Читать книгу The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898–1945 - David S. Nasca - Страница 12

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Amphibious Warfare Helps Win the Spanish-American War

Establishing the American Geopolitical Base

The United States’ need for a modern amphibious capability did not become apparent until the Maine exploded in Havana Harbor during the Cuban War of Independence, triggering outrage across the United States and demands from the American people for retribution against Spain.¹ The months spent attempting to find a peaceful resolution for Cuba’s independence were set aside as both the United States and Spain mobilized for war. According to Howard Jones, “Ideals and reality had again come together in the U.S. decision for war. For many Americans the war with Spain constituted a crusade to free Cuba from Old World oppression.”²

Prior to the Spanish-American War, the United States spent most of the nineteenth century undergoing a period of expansion and maturation that established the foundations of its geopolitical dominance in the world. John L. O’Sullivan, an influential New York City magazine and newspaper editor, states, “[American] national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that [the United States] is destined to be the great nation of futurity.”³ During this time, the United States, driven by belief in Manifest Destiny, expanded across the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. In addition, the United States also resolved the issues of slavery, states’ rights, and sectional discord during the American Civil War. After the war, the United States spent the rest of the nineteenth century concentrating its energies toward reconstruction in the South, consolidation and expansion against the American Indians in the West, and staying away from foreign entanglements outside the Western Hemisphere.⁴

Map 1. U.S. Amphibious Operations in Latin America (1898–1914)

While the United States was undergoing these trials, it also went through significant political, social, and economic changes at home. The American Civil War was the catalyst for these developments, which transformed the United States in several ways. Politically, during President Abraham Lincoln’s administration, a strong federal government was established that provided the unity, organization, and tools to focus the collective interests and resources of the states. In addition, the federal government also had the ability and power to implement policy and coordinate the United States’ manpower and resources against potential threats. Finally, the American government established the conditions that allowed the continued development of the nation’s economy by establishing high tariff barriers against imported foreign goods and implementing a series of economic policies that nurtured innovation and expansion in agriculture, industry, transportation, and commerce.⁵ This environment ultimately led to the United States’ extraordinary economic and scientific development, leading the nation into the Second Industrial Revolution. Michael H. Hunt argues in his study of America’s rise that, “A union of wealth, confidence, and leadership [provided] the basis for sustained international success, which in turn [created] a virtuous cycle, reinforcing confidence, confirming national myths, and giving rise to widely accepted policy codes. By assembling precisely these constituents of national power, [the United States] won security for their new nation, then international standing as a major power, and finally uncontested supremacy.”⁶

By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States was strategically positioned to dominate the international environment. Politically, the American government reigned supreme and had firm federal control over its various states and territories at home. Economically, the United States had a growing industrial base that was threatening to overtake the European industrial powers. Militarily, while America enjoyed order and security over its territories, its hegemony over the North American continent only had to deal with weak, divided states and nonstate actors that allowed the United States to run matters as it saw fit. Interestingly enough, American diplomacy remained detached and aloof from international affairs for the first one hundred years of the nation’s existence as a republic. While the United States did weigh in on matters concerning diplomatic affairs and foreign involvement in the Western Hemisphere, national leaders tried to stay true to President George Washington’s guidance when he urged, “The great rule of conduct for [the United States] in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagement let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith.”⁷

With political, economic, and military dominance secured on the North American continent after only one hundred years of existence, the United States managed to stay out of the world’s various foreign crises and wars perpetuated by the ambitions of the European powers. In addition, the consolidation of American power in North America created an excess of political and economic capital that allowed U.S. leadership to consider plans for future expansion beyond the confines of the North American continent.⁸ Part of this development was due to the American republic’s maturation process and its finally emerging in the international system, while the other part was influenced by the growing power and developmental impact of science and technology. Michael H. Hunt points out, “Only a dynamic and growing economy can create the material resources essential to realizing great international ambitions. Generation of wealth in turn depends on science and technology driving productivity and on a society attuned to innovation.”⁹ Therefore, as the United States grew in strength, the European continent during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was also experiencing a dynamic social, economic, and scientific transition that changed the face of the international system, as seen with the Enlightenment and the First Industrial Revolution.¹⁰

While elements of these influences in Europe touched the United States and impacted American political, economic, and social circles, the slow transition of the political leadership from the American Revolution generation into the Antebellum Period becomes apparent. The desire for isolation to focus on domestic issues within the United States began to change with a series of foreign policy moves that tied the American republic into the international system. The U.S. war against the Barbary States and, later, France and Great Britain reflected the reality that America’s interests went beyond the continental United States, and that, in fact, America was already engaged in foreign affairs to a greater or lesser degree in certain parts of the world.¹¹ In addition, the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the purchase and annexation of European holdings in the Florida and Oregon territories, and the conquest of Mexico’s northern territories reflected a United States that was becoming increasingly aggressive in its actions and assertive in its foreign policy dealings.¹² In his study of American diplomatic strategy during the nineteenth century, Howard Jones states that the United States needed to focus on strengthening its northern and southern borders, continue its expansion west toward the Pacific, and expand its commerce into Latin America. In doing this, these objectives necessitated bringing about order to the Western Hemisphere and establishing the United States as the New World’s guardian against Old World interference. The end result was bringing forth a greatly enhanced feeling of national security that rested on the United States making itself the most influential power in the hemisphere.¹³

The technological advances of the eighteenth and the early half of the nineteenth centuries, covering the latter years of the Enlightenment and much of the First Industrial Revolution, quickly shaped American political, economic, and military thinking. With American political leaders becoming increasingly aware of what was going on within the United States and the world around them, decisions and policies were shaped and implemented in reaction to the changing dynamic environment of the international system. These domestic and foreign policy decisions were made in the context of seizing an advantageous opportunity or exploiting a weakness that would significantly benefit both the United States and the American people. Walter Nugent points out, “Within this global context, the United States of America was a huge success [ending up] much larger economically, demographically, politically, and also imperially, than it had entered it.”¹⁴ Therefore, American actions in the international system did have consequences for the development of the United States based on an overall goal toward national security and shaping its geopolitical environment. Retired general Tony Zinni, former commander of U.S. Central Command, points out that national security strategy is defined by how a nation decides to engage the world. That nation can either decide on a strategy and then use its power and influence to shape the environment to fit its strategy, or that nation can take a hard, cold look at the environment to see how it can shape its national security strategy to achieve the best possible goals within the limits of the environment and its own national power and influence.¹⁵

In this context, the United States was breaking out of its geopolitical shell and beginning to view itself as a unique nation with a special mission in the world. Howard Jones argues that, unlike the European powers that talked about power relationships and strategic considerations, the United States discussed natural rights, republic ideas of popular rule, free trade, neutral rights, and freedom of the seas. While past American leaders were fairly consistent in promoting the United States’ national interests, they also had an underlying missionary spirit to expand the “Empire of Liberty,” consisting of the American ideals of freedom and democracy.¹⁶

While it could be argued that exceptionalism was just one of the many lenses through which America viewed itself, American exceptionalism was no longer something kept internally. Instead, American exceptionalism began to go global through the actions of the United States due to the efforts of many different American political, social, and economic forces that sought to change the world beyond its North American borders.¹⁷ Although the United States possessed the economic strength to potentially create one of the most powerful military forces in the twentieth century, the United States quickly found out that it did not have a complete understanding of the advantages and disadvantages that came from its geographic position on the planet. In addition, the United States neither appreciated nor possessed the technological know-how to create a military force armed with the tools and technology capable of fighting and winning wars for the purpose of shaping an international system that was conducive to American interests.

During the late eighteenth century, the American republic’s geopolitical base in North America had many advantages: it was a sparsely populated continent rich in natural resources, it was protected by two of the planet’s largest oceans and, more importantly, the United States had time and distance on its side against any potentially hostile state that had designs to attack. While other great powers such as Great Britain and Japan had these same geographic advantages to a greater or lesser degree, the United States achieved hegemony in the international system by the end of World War II because it made decisive policy decisions to invest in developing certain technologies that forever changed the dynamics of the international system. Max Boot argues in his study of technology and its impact on world powers that history was full of examples of superpowers failing to take advantage of important technological revolutions, especially in military affairs. Boot points out that the warning that appears at the bottom of mutual fund advertisements also applies to geopolitics: “Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.”¹⁸ Therefore, technological innovations and the ability to utilize them toward geopolitical ends could potentially radically change not only the conduct of warfare, but also the international system.¹⁹

Although the United States followed Great Britain, Japan, and the other major world powers in designing and testing various military technologies, such as aviation, tanks, warships, and atomic weapons, American leadership also focused on exploring the use of technology to improve amphibious warfare.²⁰ Because amphibious warfare was widely believed to be one of the most difficult forms of warfare, many countries, including most of the world’s major powers during the twentieth century, preferred avoiding having to conduct it. Paul Kennedy argues that assaults from the sea were essentially “a gambler’s throw” and that a cursory review of past amphibious assaults showed failures for a variety of reasons, ranging from powerful defenses to unfavorable weather conditions.²¹ However, by World War II, the United States’ unique decision to pursue developing technology and codifying techniques to conduct amphibious warfare allowed American military forces to destroy the Axis Powers and set the foundations for a radically different international system based on American leadership.

