Roosevelt bypassed Congress to acquire ninety-nine-year leases on Caribbean bases before Pearl Harbor

Evidence

Although such a pact should have required congressional approval, Roosevelt simply declared it done. Under what became known as the “destroyers-for-bases” agreement, the United States acquired ninety-nine-year leases and near-sovereign powers over bases in the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St. Thomas, Antigua, Aruba-Curaçao, Trinidad, and British Guiana, plus temporary access to bases in Bermuda and Newfoundland. Roosevelt called the agreement “the most important action in the reinforcement of our national security since the Louisiana Purchase.” Whether the deal was quite so important to national security is questionable. But in terms of its transformative effect, there was little exaggeration in comparing the acquisition of these bases to the 1803 treaty that nearly doubled the nation’s size. The leases’ ninety-nine-year length reflected similarly grand ambitions: President Roosevelt intended to cement the global power of the United States for at least a century to come. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 52

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of executives transcending normal constitutional/legal constraints in foreign affairs—relevant to base agreements later in the book that similarly evade host-country and congressional oversight.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 52