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Category: News and Politics
1 of 2 Parts: "How the U.S.A. Became the World's Policeman."
By Franklin Parker and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net
Review of with Commentary on Warren Zimmermann, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, 562 pp.
Given at Book Review Group, Uplands Village, Pleasant Hill, TN, May 15, 2006.
Betty: Frank, why did we choose this particular book, Warren Zimmermann's, The First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power, 2002? What was our motive?
Frank: Zimmermann's point is that an aggressive U.S. foreign policy aimed at making the U.S. the world’s policeman originated in and has persisted since the Spanish American War, 1898. In that war, for the first time, we took on and defeated a European power, Spain. We consequently acquired strategic naval bases in the Caribbean and Pacific. We planned a Panama Canal which opened in 1914. That war and control of the Panama Canal led to our becoming a world power
Betty: In that 3 month imperial thrust--April 25 to July 1898--we destroyed the Spanish fleet, acquired directly and indirectly overseas naval bases in and responsibility for Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Hawaii, Samoa. The imperial U.S. foreign policy then formed still guides us.
Frank: Who was Warren Zimmerman? What does the title mean: The First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power?
Betty: Warren Zimmermann (1935-2004) was a Yale graduate and a Fulbright scholar at Cambridge University, England. He was briefly a journalist and for 33 years a U.S. diplomat, including ambassador to Yugoslavia during the Bosnian civil war. He later taught International Diplomacy at Columbia University.
Frank: The book's title, The First Great Triumph, is from a June 15, 1898 letter Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) wrote to his sister Corinne on his way to fight in Cuba: "[This] is a great historical expedition,…I thrill to feel that I am part of it…. If we…succeed…we have scored the first great triumph in what will be a world movement."1
Betty: Theodore Roosevelt, first of Zimmerman's…Five Americans [who] Made Their Country a World Power, was frail as a child. He overcame asthma, poor eyesight, and a weak heart through exercise and a strenuous outdoor life. His vigorous personality, staunch Republicanism, ambition for high office, and his certainty that the U.S. must reach outside its borders for world leadership were infectious.
Frank: Like-minded influential Republicans saw Roosevelt as an unstoppable ally and helped him climb the political ladder. Roosevelt's career choices were guided mainly by Massachusetts Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee member. Sen. Lodge was the second of Zimmerman's…Five Americans [who] Made Their Country a World Power.
Betty: Henry Cabot Lodge, 8 years older than Roosevelt, more jingoistic than Roosevelt, was the son of two patrician Boston families. Heir to a shipping fortune, he was a Harvard graduate and a Harvard history professor. Roosevelt was his student.
Frank: Lodge won a U.S. congressional seat (1886), then a U.S. Senate seat (1892), and served 30 years on the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lodge, supreme political tactician, and Roosevelt, diehard political expansionist, helped foment the Spanish American War.
Betty: You may recall Lodge's grandson and namesake, Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, 1902-85. He was U.S. representative to the United Nations under Pres. Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1960) and Richard M. Nixon's (1913-) running mate as vice president when they both lost to John F. Kennedy (1917-63) in 1960.
Frank: The older Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt headed a rising Republican expansionist cabal determined to reach beyond U.S. borders for unlimited U.S. commercial success and unhampered world power. Twenty years later as Pres. Woodrow Wilson's nemesis Senator Lodge helped defeat the League of Nations. Why? Because to Senator Lodge U.S. sovereignty should not be limited by any international body.
Betty: Back to Theodore Roosevelt: at age 24 he was New York State Assembly minority leader (1882-84). At 26 he went west to raise cattle and hunt big game in North Dakota (1884-86).
Frank: At 34 he was U.S. Civil Service Commissioner (1889-95). At 36 he was New York City Police Commissioner (1895-97). He then helped elect as U.S. president Ohio Republican William McKinley (1843-1901).
Betty: Pres. McKinley named Roosevelt at age 38 Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1897-98). Having sparked the Spanish American War, Roosevelt resigned to recruit and lead the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, Cuba.
Frank: As a war hero, Roosevelt at 40 was elected New York State governor (1898-1900). As vice presidential candidate, he helped Pres. McKinley win a second term in 1900. When Pres. McKinley was assassinated (Sept. 14, 1901), Vice President Theodore Roosevelt at 43 became the youngest U.S. President. He was president during 1901-04 and re-elected during 1904-08.
Betty: We Americans don't like to hear our county called an imperial nation, or our president called an imperial president. Yet historians, including Zimmermann, say it has always been so.
Frank: For example: The American Revolution was fought to win independence and to acquire all the North American land we could get. American Revolutionary raiding parties captured Montreal but lost at Quebec. We wanted to take all of Canada several times but were no strong enough to do so.
Betty: George Washington in 1783 referred to the U.S. as a "new empire," a "rising empire." In 1786 he said: "there will assuredly come a day when this country will have some weight in the scale of Empires."2
Frank: With the Louisiana Purchase from France (1803), Pres. Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore (1803-06) the Pacific Northwest. Why? So that Americans could settle, develop, and profit from western lands and commerce.
