Trump utterly fails in these geopolitical gambits, the fact that he is trying in the first place shows his hand. In his second term, Trump plans on using his executive powers to expand America’s global empire. By contrast, Cleveland spent his second term trying to roll back America’s then-nascent imperialist ambitions—and did so without flinching when genuine strength in our foreign policy was needed.
The standout story from Cleveland’s presidency involves Hawaii. When he returned to office in 1893, Cleveland was greeted with a treaty that had been presented to the Senate for the annexation of Hawaii. Newspapers across the land waxed poetic about how the American flag would soon wave in the Hawaiian breeze, but few journalists questioned the official story about how this land had come into our possession. They were told the Hawaiian natives had willingly betrayed their own monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, by replacing her rule with that of white foreigners (mostly Americans).
Cleveland suspected there was more to it. He knew that sugar plantation owners and other wealthy business interests were suspicious of Liliuokalani, who wanted to reduce foreign influence in her country. Once those Americans learned she was planning concrete policies toward achieving this goal, American jurist Sanford Dole and U.S. Minister to Hawaii John Stevens led a conspiracy to dethrone her. By the time Cleveland took office, they had succeeded in doing so (with the unwitting aid of American locals who believed they had support from Washington) and were only awaiting the Senate’s ratification of an annexation treaty to consummate their plot.
Cleveland rebuffed the conspirators. First, he appointed former Rep. James H. Blount (D–Ga.) to visit the islands and investigate the coup. After Blount confirmed Cleveland’s hunch—that the queen had been overthrown through violence and against the will of the Hawaiian natives—the president sent emissaries to Hawaii saying they would help her regain power as long as she promised to neither execute nor otherwise excessively punish the Americans who had ruled since she was deposed. Cleveland insisted upon these points at the urging of Secretary of State Richard Olney, who pointed out that America still had an obligation to protect the rights of citizens who had acted according to plans they had been led to believe were fully condoned by their own government.
While Liliuokalani was grateful to Cleveland for his support, she informed his emissaries that she had to follow Hawaiian customs. In cases of treason, the traditional laws were clear: The guilty parties had to be executed, and everyone connected with them would have all of their property confiscated.
Because Liliuokalani took this stand, the next four years of Cleveland’s presidency turned into a stalemate. Despite eventually relenting in aspects of her hardline position, Liliuokalani nevertheless held firm that she could not be restored to power without inflicting some measure of punishment on the Americans who currently resided in her domain. As a strict constitutionalist, Cleveland referred the entire matter to Congress for resolution. This caused the matter to languish without resolution until 1897, when Cleveland’s second term ended. His successor, William McKinley, did not share his qualms about annexing Hawaii, and before the end of the 19th century, the deed was done.
This was not the only occasion when Cleveland stood up to American imperialism. When the final Cuban insurrection against the Spanish empire broke out in 1895, millions of Americans—whipped up by newspapers—clamored for America to simultaneously liberate its neighbor and flex its military muscles. Cleveland did not yield to these calls, displaying a strength of character that his successor lacked. Just as McKinley relented to the annexationists and acquired Hawaii, he folded to the imperialists and in 1898 launched America into the Spanish-American War despite his reservations. Most foreign policy historians regard McKinley’s decision to start the Spanish-American War to be the beginning of America’s status as a modern world power.
Cleveland never wanted America to become a global power, but that does not mean he was weak. When the British Empire threatened to bully Venezuela into accepting an unfair resolution of a boundary dispute in 1895, Cleveland reminded the British that such actions would violate America’s Monroe Doctrine. Declared in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine asserted that the United States would not peacefully submit to any nation in our hemisphere having its territorial integrity violated by outsiders, therefore considering an attack on any Western Hemisphere country to be an attack on all of them. Cleveland was ultimately successful in pressuring Britain to agree to peaceful arbitration with a warning—one America should bear in mind, especially in light of rumors that Trump will abandon our alliance with Ukraine to curry favor with Russia’s imperialist president, Vladimir Putin. As Cleveland stated in his annual address to Congress:
“There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people’s safety and greatness.”
This was not the only time when Cleveland defied a powerful empire to protect American values. At the beginning of his first term, the Austro-Hungarian empire refused to accept Cleveland’s appointed ambassador, Anthony M. Keiley, because his wife was Jewish and therefore was considered socially unacceptable among the Viennese upper crust. Instead of acceding to Austro-Hungary’s request that he appoint two gentiles in Keiley’s stead, Cleveland left the post vacant through his entire first term, explaining in his 1885 State of the Union message that he refused to agree to “an application of a religious test as a qualification for office under the United States as would have resulted in the practical disfranchisement of a large class of our citizens and the abandonment of a vital principle in our Government.”
There is a crucial difference between showing strength over matters of principle and abusing that same strength for self-glorification. Cleveland demonstrated a wise and discerning ability to recognize this difference, being strong when matters of principle were genuinely involved and otherwise deferring to the rights of other countries. He did this both because he believed the laws that govern individual relations should be extrapolated on the international level and because, on a deeper level, he was suspicious of geopolitical greed.
This is why, as Americans and the rest of the world prepare for Trump’s geopolitical aspirations, we should think of Cleveland’s wisdom. He best articulated it when rejecting the Hawaiian annexation treaty:
“I suppose that right and justice should determine the path to be followed in treating this subject,” Cleveland said. “If national honesty is to be disregarded and a desire for territorial extension or dissatisfaction with a form of government not our own ought to regulate our conduct, I have entirely misapprehended the mission and character of our Government and the behavior which the conscience of our people demands of their public servants.”
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