The International Situation in the Nineteenth Century

The international system in the late nineteenth century was hallmarked by European imperialism at its zenith. The British, French, Germans, Japanese, and other colonial competitors were pursuing aggressive territorial expansion in order to secure markets and resources to fuel their expanding industrial bases at home. This competition for land and influence led to not only the creation of several colonial empires, but also dangerous diplomatic crises that threatened to boil into a major regional war.²² While the Napoleonic Wars dramatically transformed Europe and essentially destroyed many of the old monarchical states, Great Britain led the victorious coalition against Napoleon in carefully establishing a post-Napoleonic world that focused on maintaining a balance of power in Europe. Henry Kissinger observes that the Napoleonic Wars led to the destruction of the old European order and, as a result, created an urgent need among the victorious major powers to try to build a new European system that would keep future revolutions in check while preventing the threat of a future hegemonic power. This international order, which was created more explicitly in the name of the balance of power than any other before or since, relied the least on power to maintain itself. This unique system was on continental equilibrium and a collection of major powers knitted together by shared values of power and justice.²³

Unfortunately, the builders of this new system did not anticipate that the various major world powers would all go through different levels of political and economic development in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars that would later influence their expansionistic policies overseas instead of within continental Europe.²⁴ Both Great Britain and France had a head start in the race for colonies based on their earlier jump on exploration and expansion since the sixteenth century.²⁵ Additionally, while the earlier colonial powers such as Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands stagnated and contracted during the nineteenth century, both the British and French embraced imperialism through an assorted mix of industrial development, national security, and international prestige.²⁶ The advent of the Second Industrial Revolution brought technology and knowledge that led to advances in every aspect of European society. The impact was an extraordinary population explosion, increased urbanization, and the need for more natural resources to continue feeding industries to produce goods and services to support a growing market base. Martin van Creveld observes, “A vast revolution swept over Europe and permanently altered the face of the Continent. Everywhere factories were erected, towns grew, and millions of peasants streamed from the countryside into the cities; at the turn of the century, what had for millennia been essentially agricultural societies had been metamorphosed into fully industrialized ones.”²⁷

While Great Britain consolidated its gains in Canada, Australia, India, and New Zealand, it also began expanding beyond the borders of its old imperial possessions by moving into Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East. This expansion inevitably brought the British Empire into contact with various countries and civilizations that were either conquered militarily or were controlled indirectly through local rulers and governments.²⁸ In each case, the industrial and technological superiority of Great Britain was the reason for its successful expansion across the globe. Cheap, affordable commercial goods produced in London, Manchester, and Liverpool created economic and cultural ties between Great Britain and its imperial possessions, thus binding the British Empire through the use of technology in terms of capitalism, communication, transportation, and military might. Niall Ferguson pointed out that perhaps the most remarkable thing about British defense of its interests was the composition of its military forces to defend its global interests in 1898. There were 99,000 regular soldiers in Great Britain, 75,000 in India supplemented by 148,000 native troops, 41,000 stationed throughout the rest of the empire, and 100,000 men in the Royal Navy. To support their military, the British Empire devoted 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product (40 million pounds annually), which also included barracks, forts, coaling stations, ports and maintenance facilities, supply depots, and arsenals, as well as additional money set aside for research and development geared toward modernizing the force. This was world domination on the cheap.²⁹

France’s recovery from the Napoleonic Wars and its economic boom due to the industrial revolution also made it the cultural capital of the world, the leader in literature, art, clothing, architecture, and design. Unlike the British, French expansion did not rely as much on military expeditions or hard power due to the wariness of the other European powers as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Instead, France utilized a combination of diplomacy and soft power to establish protectorates in key geographic locations throughout the world and later used these protectorates as bases of operation to expand its control over certain geographic areas, as seen with the French annexation of Madagascar, French Indochina, French West Africa, and the South Pacific.³⁰ In addition, French industry and technology allowed for the funding and coordination of extraordinary projects that had geopolitical consequences, as seen with the completion of the Suez Canal and its attempts to build the Panama Canal in the Western Hemisphere.³¹ Paul Kennedy explains that France carried out a dynamic colonial policy because it permitted a small group of bureaucrats, colonial governors, and party colonial enthusiasts to effect strategies that maximized colonial expansion and management of its territories. These policies allowed France to become immensely rich in terms of access to markets and resources overseas. This in turn enabled France to have mobile capital to spend as it saw fit in a variety of domestic and foreign policies in order to position their country as one of the great powers of the world.³²

Meanwhile, Germany, Italy, and Japan were late arrivals in the new wave of imperialism during the nineteenth century. This later adoption of imperialism was based on the need to establish political, economic, and military security within their respective homelands. All three major powers had to forcibly unite their countries through military means, as seen with the wars of unification of Germany and Italy in Europe and the Meiji Restoration in Japan. Once united, these countries also had to undergo a period of political consolidation and economic modernization at home in order to form modern, well-organized nations. By the late nineteenth century, all three major powers survived their periods of transition and began exerting both hard and soft power beyond their borders based on a desire to secure markets, natural resources, and land for their growing populations. Both Charles W. Kegley Jr. and Gregory A. Raymond point out in their examination of fateful decisions regarding war and peace in international politics that industrialization enabled the total mobilization of not only a major power’s population and resources, but also harnessed science and technology as well. Through this transformation, these newly industrialized and technologically advanced states began to change the geostrategic balance of power in the world by competing for international position and status.³³

The drive for the Germans, Italians, and Japanese to expand was based primarily on the international environment of their time during the nineteenth century where the imperial preferential trading system established by the other European colonial powers catered only to their own respective national well-being. Meanwhile, the high tariff barrier established by the United States, as well as its political and economic influence over most of the Western Hemisphere, made any possibility of establishing political and commercial ties out of the question. Facing the perceived choice of needing to grow or perish, Germany, Italy, and Japan quickly began undergoing military expeditions to establish and expand their colonial empires. Motivated by the urgent need to bring greater security to its geopolitical positions, Germany, Italy, and Japan took aggressive action against weaker independent countries, resulting in German dominance over parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, Italian control over parts of East Africa, and Japan’s growing influence over China and Korea.³⁴ Henry Kissinger observes, “The Concert of Europe, which had maintained peace for over a century, had for all practical purposes ceased to exist. The Great Powers had thrown themselves with blind frivolity into a bipolar struggle that led to petrification into two power blocs.”³⁵

By the end of the nineteenth century, imperialism quickly gained momentum, and as a result, most of the world was carved into a complex system of various European political and economic empires. Max Boot points out, “Europeans enjoyed other technological advantages beyond weaponry that facilitated their nineteenth-century conquests. Steamships, railroads, telegraphs, medical science—all were important contributors to the success of colonial campaigns by putting Europeans in a position where they could use their improved [weaponry].”³⁶ Therefore, the intense competition among the world’s major powers for land and resources now meant that fewer territories were open for colonization and economic exploitation. This change in the international system resulted in the world’s major powers becoming increasingly aggressive toward each other and more sensitive to various international incidents and perceived slights that, in some cases, threatened to explode into major regional wars. While the international community attempted to create global institutions and agreements to control and work out potential conflicts, as seen with diplomatic agreements in the Geneva and Hague Conventions, these nascent institutions and agreements did not have much credible influence.³⁷

Meanwhile, international friction and crises continued on and off, as seen in Africa, where a scramble for control over the heart of the continent led to a race between the British, the French, the Belgian, and the Italian expeditionary forces. The race quickly turned into a standoff between Great Britain and France over which nation would control the Upper Nile when both expeditionary forces faced each other in Fashoda, Sudan. War was barely avoided when France worked out an agreement with Great Britain, resulting in the British controlling the Nile while France received most of the Sahara region and, later, Morocco. Afterward, another incident occurred during the Samoan Crisis in which American, British, and German warships confronted each other over which nation would control the Pacific island group. John M. Pafford points out that while Great Britain and the United States were old rivals, Germany was different because it had grown powerful through political, economic, and military unification in 1871. Powered by the massive investments from industry and technology, Germany was new to empire building and quickly staked strategic claims in Africa and the Pacific. In addition, Germany was not only able to build the largest military in Europe, but was also simultaneously challenging Great Britain for the largest navy and the economy as well.³⁸ Germany was ready to challenge both Great Britain and the United States over the Samoan Islands. Fortunately, a major war was barely avoided when the timely arrival of a cyclone destroyed all three naval squadrons and forced a settlement between the three major powers.

In the nineteenth century, the balance of power established by Great Britain from the Napoleonic Wars was enforced and maintained by the world’s major powers despite significant changes to the power dynamics of the international system. For example, the Ottoman Empire was in decline and was only saved from being destroyed by the Russian Empire during the Crimean War thanks to the timely intervention of Great Britain, France, and Sardinia-Piedmont.³⁹ Meanwhile, China’s Qing Dynasty was fighting for its survival against the encroachments of the various foreign powers and was even successful in stopping the Taiping Rebellion from overthrowing the dynasty and potentially creating a failed state thanks to the timely intervention of Great Britain and France.⁴⁰ Finally, Germany, Italy, and Japan made dramatic appearances on the international scene when military force was used to unite their respective countries and, soon afterward, these nations implemented policies that transformed them into highly developed and powerful nations. Henry Kissinger points out that the most important reason that Europe was able to prevent itself from fracturing into war was because of shared diplomatic values established since the Congress of Vienna. The concept of maintaining the balance of power in Europe was more than just a physical equilibrium, but a moral one as well. The system of checks and balances created to prevent any major power from becoming too powerful in Europe reduced the opportunities of using force as well as contributed to maintaining international order. However, it was becoming apparent that the state system established nearly a hundred years following the Napoleonic Wars was going to be challenged sooner or later.⁴¹

The End of the European Balance of Power

Under these conditions, imperial competition during the late nineteenth century began to radically change the geopolitical situation as a result of many political, economic, and military forces, which was exacerbated by the Second Industrial Revolution. This revolution not only introduced scientific and technological changes, but also brought about new political, social, and economic ideas that threatened to overthrow timeless institutional beliefs of religion, society, and government. According to Hew Strachan, the motor of innovation was no longer commercial, but military. Iron, coal, and steam power introduced new technologies across Europe. In turn, this new technology brought intense industrial development and introduced new goods and services. In short, industrialization transformed the conduct of war because machines mass-produced weapons quicker and better. These changes ultimately facilitated the total mobilization of a country’s population and resources as it sought to establish the foundations of a modern society.⁴² During the nineteenth century, the rise in nationalism, as well as a wave of social and political unrest, that swept Europe and the rest of the world threatened to violently overthrow the balance of power carefully established nearly a century ago by the Congress of Vienna following the Napoleonic Wars.⁴³ The Ottoman, Spanish, and Chinese Empires were weakening as a result of modernization and decay, thereby creating potential power vacuums that could lead to civil war, chaos, and the establishment of new state actors. While these old empires struggled to adapt to the changing technological world around them, the major industrial powers sought to either preserve or exploit their decline and fall, resulting in a series of diplomatic situations that potentially threatened a major war.