Betty: John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State under Pres. James Monroe, influenced the U.S. to buy Florida from Spain (1819). He also helped Pres. Monroe issue the Monroe Doctrine (1823) which declared the Western Hemisphere to be an exclusive U.S. sphere of influence closed to any further European exploitation.
Frank: Avid expansionist Pres. James K. Polk (1795-1849) wanted the U.S. northwest boundary with Canada set at "54-40 or Fight." By winning the Mexican War (1846-48), he added 1.2 million square miles to the U.S. Pres. Millard Fillmore (1800-74) used gunboat diplomacy in sending Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794-1858) to open trade with Japan (1853).
Betty: Pres. Abraham Lincoln was imperial in suspending habeas corpus in the Civil War and jailing subversives without trial, actions that were unconstitutional. The U.S. was imperial in its discrimination against African Americans, American Indians, Chinese, and other minorities.
Frank: National U.S. post-Civil War energy went into settling the West, building roads, canals, railroads, and the telegraph to connect our vast nation. Immigrant labor abounded, business boomed; fortunes were made by Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, others. U.S. "Manifest Destiny" seemed unstoppable.
Betty: Wisconsin history Prof. Frederick Jackson Turner saw in the U.S. Census of 1890 a slight but significant shift in the U.S. center of population. His 1893 paper, "The Frontier in American History," said that the American frontier was gone, but that frontier characteristics remained: rugged individualism, restless movement, upward striving for business success, profit, and dominance.
Frank: Prof. Turner said prophetically in 1896, two years before the Spanish American War: [Frontier] "energies of expansion will…[continue in] demands for a vigorous foreign policy, for an inter-oceanic canal, for a revival of our power upon the seas, and for the extension of American influence to outlying islands and adjoining countries…."3
Betty: Prof. Turner was right. With the frontier gone, believers in "Manifest Destiny'" looked overseas for increased trade. To protect that trade, they needed strategic overseas bases and naval protection. Military power outside U.S. boundaries then meant naval power.
Frank: To Prof. Turner's insight that U.S. rugged individualism would expand overseas was added Charles Darwin's (1809-82) evolution theory (1859). U.S. expansionists, embracing Darwinian evolution, saw struggle for survival as natural and believed it right and proper for the U.S. to become the fittest, strongest, first, most dominant of nations.
Betty: U. S. naval officer and historian Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) was the third of Zimmermann's …Five Americans [Who] Made Their Country a World Power. Mahan's 1890 book on the importance of sea power influenced naval strategists world-wide. Mahan was the father of the modern U.S. Navy.
Frank: Born in West Point, N. Y., where his father taught, young Mahan graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis in 1859. Having served in the Civil War on antiquated wooden Union warships, Mahan later irritated superiors by publishing articles urging U.S. Navy improvements. His superiors tried unsuccessfully to muzzle Mahan. One called him derisively "a pen and ink sailor."
Betty: Mahan's model was the British Navy. He wanted more, larger, better-gunned, steam-driven, steel-hull ships. He wanted better selected, brighter, well trained, highly skilled naval personnel. Instead of small ships for coastal defense he wanted large battleships for oceanic offense.
Frank: The U.S. Navy, he wrote, must be mobile, flexible, with quick passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific through a central American canal. The U.S. must also have a network of strategically located refueling and refitting stations with deep ports.
Betty: Mahan's big chance came when Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce (1827–1917), under whom Mahan once served, established the world's first Naval War College at Newport, R.I. Mahan eagerly accepted a teaching post there (1885), spent 9 months in libraries steeped in historical studies, and arrived at the Naval War College (1886) to find himself its acting head and later president.
Frank: In his second year (1887), needing a lecturer on the naval history of the War of 1812, Mahan found that Theodore Roosevelt, whom he did not know, had published in1882, age 24, a book titled The Naval War of 1812. In his lecture series Roosevelt used the word "war" 62 times. These two men thereafter reinforced each other; Mahan was Roosevelt's strategic advisor. Roosevelt as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and as U.S. President implemented Mahan's ideas.
Betty: Mahan's lectures were published by Little, Brown & Co. The editor wisely suggested a new introductory chapter that tied his historical themes to U.S. Navy shortcomings. Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History 1660-1783, published in 1890, won rave reviews. That book and Mahan's subsequent books became required reading in major navy departments worldwide.
