It should be noted too that the USA's taking of the former Spanish territories of Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico was very much in the vein of European geopolitical horsetrading.

Germany in particular was less than pleased about the new permanent US presence in East Asia and there was a standoff in Manila Bay between each nations fleets. The Royal Navy siding with the USN and helping pressure the Germans to stand down was a major event on the repairing of the US-UK relationship.

Germany had also had a contentious relationship with the US over Samoa. In fact at one point 3 ships of each nation had been in a months long standoff until a storm wrecked all 6 ships.

The US also went from respecting the native monarchy of Hawaii to supporting the white planter backed coup, to just seizing the islands for their strategic worth.

Although not exactly like what the Great Powers were doing in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, the U.S. actually did pursue some imperial aims during the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries, most of them aimed at Latin America with some exceptions, such as the Philippines and Hawaii. The attempts made by Southerners like William Walker to colonize Nicaragua and other parts of Latin America in the 1850s through filibustering (unauthorized military expeditions) are some of the earliest after the Mexican-American War.

Prior to World War I, the U.S., through businesses and exploitation of both economic and political conditions, expanded their influence into Mexico and other parts of Latin America. In the case of Mexico, Porfirio Diaz engaged in a policy of attracting foreign investors to the country through various means, even passing legislation that allowed foreigners to take "public land" and gain the resource rights, as well as circumvent established nationalization laws. Before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, roughly 27% of the surface area of Mexico and just under 60% of the coastal and border areas were under control of the U.S.

And here are some sources:  

*Buchenau, Jurgen. Tools of Progress: A German Merchant Family in Mexico City, 1865-Present. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.

*Hart, John Mason. Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico since the Civil War. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002.

*May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

It did. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, the U.S. annexed the Philippines. Filipino nationalists, most notably Emilio Aguinaldo, were not happy about this and launched a three year war against the U.S. Aguinaldo and the nationalists wound up losing the Philippine-American War. The Philippines wouldn't gain their independence until 1946. The U.S. also annexed Guam and Puerto Rico as a result of the Spanish-American War, and inserted the Platt Amendment into Cuba's constitution, which gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it wanted. Hawaii was annexed in 1900, after its monarchy was overthrown by a bunch of sugar and fruit planters in 1893.

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/war https://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/1898/intro.html https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=55 http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3159