The international situation in the late nineteenth century was becoming one big global competition with the perception of it being a zero-sum game in which one major power’s gain was another’s loss. While for centuries imperial competition and global power dynamics were limited to an empire’s geographic or cultural location (with rare exceptions made by the Roman, Greek, and Mongol empires), modern industrial and scientific technology created the communication, transportation, and medical capabilities, and military power to quickly deploy military forces and dominate various parts of the globe. Max Boot argues that the Industrial Revolution was both a boon and a bane in that industrial technology allowed countries to produce more food, medicine, clothing, and countless products, resulting in a population explosion without triggering a Malthusian crisis. However, while industrialization made life better for millions, it also resulted in the death of millions since this technology now enabled the extinguishment of life in a similar industrialization process.⁴⁴ In turn, this potential for violence created an atmosphere of power politics and realpolitik that caused an increasingly competitive, dangerous global environment that set the conditions for a global war. Through the Second Industrial Revolution, the use of hard and soft power could now be brought to bear globally at times and locations of an industrialized nation’s choosing. This ability became apparent in the ease in which the major powers quickly conquered and absorbed weaker, undeveloped countries throughout the world, as seen during the Scramble for Africa, the Great Game in Central Asia, and the ease in which China was brought to its knees during the Opium Wars.⁴⁵

Competition for the lands, markets, resources, and national prestige led to constantly shifting alliances and rivalries within the international system. The Holy Alliance, created in the early half of the nineteenth century between Prussia, Austria, and Russia, was a coalition created by the monarchist great powers to restrain republicanism and secularism in Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.⁴⁶ Meanwhile, Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and Piedmont-Sardinia formed a coalition to stop Russian expansion into the Balkans and the Middle East.⁴⁷ Another source of rivalry and friction developed after Japan’s smashing victory over China during the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, leading to the triple intervention of France, Russia, and Germany in the Asia-Pacific Region. These three major powers stopped Japan from imposing additional monetary and territorial demands at the expense of China and possibly causing its collapse in the region.⁴⁸ Finally, British and French competition continued on and off following the Napoleonic Wars during the nineteenth century and almost led to war in 1898 when the Scramble for Africa resulted in a showdown between British and French forces during the Fashoda Incident over imperial territorial disputes regarding control of the source of the Nile River.⁴⁹ According to David Levering Lewis, the possibility of a global war was postponed and therefore allowed the various major powers to continue their military repression and administrative consolidation of their holdings both at home and abroad. However, the delayed world war allowed for continued tensions to build, and with them, an arms race began, and two powerful alliance systems arose that promised an even greater, more destructive world war.⁵⁰

With the various major powers competing with each other for international supremacy and prestige, these nations also utilized their industrial and scientific bases to build and modernize their militaries as well as experiment and develop new military technologies. Industrialization not only allowed these powerful states to quickly support both the defense and economic opportunities of their people, but it also allowed the unprecedented national coordination and mobilization of their people and resources for total war. Hew Strachan points out, industrialization transformed war with the standardization of weapons and equipment with interchangeable parts. The introduction of precision machine tools and assembly processes combined with the refinement of better materials led to the unprecedented production of weapons of high quality and destruction. Therefore, many of the theoretical ideas and creations from the mind became a reality thanks in part to the rise of science and technology.⁵¹

In other words, the wars that were fought against an equally powerful nation were now more dangerous and destructive than ever, thus allowing the major powers, thanks to technology, to draw on every ounce of strength from the land and its people to win in a potential all-out war. Martin van Creveld observes in his study of industrialization and its impact on the growth of the military that as national economies expanded, so did armies; their growth more than kept pace with the rise in population. While machinery increased production, it also made its manpower pool available for other purposes, such as the military. Soon, armies were numbering in the millions in terms of both active and reserve troops ready for the possibility of combat.⁵² This reality became apparent in the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the Taiping Rebellion, and the German and Italian Wars of Unification. In each of these conflicts, the size and support of these armies dramatically increased because of science and technology, and so did the casualties and the level of destruction. This new reality resulted in nations requiring longer periods of time invested in reconstruction and recovery before being able to reengage in diplomatic affairs and pursue their national interests in the world.

The constantly shifting agreements and coalitions that maintained the balance of power within the international system were fading away. The world was changing because of the decline of certain states at the expense of new states that were rising to the fore. Henry Kissinger observes that several factors within the international system were transforming the balance of power, such as the decline of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the rise of Germany, Italy, and Japan. However, the balance of power within the Vienna system, Kissinger goes on to explain, was being radically altered with the rise of a unified Germany, and Great Britain continually distancing itself from maintaining the international system established at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.⁵³ The instability of the world due to intense state-on-state competition inevitably led to two slowly coalescing alliance systems by the early twentieth century: the Triple Entente composed of Great Britain, France, and Russia and the Triple Alliance made up of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.⁵⁴ While European rivalries threatened the peace and security of the international system, both the United States and Japan found themselves at cross-purposes in both Asia and the Pacific. Japan’s growing ambitions in the Pacific were intensified by the vulnerability of China and Europe’s colonial possessions in the region. While the United States and Japan were wary of each other and made long-term plans for an eventual war, Russian and British strength in the region also served to curb Japanese aggression during the nineteenth century.

Ironically, despite the friction and tension within the international system, a worldwide belief existed that the days of the Napoleonic Wars, where all the major powers were drawn into the conflict, were over and that national differences could be worked out and resolved peacefully. However, the fluctuation of power across the international system that was shaped by the unpredictability of interactions between the European powers still created moments of political crisis in which the threat of war was always a possibility because of the heightened pressure and threat of losing national prestige and power.⁵⁵

Past experiences from wars during the nineteenth century also mistakenly led to the understanding that conflict between nations would be very short, as proven in the German and Italian Wars of Unification, the First Sino-Chinese War, and the various small colonial bush wars that took place in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Meanwhile, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the Boer War were argued to be the exception rather than the rule of future conflicts, despite the massive loss in human life and material destruction. Orlando Figes argued that these conflicts were the earliest examples of truly modern wars that were fought with new industrial technologies, modern rifles, steamships, and railways, and where novel forms of logistics and communications were utilized to support and coordinate the movement and deployment of massive military forces resulting in unprecedented casualties prior to being eclipsed by World Wars I and II.⁵⁶

While the United States avoided most of the international crises and small wars, American political, economic, and military power continued to grow from its geographical base in North America. While technology from the Second Industrial Revolution dramatically improved economic standards at home, it also introduced new social and political problems that demanded new, unique solutions from the American government. Doris Kearns Goodwin observes, “With this transfiguring mechanization and the development of mass production, however, the gulf between the employed and the employer is growing wider; social contrasts are becoming sharper.”⁵⁷ In addition, the United States also had to spend increasing amounts of time and energy on American foreign policy, since its diplomatic and commercial ties brought it into contact with almost every part of the world. Although America’s contact with the international system brought economic and cultural benefits that continuously transformed American society, it also left the nation susceptible to the world’s problems and crises.

America’s Expanding Geopolitical Interests in the Nineteenth Century

The United States’ successful fulfillment of the American goal of Manifest Destiny meant that the American nation straddled the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and that the country had direct access to markets in Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. The American republic’s position was ideal in the international system because it had access to two of the world’s largest oceans, giving it maritime access to both East and West. In addition, its geographic landmass across the North American continent also gave it access to a variety of environments and natural resources ready for development and exploitation. Finally, the United States bordered only Canada and Mexico, two relatively weak states that no longer posed a significant threat to the United States’ core interests. John J. Mearsheimer’s examination of the United States as a great power is interesting because while he acknowledges that the United States did possess the economic strength to compete with the other major powers in the international system, he points out that the United States was no ordinary great power. Its small military combined with its hesitation to use it to pursue its interests made the American power an unusual state actor throughout the nineteenth century. During this period, the United States instead relied almost exclusively on the use of soft power for its foreign affairs, using a combination of diplomacy and commerce to leverage gains on behalf of the republic.⁵⁸

While the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans provided geographic protection from more powerful and highly aggressive state actors, the United States was not entirely sheltered from military attacks. The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 proved that Great Britain could use both Canada and the Royal Navy to inflict harm on the continental United States. In fact, Great Britain proved that it could conduct amphibious operations effectively against the United States when it launched a few major campaigns against the American mainland from the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Piers Mackesy argues that Great Britain’s three main concerns revolved around maintaining maritime security, protecting its overseas empire, and maintaining the European balance of power. In order to maintain these three priorities, Great Britain relied on interventions from time to time to ensure its geopolitical interests were maintained, especially when it had to reduce the British Army to amphibious warfare at a time when it had no secure bases in certain parts of the world to successfully attack an enemy state.⁵⁹ Great Britain demonstrated this power projection capability with the occupation of major American cities during the American Revolutionary War and the embarrassing defeats it inflicted on the Americans during the War of 1812. These defeats made an impression on the American political and military leadership of that time and set the foundations for what became the basis of American geopolitical strategy: protection of the continental United States. With the rise of the Second Industrial Revolution during the latter half of the nineteenth century, technological advances in transportation, firepower, and logistics now made it possible to vastly improve the power projection distance and lethality of potential state competitors.

The influence of the Second Industrial Revolution on American national security became evident in a series of crises in the Western Hemisphere after the conclusion of the American Civil War. While the Mexican-American War finalized the issue of dominance over the North American continent, the immediate threat of the southern states seceding from the Union and forming the Confederacy forced an immediate reprioritization of American leadership, manpower, and resources. With American foreign policy focused exclusively on discrediting the rebellion and preventing European recognition and intervention in the conflict, much of the Western Hemisphere was left to its own devices, especially Mexico and South America. Bevin Alexander comments, “At the turn of the twentieth century the United States entered into a vast new world [and] had become the preeminent economic power on earth and was separating itself further from the world…. But the United States had so far played only a minor role in world affairs.”⁶⁰

The end of the American Civil War and the preservation of the Union left the United States for a brief time in possession of one of the largest, most powerful militaries in the world. The implementation of the Anaconda Plan to strangle and destroy the Confederacy during the American Civil War led to the formation of a large army and navy. The defeat of the Confederacy now required the United States to maintain a large military for the occupation, reconstruction, and eventual reintegration of the southern states back into the Union. While the political and military leadership was focused on reconstruction in the South, it also sought to remove any potential threats to the republic, especially along its southern and western frontiers. The destruction and removal of the American Indian tribes was considered essential to the United States’ interests in order to allow American settlement and economic development to proceed unmolested. In addition, American political and military leadership successfully pressured France to withdraw its military support of, and political influence over, Mexico after several years of occupation in trying to support French imperial schemes in Central America.

While the United States focused on reconstruction and closing the western frontier, American political, military, and economic leadership began looking beyond its borders. In a series of foreign policy moves, the United States acquired or secured a series of territories, such as Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, and Wake Island, that extended its power and influence into the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.⁶¹ In addition, the United States also sent warships to various parts of the world to safeguard American commerce and interests, particularly in South America, Africa, and Asia. However, by the end of southern reconstruction and western frontier settlement in the late nineteenth century, the American military was still small and sorely in need of modernization. These problems became apparent when American naval squadrons were embarrassingly unprepared to protect American interests during the War of the Pacific in South America, where Chile’s ground and naval forces were more powerful than those of the United States.⁶²

Although the United States avoided war with Chile and involvement in the War of the Pacific, the United States clearly required more than diplomacy, soft power, and posturing to implement its geopolitical strategy. Based on these recent international incidents, as well as Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, the United States authorized the growth and modernization of its naval forces by decommissioning its old wooden ships of the line from the American Civil War. In their place, the American republic pushed for the rapid construction of modern steel warships that ran on either coal or oil and that were equipped with the latest technology and armed with big, quick-firing cannons.⁶³ In addition, sailors and marines were becoming more professionalized by virtue of increased application in discipline and technical training. In other words, technology was beginning to influence American military capabilities so they could advance the United States’ geopolitical strategy, as well as protect its global interests. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, “under the elderly Navy secretary, John Davis Long, Theodore Roosevelt did everything in his power to prepare the U.S. Navy for war. During the long summer months when his boss vacationed in New England, Roosevelt exercised a ‘free hand’ to purchase guns, ammunition, and supplies. He generated war plans, scheduled additional gunnery drills, stocked distant supply stations with coal, consulted Captain Alfred Mahan about the need for new battleships, and succeeded in having Admiral George Dewey placed in command of the Asiatic Fleet.”⁶⁴

With the United States modernizing its military, it also became apparent that America needed to establish and maintain diplomatic relations with numerous states within the international system, particularly in the Asia-Pacific Region. While the State Department maintained diplomatic relations in Europe and South America, the United States sought to establish diplomatic relations with other nations as well, including Japan, Korea, Siam, and China.⁶⁵ Attempts to do the same with Africa and the Middle East were shut down, since the European powers were already dominant in those regions where many of the independent states became either colonies or protectorates. It was in this international environment that the United States’ foreign policy and commercial interests were focused primarily within the Western Hemisphere and the Asia-Pacific Region, since the imperial preferential trading system in those regions was not as dominant.