Frank: Some quotes about Mahan: "The Influence of Sea Power…was Mahan's greatest achievement and probably the most influential work on naval strategy ever written."4 [Again]…"The Influence of Sea Power was a work of breathtaking range: a history of diplomatic and military strategy, a survey of land as well as sea combat."5 [Again]…"[Mahan's book] shaped the imperial policies of Germany and Japan…"6
Betty: To Mahan's new naval strategy was added the insatiable drive for increased U.S. trade abroad. Ohio Governor William McKinley said, before his presidency: "We want a foreign market for our surplus products."7 Indiana Republican Senator Albert J. Beveridge (1862-1927) in 1897, a year before the Spanish American War, said: "American factories are making more than the American people can use; American soil is producing more than they can consume. Fate has written our policy for us; the trade of the world must and shall be ours."8
Frank: Expansionist Senator Henry Cabot Lodge said: "In the interests of our commerce…we should build the [Central American] canal, and for the protection of that canal…we should control [Hawaii].., Samoa, [and] Cuba….The great nations are rapidly absorbing for their future expansion and their present defense all the waste places of the earth…"9
Betty: Thus, during William McKinley's presidency (1896-1901) Republican expansionists determined to advance U.S. world status by increased overseas trade protected by strategic bases in territories abroad. Wanting a pretext for war, hawkish Roosevelt wrote to a friend in 1897, a year before the Spanish American War: "In strict confidence…I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."10
Frank: Spain then was weakened by guerrilla-led uprisings in Cuba under Jose Martí (1853-95) and in the Philippines under Emilio Aguinaldo (1869-1964). U.S. Americans sympathized with oppressed Cubans, were angered at Spain's brutality, concentration camps, and resulting deaths. U.S. American anger was fanned by U.S. yellow press sensational accounts of Spanish atrocities.
Betty: Pres. McKinley, a decorated Civil War major, wanted to avoid war. But a riot in Havana on January 12, 1898, threatened U.S. residents. Pres. McKinley sent the battleship Maine to Cuba as a show of force. On Feb. 15, 1898, an explosion sank the Maine in Havana Bay, killing 268 U.S. sailors. A U.S. Navy investigation, March 21, 1898, reporting that a mine explosion outside the hull sank the Maine, stirred U.S. anger. The U.S. jingo press, bent on war, headlined that Spanish agents had deliberately sunk the Maine.
Frank: Yielding to public clamor, Pres. McKinley on April 11, 1898, asked Congress to declare war on Spain. On April 22, 1898, the U.S. Navy blockaded Cuban ports. Spain on April 24, 1898; and the U.S the next day (25th), declared war.
Betty: Seventy eight years later (1976) a re-sifting of the evidence attributed the Maine explosion to coal dust which accidentally ignited nearby gunpowder.
Frank: The cry, "Remember the Maine," sparked the Spanish American War. It was comparable to the firing on Fort Sumter in the Civil War, the sinking of the Lusitania in World War I, the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II, the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in Vietnam, and Weapons of Mass Destruction charge in the Iraq War (2003-).
Betty: The Spanish American War, 1898, was based on larger U.S. motives than the Maine explosion: 1-to acquire more territory for more trade, 2-more territory for refueling bases, 3-to attain greater U.S. status, 4-to protect the proposed Panama Canal, and—a reason given for the first time: 5-to restore human rights to oppressed Cubans
.
Frank: Cuba was the initial focus. The Philippines was an afterthought. Following Mahan's strategic advice, and in the absence of his superior, Navy Secretary John D. Long, Assistant Navy Secretary Theodore Roosevelt sent Commodore George Dewey's (1837-1917) Asiatic fleet to Hong Kong before war was declared. Roosevelt instructed Dewey: when war is declared, rush to Manila and attack the Spanish fleet. Dewey's fleet reached Manila Bay late April 30. On May 1 in a 7 hour battle Dewey destroyed the Spanish ships.
Betty: In Cuba a U.S. Navy squadron blockaded the remaining Spanish fleet. U.S. regular soldiers and volunteers, including Roosevelt's "Rough Riders," soon reached Cuba. Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt, with spare glasses sewn into his new Brooks Brothers uniform, led the fight up San Juan Hill. On July 3, the U.S. destroyed the Spanish fleet in a 4 hour sea battle. A month later, Aug. 4, 1898, U.S. forces took Puerto Rico.
Frank: Total U.S. casualties: 3,289 dead. Only 332 died in battle. The remaining deaths were from malaria, dysentery, and other diseases. Spanish casualties: about 60,000 dead, only 10% in battle or battle wounds, 90% from malaria, dysentery, and other diseases.11&12
Betty: In the Treaty of Paris that ended the war (Dec. 10, 1898) Spain ceded to the U.S. the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam. In the Pacific we annexed Wake Island (July 4, 1898) and Hawaii (July 7, 1898). We had earlier acquired Midway Island when we purchased Alaska (1867).
Frank: The U.S. Senate fiercely debated the Dec. 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris. Anti-expansionists argued that acquiring such distant non-contiguous areas peopled by alien races incapable of assimilation was against traditional U.S. isolationism. Taking the territories, they said, was inconsistent with the Monroe Doctrine and against U.S. principles of self-government. It was Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge's dominant persuasion that won Senate approval by just two votes on Feb. 6, 1900.
End Part 1 of 2 Parts: Go to Concluding 2 of 2 Parts: bfparker@frontiernet.net
9:49 PM
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