In this situation, the United States’ involvement in Central America and the Caribbean became prominent for many reasons. Besides geographic proximity with the continental United States, the United States had political, economic, and military interests in the regions’ natural resources and markets, as well as in their potential ability to serve as refueling stations, port facilities, and, more importantly, in the possibility of constructing a canal to connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. While the United States had the transcontinental railroad for cross-country travel, the geopolitical implications of linking the eastern and western regions of the United States by sea were manifold. Such a canal would shorten maritime commerce and passenger movement by several weeks, and it would allow the American Navy to more easily shift its fleets and squadrons between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Despite the potential economic and military applications of a canal in Central America and in the Caribbean, the entire region was rife with strife and intrastate warfare. The various weaknesses found in the host nation governments of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua made them ripe for American military intervention in order to safeguard the United States’ commercial and diplomatic interests as well as to prevent the possibility of a major power moving in to exert control.⁶⁶ In addition, some of the Caribbean islands were also fighting for their independence, as in Cuba, where a long, violent insurgency was taking place against the Spanish Empire, leading to news reports of outrageous atrocities and the use of concentration camps. Besides being the largest island in the Caribbean, Cuba had the most extensive commercial ties with the United States and had geostrategic importance, since it was less than one hundred miles from Florida’s southern coast.

While Central America and the Caribbean were practically the “backyard” of the United States, the geographical, political, and military uniqueness of the region presented several obstacles in using American military forces in the region.⁶⁷ These conditions combined to push America’s military to develop and experiment with new technologies, especially in the realm of amphibious warfare, that later served as the basis for how it would fight wars in the first half of the twentieth century. However, the United States’ military had atrophied while fighting scattered, disorganized American Indian tribes, and its perception of fighting wars overseas was conceptual and based on how it had fought the American Civil War, as well as its limited observations of how the other major powers waged war. When the Spanish-American War began, the United States used whatever practical equipment and weapons it had on hand. To make up for the military shortfalls, Americans had to adapt and overcome the difficulties they faced when fighting against the Spanish. Herbert Sargent points out, “The [American] volunteers had to accept an inferior rifle and use black powder; a number of regiments could obtain no tents; the entire army was short of transportation; and many soldiers had to go to the tropics and fight in winter clothing.”⁶⁸

Military Mobilization and Adaptation for the Spanish-American War

When the United States entered the Spanish-American War in 1898, the American armed forces were still woefully behind in their organization, professionalism, and technology.⁶⁹ Despite the United States not having a powerful, modern military that could potentially challenge the larger, more powerful major powers such as Great Britain, France, Russia, or Germany, Theodore Roosevelt anticipated a war with Spain and, as a result, applied his immense energy as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to modernize its power projection capabilities by focusing on building up its naval forces. Roosevelt also issued an extensive memorandum to the Secretary of the Navy about a possible war with Spain and in which he insisted that American cruisers, gunboats, and other warships be concentrated at strategic points for possibly blocking the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines. In addition, the memorandum also ended with demands for more ammunition, men, and colliers to be ready to support the American fleets if war was declared.⁷⁰

While the Union victory at the conclusion of the American Civil War restored legitimacy and confidence in the United States and scared off most European encroachments in the Western Hemisphere, the American military declined in power and influence. It spent the latter half of the nineteenth century overseeing reconstruction of the American South while also protecting settlers along the western frontier. During this time, the United States’ recovery seemed miraculous and led to the steady development of its industrial, food, and resource production.⁷¹ With the continent secured against potential external enemies, the American military became more of a police force that focused on maintaining law and order. Since the military dealt primarily with hostile American Indians and the occasional group of outlaws or bandits, its capabilities atrophied. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy focused on protecting American commercial vessels from pirates and generally contributing to maintaining security of the global commons.

After an international incident involving American sailors in Santiago, Chile, and avoiding being potentially embarrassed in a naval war by a militarily more advanced and powerful Chile, the United States invested funds to modestly modernize its naval forces.⁷² In order to encourage continued American political support for naval modernization and military preparation, according to Kenneth Hagan, junior officers within the U.S. Navy, such as Lieutenant Charles Belknap, argued that battles on land and sea should not be left to chance, but instead be recognized as essential for America to achieve dominance. In a potential war, the destruction of the enemy’s fleet, followed by campaigns “involving combined naval and military operations against assailable portions of an enemy’s territory,” was chiefly important.⁷³ In addition, Mahan’s writings on sea power and its impact on geopolitics within the international system further convinced the United States to accelerate its naval modernization program and increase the size of its fleet. In doing so, the American political and military leadership realized that it also needed to increase the size and professionalization of its armed forces. Increased allocation of funds toward growing the education and training of both its ground and naval forces was realized with the establishment of the new Army Command and General Staff College and the Naval War College. These premier military institutions served as the foundations for not just the study of warfare, but also allowed the Army, Navy, and later Marine Corps students to practice and experiment with planning and conducting amphibious operations with units trained and equipped with modern weapons and equipment.

Although these measures helped the American military, they were not enough to initially prepare its military forces for war with Spain. According to Allan R. Millett, the Department of the Navy concluded that the U.S. Navy would be the primary instrument that the American republic would use to end Spanish colonialism. While the Naval War College and the Office of Naval Intelligence drew up a series of war plans for naval action against the Spanish Fleet, the Navy War Board envisioned offensive operations in the Caribbean and Pacific. A defeat in the Caribbean would isolate Cuba and blockade the Spanish ground forces, while a victory in the Pacific would allow the American government to hold the Philippines hostage.⁷⁴ Despite being a young, large country, the United States had a poor military record of fighting against other major powers. The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were mostly a string of tactical and operational defeats against the British interrupted with an occasional American victory, while the Quasi-War with Revolutionary France was inconclusive, resulting in the French Fleet continuing to harass American shipping and the United States’ commerce taking a major hit during the course of the Napoleonic Wars. To make matters worse, with the exception of its war against the Barbary States in the early nineteenth century, the United States had almost no experience fighting overseas. While American naval forces were familiar with operating long distances from the continental United States, they faced the challenge of transporting and deploying large American military forces in order to remove Spain from Cuba and its various colonial possessions in both the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Regardless of their military shortfalls in the upcoming war with Spain, the Americans had the advantage of having a more modern navy than the Spanish. The United States had spent the years since its confrontation with Chile well. When Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt came into office, he continued the rapid growth and modernization of the naval force, while directing American warships to key locations around the world in order to be ready for a war.⁷⁵ In addition, while the American ground forces were small in comparison with the other major world powers, they served as a small professional military core for the United States to quickly mobilize and then expand the size of its all-volunteer military force for action. Although military weapons, supplies, bases, and infrastructure were lacking, by 1898, the United States had a well-developed industrial base and transportation system.⁷⁶ With the technological and organizational instruments in place, the United States’ difficulty was mobilizing its potential military strength quickly enough to defeat the Spanish forces before they could dig in and prepare against the anticipated American offensive.

Military mobilization and organization during the Spanish-American War greatly varied between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army. Once war was declared, telegraph messages were quickly sent from the Secretary of Navy’s offices in Washington, DC, to move against Spain’s Pacific and Caribbean colonial possessions. The U.S. Navy Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey quickly steamed from Hong Kong to Manila Bay, where it quickly made short work of destroying Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo’s squadron, while still in harbor, with its quick-firing five-inch guns, and eliminating Spanish naval power in the Asia-Pacific Region. Soon afterward, American military ground forces, in conjunction with Filipino insurgents, quickly captured Manila and seized control of the Philippine Islands.⁷⁷

Even though the American forces made short work of Spain’s colonial possessions in the Pacific, the main theater of the war was concentrated primarily in Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. Facing significantly larger, better prepared military forces on those islands, the U.S. Navy quickly positioned itself to cut off all communications with Spain as well as to neutralize Spanish naval power to prevent any Spanish military attacks along either the Gulf Coast or the eastern seaboard of the United States.⁷⁸ Once naval dominance was established around these islands, the U.S. Navy conducted reconnaissance and shaping operations to prepare the operational battlespace for invasion. The U.S. Navy did possess Marine detachments, but they were simply not enough to project military power ashore. American military forces in theater had to wait until either the U.S. Army was mobilized and trained for the upcoming invasion or additional Marine units were raised and deployed from the continental United States.

The U.S. Army’s leadership quickly took the lead in organizing the mobilization of an all-volunteer expeditionary force to conquer Cuba and Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, the U.S. Army took a long time to mobilize and concentrated its units in Florida in preparation to deploy as the expeditionary force.⁷⁹ In addition, the U.S. Army did not have a long history of conducting amphibious warfare—only, to a limited extent, during the American Civil War with the capture of major ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts in the South as well as controlling the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, that was many years previously, and the U.S. Army did not yet appreciate the importance of amphibious operations; instead, it focused on physical conditioning and basic training, especially with an emphasis on marksmanship, field craft, hand-to-hand combat, animal husbandry, and horsemanship. Meanwhile, officer and noncommissioned officer leadership was in short supply within the regular forces and, as a result, had to be supplemented with ad hoc selections of potential officers based on past military leadership, education, physical fitness, character, and leadership potential. While officers and noncommissioned officers were drafted from the ranks, they received training in military leadership, tactics, organization, logistics, and administration. Unfortunately, when it came to embarking the large military force onto ships in preparation for amphibious operations in Cuba and Puerto Rico, Major General Shafter from Port Tampa, Florida, notified the Adjutant General of the United States Army in Washington, DC, that he encountered numerous difficulties in loading men, equipment, and animals onto the ships and that the infrastructure to move the expeditionary force from the camps to the ships made quick loading impossible.⁸⁰

By June 1898, the United States was positioned to launch the final part of its war with Spain. While the U.S. Navy quickly destroyed Spanish naval forces, Spain’s colonial garrison had time to dig in and fortify its positions in both Cuba and Puerto Rico, while in the Pacific, the Philippines was threatening to drift into chaos. In these hostile, uncertain conditions, the United States’ ground and naval forces were making final preparations for destroying Spanish colonial forces and seizing control of the Caribbean. In the American military leadership’s assessment of the intelligence reports they were receiving from Cuba and Puerto Rico, the United States was at a severe disadvantage in that they would be landing troops on a hostile shore against enemy forces that had had years to prepare and fortify their positions against potential invasion. Through practicality and the technology it currently had on hand, the American military began its first steps in modernizing amphibious warfare and adapting the tools and opportunities offered by the Second Industrial Revolution.

Technological Influences on the United States Military and Its Impact on Amphibious Warfare

The Spanish-American War was the first major war the United States fought overseas. Despite having fought against Great Britain, France, and even the Barbary States, these conflicts were either waged mostly at home within the United States or on international waters. Unfortunately, the United States did not have a great success rate in winning overseas conflicts, since these conflicts were either open-ended affairs or else ended in a stalemate. In addition, the wars fought on the North American continent depended on the national welfare of the United States and were against weaker, less organized opposition, as seen in its victories over the American Indians and Mexico. Meanwhile, the American Civil War was a matter of national survival, and the performance from both the North and South during that conflict was observed by the major European powers as simply uninspired and amateurish at best.

The war with Spain, just like previous conflicts involving the United States, caught the Americans at a disadvantage in terms of training, experience, and planning. In fact, according to Graham A. Cosmas’ study of American military capabilities during the Spanish-American War, American military planners discovered they had an acute shortage of shipping, personnel, and facilities to support the immediate deployment of an American expeditionary force to the Caribbean in July 1898. Both Secretary of War Russell Alger and Quartermaster General Marshall Ludington had taken drastic steps to alleviate naval transportation, which included chartering not only every available American steamship and ocean-going vessel in the Gulf of Mexico, but also going as far as to recruit foreign vessels as well.⁸¹ Since the United States had not yet taken the time to fully explore how much war had changed in the nineteenth century, the American republic’s reactions were the typical knee-jerk response (as in past conflicts) to ensure it could quickly close the gap militarily with the opposition. However, unlike its previous wars, the United States was better positioned industrially, scientifically, and financially to push for significant changes in its country’s military forces as well as to utilize the tools and weapons to help the American expeditionary forces succeed in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Although the United States military went into the Spanish-American War with few technological innovations, the operational environment, combined with the requirements to win the war, encouraged pragmatic thinking and improvisation on the part of the field commanders and troops.

While some of the military leadership in the American forces did serve in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars, the military operations during the Spanish-American War were more or less alien to anything they had experienced before. In addition, the lesson learned from the American Civil War was that the conduct of war was changing and that war was becoming increasingly industrialized and dominated by technology. Jared Diamond explains in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, “Technology’s history exemplifies what is termed an autocatalytic process: that is, one that speeds up at a rate that increases with time, because the process catalyzes itself … that new technologies and materials make it possible to generate still other new technologies by recombination.”⁸² The technological development and employment from Diamond’s study was best understood by examining how the older military commanders used their American Civil War experience with the rifle and cannon against the Spanish. In addition, technological improvements in steamships, telegraphs, railroads, smokeless gunpowder, and increasingly powerful artillery made it clear that the complexity and operation of these tools of war required specific training, discipline, and specialization in order for the American military to succeed.

In the case of amphibious warfare, not much had changed in its applications throughout military history. In fact, it continued to stagnate and was really still an ad hoc operation that depended on luck and leadership for its success. Even during the Spanish-American War, amphibious warfare was conducted much as it had been forty years earlier during the American Civil War. Despite the United States’ significant industrial advantages over Spain, military practical experience and knowledge in such operations had atrophied, especially when the missions of both the Army and Navy went their separate ways. The lack of cooperation between the Army and Navy became apparent during the planning and execution of landing American ground forces on Cuba. According to Alfred T. Mahan, the movement of American ground forces from Tampa to Cuba was essential to the war’s success, but required the U.S. Navy to peel away ships from the blockade as well as assemble the numerous small vessels needed to check the possible harmful activity of the Spanish gunboats along the northern coast and, afterward, at Santiago.⁸³

The debarkation of Fifth Army Corps, under General William R. Shafter, in the vicinity of Daiquiri and Siboney near the Cuban capital of Santiago, was a lesson in patience. The Quartermaster’s Department in 1898 was still not ready for war and required more time. It had to find the landing craft necessary to land the men, guns, and supplies on the enemy beaches. In addition, both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy did not have any specialized boats for amphibious warfare, which were an essential ingredient in ship-to-shore movements to projecting military power ashore. To compensate for the lack of amphibious boats, the American military had to improvise by making use of the lifeboats and borrowed Navy steam launches. Meanwhile, for the disembarkation, the Quartermaster’s Department had to employ steam lighters from American harbors to supplement the expeditionary force.⁸⁴

Unfortunately, this meant that the landing locations selected in Cuba did not have the port facilities to accommodate the efficient debarkation of the troops, nor did it have the ability to offload and organize weapons, equipment, and supplies for the expeditionary force. In addition, the loading plan for the troop transports was a haphazard effort in which men, equipment, supplies, and horses were thrown together in the rush to get American ground forces to Cuba. Unfortunately, not much thought was put into how the landing force would debark onto Cuba, therefore setting conditions for a confused, disorganized amphibious landing.

The friction and slowness of Fifth Corps’ debarkation put the entire American expeditionary force in a vulnerable position. The inability for American forces to land quickly along Cuba’s southern coast was the result of several factors—the choppy conditions on the ocean, the difficulty of men dropping into boats, and the distraction of the huge guns from American warships providing uncoordinated naval gunfire support. To make matters worse, the unloading of follow-on men, supplies, and artillery simply could not happen because the docks and harbor facilities of Daiquiri were ruined by the storm. Therefore, the American expeditionary force once again adapted to the situation by men and horses jumping into the water and swimming ashore while lifeboats and steam tugs were used to ferry supplies and artillery. Unfortunately, most of the supplies and artillery still remained in the American fleet because there was no way for most of the ships to empty their holds without cranes and winches.⁸⁵

The troop transports in these operations were contracted from commercial companies, and to make matters worse, the vessels were not designed for billeting troops and conducting amphibious landings. In General Order Number 13 in 1885 released by Rear Admiral James E. Jouett of the U.S. Naval Force on the North Atlantic Station in 1885, he laid out in exact detail how amphibious assaults were to be organized and executed when the landing force began operations from sea to shore:

Land on a beach for ordinary drill or parade, [while] boats will pull in to the beach in line abreast, with intervals of one boats’ length between the boats, and all the men and howitzers will be landed at once. If all must land at one point, “column” will be formed, and the crews will be landed in succession. After landing, the formation will take place at once. The battalion will be quickly established in the desired direction, and the other battalions will be formed on the same line. The intervals between battalions will be six yards. The marine battalion forms on the right, the infantry battalion of seamen on the left of the marines, and the artillery battalion on the extreme left. The order of arrangement of the companies and field pieces from the different battalions will be the same as given for boats; and each company and howitzer crew will upon landing be nearly opposite its place in line.⁸⁶

While the ships did have life vessels to facilitate the movement of men and supplies ashore, there were simply not enough of them. Men and officers were so impatient with the debarkation process that many jumped into the water to swim ashore, and later they found even the lifeboats could not handle moving horses ashore, which led to the crew having the horses jump into the water so they could swim ashore. Unfortunately, some of the horses became confused when they were pushed into the water and instead swam out into the open ocean where they soon drowned. Due to these complications, not enough horses were left to maintain an effective cavalry unit, and many cavalrymen became infantry for the fighting ahead. In addition, without horses, the careful use of the expeditionary force’s manpower became a concern for the unloading and stockpiling of supplies and equipment for the campaign ahead. According to Richard Harding Davis, disembarkment was a marvelous thing in which thousands of men finally made it ashore, but were prevented from engaging the enemy because three weeks had to be spent unloading their packs, arms, ammunition, and supplies. Instead of the landing force securing the beach and making its way quickly into the interior as originally planned, the Americans became bogged down because of supply and logistical issues while the Spanish had time to prepare for the upcoming American assault.⁸⁷

Not surprisingly, the plan to seize Santiago in a coup de main was lost when the Spanish colonial forces realized the presence of American ground forces. The Spanish forces under the command of General Antero Rubin took up defensive positions at Las Guasimas and ambushed the American forces as they pushed west toward Santiago.⁸⁸ Edmund Morris observes that the campaign to capture Santiago was not accomplished without considerable further bloodshed since the city proper was stiffly fortified, with five thousand troops and a seemingly inexhaustible stock of ammunition. In addition, wounds, malarial fever, and dysentery incapacitated or killed more and more men. It took less than forty-eight hours before the expeditionary force was desperate for personnel and supplies.⁸⁹ During this time, the American ground forces were also hampered by Spanish colonial forces that were very familiar with the jungles of Cuba. Fighting a rearguard action, General Antero Rubin’s forces slowed down the American advance with snipers as well as hit-and-run attacks using the local vegetation and terrain to their advantage. The Spanish colonial forces’ use of smokeless gunpowder made it difficult for the Americans to locate and close with the enemy. This gave the Spanish an edge in the bitter jungle fighting between the landing beaches and the city of Santiago, therefore buying time for its defenders to strengthen its defenses and prepare itself for the American assault.⁹⁰

Despite the unexceptional performance of the American expeditionary force’s initial contact against Spanish colonial forces, General William R. Shafter and the officer leadership quickly adjusted tactics by employing skirmishers to flush out snipers and small-scale Spanish units in the jungle.⁹¹ In addition, they also stayed off the main roads and trails toward Santiago, using the jungle for cover and concealment and, when engaged by the enemy, employing fire and maneuver in rushes. General Shafter’s forces continued to advance toward Santiago in this manner until Spain’s colonial forces anchored themselves along the San Juan River, thus forcing the Americans to employ frontal attacks against well-entrenched defensive positions. Frank Freidel points out, “The twin battles of El Caney and San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898, decided whether the American expeditionary force in Cuba would succeed or fail. It was a close decision.”⁹² However, with the employment of artillery and small arms fire to suppress Spanish defensive positions, American forces broke through at El Caney and San Juan Hill and continued their push toward Santiago.⁹³

While the U.S. Army struggled with its landings in the vicinity of Daiquiri and Siboney, the U.S. Navy continued its blockade of Cuba with the preponderance of its naval forces focused on containing the Spanish fleet in Santiago. According to Lieutenant Jose Muller Y Tejeiro, “The enemy had complete control of the sea, and from Daiquiri, where the landing was made, to Punta Cabrera, the American fleet, consisting of over seventy vessels, including both war and merchant vessels (many of the latter armed with guns), did not permit us to even think of receiving reinforcements or help of any kind, unless it were from the interior of the island.”⁹⁴ However, American naval forces were prevented from engaging the Spanish navy because of the powerful naval defenses protecting Santiago Bay. Worse, American naval forces were at a disadvantage in terms of weather because they were fighting in hurricane season. In order to secure shelter for such an event, Commander Bowman H. McCalla was detached from Admiral Sampson’s blockading fleet at Santiago to secure Guantanamo Bay with a squadron composed of a battleship, three cruisers, and a gunboat. Shortly after arriving at Guantanamo Bay, Commander McCalla neutralized Spanish coastal defenses and landed a battalion of U.S. Marines under Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Huntington in order to seize the harbor facilities and their fortifications.⁹⁵ Interestingly, prior to the amphibious assault against Guantanamo Bay, Lieutenant Colonel Huntington reported many lessons learned to the Commandant of the Marine Corps during his battalion’s first and only “practice” amphibious landing and the problems he encountered at Camp Sampson, Key West, Florida, prior to participating in the amphibious assault on Guantanamo Bay:

I received orders from Commander Reiter that the battalion would leave the ship at 4:15 a.m. It was necessary to knock off work at 3:45 a.m. in order that the men might get ready to go ashore. I was ordered by Commander Reiter, against my earnest pleas, to leave on board the Panther one-half of our 6-millimeter ammunition (225,000 rounds) and one-half of the 3-inch ammunition (18 boxes), the Panther having two 3-inch guns and we having four. This 6-millimeter ammunition was retained, Commander Reiter informed me, to serve as ballast, as the Panther has no 6-millimeter rifles…. Owing to the short time allowed for the removal of the stores, and notwithstanding the fact that the men worked hard and worked fast, considerable quantities of our property and part of the ten days’ rations I requested were left on board. The battalion moved from the ship shortly after 4:15 a.m., and moved out to the beach, short 2 miles from the wharf, and after we had been there some time the Panther came out of harbor and apparently lay to in the offing about two and one-half hours…. The battalion is now strung out in camp along the beach for over a half a mile…. I think that, notwithstanding the annoyance, trouble, and expense this transfer has caused, the experience will be some value to the battalion.⁹⁶

While the landing at Key West was less than stellar for the Marines, the capture of Guantanamo Bay went smoothly, and the entire battalion landed under the protection of the naval squadron’s fire support. As stated in the squadron bulletin from the U.S. Flagship New York near Guantanamo Bay, “the pickets launched against Guantanamo were fired by the Spaniards near the fort, but suffered no casualties. In addition, no effort was made to dispossess the Spaniards of the upper part of the bay, as the squadron had no use for it, and the Spanish defenders must, eventually, surrender in any case for want of food.”⁹⁷ Soon after the Americans took Guantanamo Bay, the Spanish colonial forces counterattacked the Marines, forcing them to improvise. Working in conjunction with Commander McCalla’s squadron, Lieutenant Colonel Huntington coordinated not only the movement of reinforcements and additional machine gun and artillery support ashore, but also utilized naval gunfire from the American cruiser, the Marblehead, to supplement the Marine battalion’s firepower. After defeating the Spanish counterattack, Marines later attacked and seized Cuzco Well through a combined arms attack with Cuban insurgents using ground artillery, machine guns, and more naval gunfire support from the gunboat the USS Dolphin. Ship-to-shore support during the fighting was accomplished through the gunboat’s weapon systems being used with deadly effect on the Spanish defenses around Cuzco Well through use of makeshift naval signal flags from shore. This tactic prevented the American forces from being hit by the USS Dolphin’s guns and allowed them to seize control of Cuzco Well.⁹⁸

The capture of Guantanamo Bay and Cuzco Well resulted in a secure naval base of operations for Admiral Sampson’s naval forces and placed American forces in an advantageous position to support Major General Shafter’s attack on Santiago. Soon afterward, the American expeditionary force, with the help of Cuban insurgents, slowly hammered away at the defenses of Santiago. After less than two weeks of siege, the Spanish defenders surrendered the city soon after the destruction of Spain’s naval forces against Admiral Sampson’s fleet in the Battle of Santiago.⁹⁹ The total defeat of Spain’s ground and naval forces in Cuba was possible thanks, in part, to the United States’ use of amphibious operations to effectively terminate the Spanish-American War. This war essentially ended Spain’s role in the international system as a major power, while confirming the United States’ entry as a world power at the end of the nineteenth century. However, the end of the war and its successful use of amphibious warfare overseas had unanticipated political, social, and military ramifications that contributed to the manner in which the United States would use military force in its geopolitical strategy during the first half of the twentieth century.

The Spanish-American War and Its Impact on Amphibious Warfare

The Spanish-American War was the United States’ first use of amphibious warfare for long-term geostrategic purposes overseas. While it could be argued that amphibious warfare had been used outside the United States by American forces in the past, such as against the British in the Bahamas during the American Revolutionary War or in punishing the Barbary States during President Thomas Jefferson’s administration, these conflicts were small-scale military operations that had no long-term political or military value. The use of amphibious warfare in the Spanish-American War was different because a large American ground force was deployed overseas from the United States to seize and hold ground for geopolitical purposes. The result was not only the end of Spanish power and influence in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific, but also enhanced U.S. diplomatic and military credibility throughout the world because it could employ its military far from home.

Amphibious warfare was essential to the American political and military leadership because despite quickly destroying Spain’s naval forces in both the Pacific and the Caribbean, the United States had extreme difficulty landing and supporting its ground forces from ship to shore. While the Philippines and Cuba were considered hostile territories, the Filipino and the Cuban insurgencies were vital factors in facilitating American forces as they attempted to organize themselves and attack the Spanish colonial garrisons. The United States was fortunate against Spain, because the Spanish defenders had every opportunity to stop the American landings on the beaches but did not exploit those opportunities. In addition, limited avenues of approach existed for American forces to land; with a little preparation and effort, the Spanish could have easily wreaked havoc on the American invaders, since they certainly possessed the weaponry, terrain, and naval coastal guns to repel an attack from the water.

Upon conclusion of the war with Spain, the American political and military leadership understood that they only possessed half of the power projection capabilities required to be a major world power for the twentieth century. Based on the performance of the U.S. Navy, America understood that its efforts at modernization, training, and expanding its naval forces had paid dividends. Spanish naval power was completely crushed in less than three months because the United States invested the time and energy for the best guns and armor, powerful steam engines, and highly trained naval personnel. However, the ground aspect of the American military was missing, based on the ad hoc performance in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. While the deployment of Soldiers and Marines ashore was successful because of their grit and determination against Spanish ground forces, the American military clearly lacked the ability to efficiently execute amphibious warfare.

American forces were critically delayed because of their haphazard landing in the vicinity of Santiago, therefore giving the Spanish defenders time to rally and set up strong defensive positions to prevent the quick capture of Cuba’s capital. However, the U.S. Army would have faced a much worse situation if the Spanish defenders had attacked the American ground forces while they were assembling and preparing for the big push into Cuba’s capital. The lack of specialized troop transports built for quickly loading and unloading ground forces and logistical support was obvious; but in addition, little coordinated naval gunfire was available for troops on the beach, and no communication or unity of command existed between the landing force and the naval squadron tasked to supervise the debarkation. A. B. Feuer points out:

Mahan [sic] commented on the petty bickering between the Army and Navy war departments: The transports did not come under naval authority until they had sailed—and then only for escort duty. Everything connected with seagoing transportation is a particular feature of maritime activity. Internal disciple of a ship—and proper control of its movements in a convoy—can only be insured [sic] by naval organization and naval command. The committing of transport service to the Army is vicious in theory, and directly contrary to the practice of the most experienced maritime nation—Great Britain.¹⁰⁰

Simply put, leadership, as well as naval and logistical technology, was simply not in place to conduct a fast, effective amphibious landing for the U.S. Army.

While the Marine attacks on Guantanamo Bay and Cuzco Well were successful, significant technological gaps were readily identified in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. Communication between ship and shore was too slow and cumbersome because naval and ground forces had to rely on messengers being rowed back and forth. However, the use of makeshift signal flags during the fighting at Cuzco Well to help coordinate naval gunfire away from the American ground forces and direct it toward the Spanish defenders was a stroke of common sense that played a role in developing America’s future amphibious capabilities. In addition, the use of naval gunfire, the employment of machine guns, and the engagement of light artillery with Lieutenant Colonel Huntington’s Marine battalion on the beaches of Cuba led to the expansion of the Marine Corps’ mission of now conducting amphibious assaults in America’s future conflicts.

Evaluation of the United States’ fledgling amphibious warfare capabilities indicated that logistics were also an issue. The offloading of both Soldiers and Marines in Cuba and the Philippines was simply too disorganized, while the deployment of ground forces was simply not used to great effect based on a combination of economy of force and the local concentration of American military power. Major Robert Meade of the United States Marine Corps voiced his frustration to Captain French Ensor Chadwick, chief of staff of the North Atlantic Squadron, about the gainful deployment of himself and the other Marines while on the U.S. Flagship New York off Santiago, Cuba, on June 12, 1898. Meade requested that the chief of staff define his position and duties on the flagship and clearly define his status. In addition, Meade felt that the Marines of the fleet would not be landed as an organization and, therefore, would be of no use to the campaign ahead.¹⁰¹ The troop transports were not made specifically to carry and land men and supplies. Instead of the orderly landing and buildup of supplies, also known as “building the iron mountain,” naval and ground forces failed to communicate and, in some cases, refused to cooperate with the landing force. During the amphibious assault on Guantanamo Bay, Commander McCalla had to give a direct order to one of the ships in his squadron after it refused to help the Marines unload their equipment and provide the necessary support to finish their transition ashore. Despite the Marines’ success in capturing Guantanamo Bay, Commander McCalla understood what was at stake in possibly losing the naval installation to a Spanish counterattack.¹⁰²

Besides command and control issues, naval vessels used for carrying the ground forces were found to be inadequate in the trip from the United States to Cuba. According to Edmund Morris, “Considering the logistical problem of moving 16,286 troops … [General Shafter] had no choice but to leave the remainder of his corps behind in Tampa, owing to wild miscalculations of available berth space; as it was the ships were so crammed with men that bodies covered every foot of deck…. It was out of the question to disembark, since orders to proceed might be received at any minute; so for the next six days sixteen thousand men baked like sardines in their steel ovens.”¹⁰³ Despite also having captured small towns in the vicinity of Santiago, several problems were not anticipated, such as these settlements not having the capabilities to support the offload of American men and equipment. In addition, American ships involved in the landings did not have enough naval intelligence to either develop a familiarity with the hydrography of Cuba’s coast or to have an understanding of possible naval defenses and units that might be defending the beaches. Therefore, naval forces involved in the amphibious assaults hesitated to get close enough to shore and risk possibly grounding one of their ships. The difficult situation on the Cuban coast meant that wooden lifeboats had to be used to move weapons and supplies ashore. While men improvised by jumping off their ships along with their horses and swimming ashore, they lost several of their animals to drowning or, in the case of donkeys, had no luck pushing them off the ship at all.¹⁰⁴ This problem meant more than just not having a cavalry to function as reconnaissance or to serve as a mobile force to use against the Spanish; it also effectively grounded the logistical train. According to Donald Smythe, “So exasperating was the mess that grumbling was inevitable. One trooper damned [General] Shafter up and down as a fat old slob who was sitting on his rump in his tent when he should have been on the spot straightening out the supply mess.”¹⁰⁵ For that reason, soldiers had to carry heavier loads of supplies and weapons with them into battle through extremely harsh heat when they advanced against enemy positions near Santiago. From General John J. Pershing’s recollection of the landing in Cuba during the Spanish-American War as a junior officer, “Each soldier carried three days’ field rations of raw bacon, hardtack, and coffee. On his back was strapped his rifle, 100 rounds of ammunition, a blanket roll, a shelter tent, and a poncho. So weighted down, it meant certain death.”¹⁰⁶

While these problems could not have been remedied due to the urgency of time and the political situation both at home and abroad, the American political and military leadership understood that improvements needed to be made to its amphibious capabilities for future wars. The lack of U.S. amphibious capabilities became apparent in the Philippines when Commodore Dewey’s naval and ground forces found themselves in a very sensitive diplomatic situation. The destruction of Spanish naval power in the Pacific attracted the British, the Japanese, and the Germans. While Great Britain and Japan looked on as the Americans destroyed Spain’s Pacific Fleet, German naval forces intentionally got in the way of American ships in Luzon by either denying them access to certain parts of Manila Bay or intentionally getting in the line of fire to prevent an American bombardment of Spanish defenses in Manila. After Germany’s ships withdrew thanks to Commodore Dewey’s refusal to have his ships back down from a potential fight, Dewey began negotiations for the surrender of the Spanish garrison and occupation of the city. However, Commodore Dewey and the small American occupational force found itself handling a potential Filipino insurgency, especially when the Philippines’ national leaders found out that they would not be granted immediate independence.¹⁰⁷

When American forces began to secure Manila and Luzon, the United States soon realized that hundreds of islands made up the Philippines and that it would require an extraordinary number of troops, supplies, ships, and even specialized naval support to occupy the archipelago before it collapsed into chaos.¹⁰⁸ If these requirements were not met, it would mean either leaving the Philippines vulnerable to having other foreign powers carve out their own spheres of control there or conducting a long-term American counterinsurgency campaign against rebellious elements of the Filipino population. In addition, there were also American interests to consider in the Asia-Pacific Region in which the United States’ political and economic leadership felt that giving up the Philippines would mean eventually being locked out of China’s markets by the other major powers. In addition, from a military standpoint, an American presence in the Philippines would be a good thing in terms of protecting the indigenous population, having access to valuable ports and harbors, and being able to station a forward-deployed American force to protect U.S. interests.¹⁰⁹

Amphibious warfare brought Spain to its knees and essentially forced the country to give up its colonial holdings in the Pacific and the Caribbean. The United States used its navy to destroy Spanish naval power and isolate key colonies in order to allow ground forces to land and seize control. Although the amphibious assaults were ad hoc operations and left much to be desired by the military leadership, the United States accomplished its war aims quickly and with few casualties. From his study of American foreign policy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Michael H. Hunt believes the United States saw establishing and managing an empire as a simple matter. According to Hunt, “Advances in military technology had lowered the cost of fixing control over peripheral peoples…. Surely Americans, tested in a running battle with Native Americans across the continent, knew how to coerce obedience as well as Europeans.”¹¹⁰ More importantly, the United States was also recognized as a major power in the world with the military strength to back up its global interests. The Treaty of Paris of 1898 officially ended the Spanish-American War and granted the United States control over most of Spain’s colonial territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean.¹¹¹ However, the American victory had unforeseen political and social implications that did not become immediately apparent during the war or during the peace that followed afterward.

American Geopolitical Implications of Amphibious Warfare

According to Max Boot, “Few Americans paid much attention as their [military] made one overseas landing after another during the course of the nineteenth century. In part this was because most of the landings were not very large; in part because Americans were not very interested in imperialism abroad.”¹¹² However, the Spanish-American War brought geopolitical changes both within the United States and to the international system. The American victory confirmed that Spain was no longer a world power; and as a result, Spain lost its territorial possessions and influence to the United States. The new world power now had new acquisitions that extended its power and influence to two geographic regions of the world: Asia-Pacific and South America. While American commercial and diplomatic interests had already been in place in these parts of the world, the United States now had territories where it could station and forward deploy American military forces, ready to influence geopolitical forces in these parts of the world. In addition, the American political and military leadership found itself coping with the future governmental and security concerns that changed the dynamics of the American political system and presented new challenges and responsibilities.

Commodore Dewey’s destruction of Spain’s Pacific Fleet and the capture of Manila through amphibious operations using American ground forces was necessary because the Filipino insurgents were on the verge of seizing control and plunging the entire island chain into intrastate violence and disorder. With the Spanish colonial forces ready to surrender and wanting to avoid being massacred by the Filipinos, Commodore Dewey arranged the peaceful transition of control to the Americans, thus turning over possession of the island to the United States.¹¹³ In addition, the United States did not feel comfortable with turning over control of governance of the Philippines to the Filipinos because of the possibility of another major power moving into the country and reinstating it as a colony.

The hesitation of the Americans was based on how the European powers treated the newly independent Egypt in the late nineteenth century when it broke away from the Ottoman Empire to become a sovereign nation. Anglo-French management of Egypt’s finances, while meant to help manage the country’s money in order to pay off its debts to Europe, only provoked widespread unrest. Not only did the Europeans introduce unpopular economic reforms, but they also began swarming into Egypt to begin building and investing in the country’s commercial development and public infrastructure. As a consequence, life began to take a more westernized style in Egypt as the population began to embrace new cultural practices and goods from the West. However, discontent was also brewing in the local Egyptian population, especially among Muslim religious leaders who felt that Egypt was going to become another European colony like Cyprus and Tunis.¹¹⁴

With the Americans in control of Manila, the repercussion was that the Filipino insurgency began targeting the American military. The deteriorating situation in the Philippines forced the United States to begin transferring troops from North America to the Philippines to begin the long-term process of occupation, counterinsurgency operations, and state building. From Manila, the American expeditionary force transitioned into an occupational force and received additional ships, manpower, and supplies to begin expanding its control across the main island of Luzon. Although the United States quickly crushed the backbone of the rebels in Luzon, American military and political leaders realized that not only would insurgents slip back into the general native population, but that they were also setting up new bases on the other, smaller, nearby islands. Russell Weigley argues that possession of the Philippines urged the construction of a system of naval bases meant to not only protect the American archipelago, but also serve to project American military power to safeguard American interests in the Asia-Pacific Region, especially in China.¹¹⁵ To realize this new defense posture in the Pacific, either small-scale American amphibious operations had to be used to flush out Filipino insurgents on some of the islands or, in other cases, a garrison force would have to be established to maintain law and order.

Again, just like the Spanish-American War, ad hoc amphibious operations were used through a combination of American warships and gunboats or by making do with local fishing boats or other commercial vessels for ship-to-shore troop movements. In each case, the success of amphibious operations into what became the Philippine-American War introduced the need for better military training, equipment, and supplies as the occupation dragged on and became an increasingly long, frustrating war. The fighting in the Philippines eventually led to an “us versus them” mentality between the American occupational forces and the Filipino population, resulting in terrible atrocities, especially during the disastrous Samar campaign in which amphibious operations to land and control Samar Island suffered heavy casualties and culminated in the Balangiga Massacre.¹¹⁶ With American and Filipino casualties mounting in an openended war for control of the Philippine Islands, the United States stubbornly held on for purposes of geopolitical interests.

Michael H. Hunt’s examination of the United States during this time is interesting because he argues that the rise of the American Empire was based on the need for U.S. security. Cable and steam made the world smaller and increased the colonial appetite of most of the major powers, as seen with the conquests of Africa, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific. From the perspective of American strategists, it looked as if these aggressive empires were hemming in the United States. Under these conditions, the United States had to fend against these possible dangers by creating a defense in depth by controlling the Pacific and the Caribbean. Not only would American outposts deter any hostile moves against the Western Hemisphere and uphold its determination to maintain the Monroe Doctrine, but they would serve as interior lines to move ground and naval forces against any attack on the U.S. perimeter.¹¹⁷

Meanwhile, the United States found itself in possession of Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea. While the Philippine-American War raged in the Asia-Pacific, it became apparent that the possibility of retaining Cuba as an American territory would compromise the reason for the United States’ involvement in the Spanish-American War: forcing Spain to grant Cuba its independence as promised through the Teller Amendment.¹¹⁸ The occupation of Cuba by the United States following the Spanish-American War dragged on because the United States had significant economic investments and trade with the island. American occupational forces became part of the island life with the intent of maintaining peace and order for the newly established Cuban government. In addition, military forces were kept in place for the geopolitical purpose of keeping Cuba under American control.

Senator Orville Platt introduced the Platt Amendment for congressional approval for the specific purpose of outlining the role of the United States in Cuba and the Caribbean. The amendment established boundaries for Cuba’s conduct of foreign policy and commercial relations, creating in essence a satellite state of the United States and putting the island nation at a diplomatic and economic disadvantage.¹¹⁹ The continued presence of American troops, as well as the United States’ control over the daily administration and maintenance of the island, became continued sources of pressure for the Cuban government as it debated whether or not to accept this American amendment into the drafting of the Cuban Constitution as it prepared for eventual self-government. Additionally, the amendment created a Cuba that would also allow the establishment of American military bases to forward deploy naval and ground forces in the Caribbean to protect newly acquired Puerto Rico as well as its growing interests in Central America and South America.

The annexation of Puerto Rico and turning Cuba into a U.S. protectorate positioned the American republic to begin looking at Central and South America as core interests to U.S. national security in the Western Hemisphere. With American ground and naval forces readily positioned in the middle of the Caribbean, the United States continued to involve itself in Central America with special attention to Nicaragua and Panama. American economic and political interests were heavily invested in these areas based on significant American investments because both countries were seen as potential routes for a cross-ocean canal that would connect the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. In addition, Nicaragua had a particularly special economic interest for the American republic because it had significant control of the production and exportation of fruits to the continental United States. In other words, these two nations were economically vital to the prosperity of the United States and had the potential to be the site for a future American Canal Zone linking the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans together. This canal would not only shorten the maritime movement of people and commerce between the east and west coasts of the United States, but also allow American naval and ground forces to move quickly around the Western Hemisphere. Ivan Musicant points out, “The sea trade was lucrative, and Panama, by accident of geography, provided the crucial linchpin in the chain of Manifest Destiny.”¹²⁰

While the United States now had the power projection capabilities to reach South American countries that had previously tried to bully or embarrass the American republic (as in the case of Chile), it could also prevent the European powers from getting too involved in the affairs of those countries, as would soon be the case with Great Britain and Germany in response to Venezuela’s financial woes. According to Edmund Morris, “The massive [American military] deployment [to Venezuela] appealed to [Theodore] Roosevelt as diplomacy, as preventive strategy, as technical training, and as a sheer pageant of power…. He had private information that neither British nor German naval authorities believed he could do it.”¹²¹ However, America’s new influence and involvement in the region required continued American ground and naval involvement when American authority or interests were challenged. In what became known as the “Banana Wars,” the United States was engaged, just as in the Philippines, in a series of open-ended military operations in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Mexico. The various missions required the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps to work together in occupations, police actions, and interventions.¹²²

With small wars raging throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and other parts of the world, the American, as well as European, military leadership used these campaigns as a virtual testing ground for new weapons, equipment, and tactics.¹²³ In addition, naval patrols and police actions in the Caribbean required having to land American ground forces ashore again, forcing ad hoc amphibious assaults on hostile beaches. The conditions of these operations resulted in forced innovation and experimentation in fighting not just small wars, but large ones as well. However, just as in the Philippines, the American military and political leadership faced continued hardship and frustrations.

Interestingly, the long-term implications of America’s relationship with the major powers in the international system were a result of the Spanish-American War. The United States’ success in that conflict essentially defined the diplomatic relationships with the other major powers and hardened its geopolitical strategy for the first half of the twentieth century. In Howard Jones’ assessment of the United States during that period, he argues that the United States’ demeanor dramatically changed as it became involved in the Caribbean, Pacific, and Asia in a surge of a new Manifest Destiny. While the United States grew in political, economic, and military strength, it used its surplus of energy toward expanding its “Empire of Liberty” and therefore spread American influence and domination to distant shores. Through this context, expansion was inevitable and relentless for the American republic.¹²⁴

While relations with France and Great Britain dramatically improved and established growing cooperation, the United States found itself at cross-purposes with Germany and Japan. Both nations were frustrated with America’s almost bloodless victory against Spain and desperately sought an opportunity to possibly capitalize on it by snatching away a few Spanish colonial possessions in the ensuing collapse of its colonial authority. Unfortunately for Germany and Japan, America’s rudimentary amphibious capabilities were able to beat both expansionistic empires in their Spanish territorial land grab in the Asia-Pacific Region.

Germany and Japan wanted to possess a global empire just like the British and the French, but were late arrivals in the new wave of imperialism that swept the major powers in the late nineteenth century. To make matters worse, Germany was also intruding in the Caribbean and other parts of the world in a race to gather colonies and construct military bases in order to secure access to markets and resources. Germany’s actions therefore stood as a potential threat to the American canal zone and its interests in the region, thereby creating tensions and influencing American political and military leaders to seek closer relations with Great Britain. According to Otto Pflanze, since the late nineteenth century, Germany’s chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, sought to protect his country’s overseas trade: “During the following decades of Germany’s industrialization, the search for markets and materials, the expansion of overseas trade, and the exodus of German emigrants to foreign lands gave weight…. For nearly two decades the foreign office received a steady flow of proposals for colonial ventures in various parts of the world.”¹²⁵

Meanwhile, the United States faced tensions with Japan. The United States’ expansion across the Pacific with the Alaskan Purchase, as well as the annexation of Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam, and the Philippines, put American power and influence into the heart of the Asia-Pacific Region. Not only did the United States deprive the Japanese of these Pacific possessions, but it also put itself in a geopolitical position to become embroiled in Japan’s relationship with China. Japan’s victory over China during the First Sino-Japanese War, when they took control of the Liaodong Peninsula, Taiwan, and the Penghu Islands, and the Chinese government recognized that Korea now belonged under the Japanese sphere of influence, made it apparent that the Japanese had territorial ambitions in the Asia-Pacific.¹²⁶ In addition, Japanese warships off the Philippines during the Spanish-American War also hinted to the United States that, like Germany, Japan also had territorial ambitions to seize control of part or all of the islands for its own colonial empire.

To mitigate potential friction with Japan, the United States worked an agreement in which, in exchange for the Japanese government recognizing the American occupation of the Philippines, the United States would in turn recognize Japan’s domination over Korea by conveniently forgetting America’s 1882 pledge of Korean independence. While this might have the short-term gain of smoothing over ruffled diplomatic feathers with Japan, it essentially established spheres of influence for both the United States and Japan in how parts of the Asia-Pacific Region would be divided between the two nations. In the case of the United States, it allowed the Americans to consolidate control over the newly acquired colonial possessions from Spain, while Japan was given a free hand to pursue its expansionist policies in Northeast Asia.¹²⁷

While Japan saw American intrusion in the Asia-Pacific Region as another potential state challenger to its core interests, its wariness of the United States was surpassed by its hostility toward the Russians, who were encroaching on Japanese interests in the North Pacific as well as in China. Since Russia’s occupation of China’s Maritime Provinces in 1858, Japan had seen the Russians as a major threat to its interests in the region, especially when Russian control extended beyond Siberia into Sakhalin Island and into Manchuria. With a large military presence in Siberia and Manchuria, as well as powerful naval forces in Vladivostok and Port Arthur, Japan could not afford to confront both the Americans and Russians.¹²⁸ With China removed as a potential threat and now proven to be a weak nation ready for conquest, Japan sought to shift the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific by entertaining the possibility of an alliance with Great Britain. With a history of hostility with both Russia and the United States, Japan saw Great Britain, the most powerful empire on the planet, as an ideal candidate to assist with Japan’s ambitions.

In understanding the power dynamics in the Asia-Pacific Region, both France and Germany had significant colonial possessions and influence in the area as well. France’s occupation and influence in Indochina was already recognized when the French allied with the British to defeat China during the Second Opium War. With China growing increasingly weak from its recent defeat against the European powers and in the Taiping Rebellion, as well as its significant decline in political and economic influence in the region, the French moved quickly against China’s client states in Indochina by quickly incorporating the region into its imperial holdings and looking at possibly carving out a sphere of influence within China’s southern provinces. Meanwhile, Germany had occupied the islands of the Central Pacific, as well as parts of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific and the Shandong Peninsula in China. Germany’s ability to intimidate the Chinese with its powerful naval and ground forces enabled it to receive additional special trading privileges, and also allowed German capital and investments to shape China’s undeveloped economy.

France and Germany’s movements in the Asia-Pacific made Japan view them as additional potential rivals. Japan’s acceptance of French and German domination in Southeast Asia and the Pacific convinced the Japanese political and military leadership that the focus should essentially be against Russia, China, and the United States. France and Germany saw Russia and the United States as powerful state actors in the international system who also posed the most immediate danger to Japan, while France and Germany could easily be played against each other due to their bitter past antagonism during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). In addition, unlike Russia and the United States, neither France nor Germany were proven to have amphibious capabilities. Russia’s expansion into the North Pacific by landing troops to occupy Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, as well as the United States launching amphibious assaults against Spanish colonial possessions, caused concern in Japan. While Japanese political and military leaders were impressed by Russian and American amphibious capabilities in the Pacific, they were fearful that those capabilities could also be used in a potential invasion of Japan’s home islands. Baron Hayashi believed, “Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of national power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives, Japan will decide her own fate.”¹²⁹

While the United States did have advantages and disadvantages in its new geopolitical position thanks to amphibious warfare, it also faced potential political and social hurdles that were not yet fully anticipated in the afterglow of victory in the Spanish-American War. This war, which was initially presented as a good thing for the American people, turned out to be a long, drawn-out, open-ended war that required a significant investment of American lives and resources. Not only did the Philippines become an irritating sore to the American diplomatic community, it also served as a major issue within political and social circles that led to discussions about the United States’ belief in its own exceptionalism and also about how the American republic would preserve its principles and beliefs as a major power in a new, brave world.¹³⁰ Warren Zimmermann points out from the perspective of some of the anti-imperialists, especially idealistic and powerful industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, “He feared that annexation would threaten American security…. He also worried that expansion would change the character of America itself by embracing untrustworthy aliens, foreign races bound in time to be false to the Republic in order to be true to themselves.”¹³¹

Political Implications of Amphibious Warfare

Victory in the Spanish-American War, gained through amphibious warfare, introduced the United States as a world power; however, America’s elevated geopolitical position had unforeseen political consequences that later became part of American electoral issues and debates. Graham A. Cosmas points out, “The United States liquidated Spain’s colonial empire in the Caribbean and the Far East and began her march to world power. In that period, the [United States] suddenly confronted the task of waging trans-oceanic campaigns and securing and ruling an empire.”¹³² In addition, it created political situations in which the American occupational force found itself in militarily or morally impossible situations that questioned the purpose and legitimacy of the United States’ policy in those territories. Finally, it awakened segments within American society that led to the formation of new political movements and parties that sought to address these new geopolitical concerns and actions being sanctioned by the United States. In essence, these new overseas obligations questioned the very definition of the United States’ principles and the future direction of its political institutions.

The possession of overseas territories taken from another foreign power introduced challenges that the American republic did not foresee. The establishment of overseas government institutions in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico was often at odds with governing those areas’ large indigenous populations. Zimmermann observes that the United States was “grappling with the core contradiction inherent in the U.S. seizure of the Philippines and Cuba: Americans may have seen themselves as liberators, but they were regarded by large elements of the local populations as oppressors…. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose.”¹³³ Differences between the American occupiers and the indigenous populations imposed natural obstacles in regard not only to culture and language, but also to a fundamental understanding of the local politics and issues that concerned those peoples. These distant countries had little desire to become American territories, but wanted to instead become independent nations that were free from the influence and domination of a foreign power. In the case of Cuba and the Philippines, the United States’ failure to withdraw its military forces and transfer governmental authority in preparation for independence created both shock and outrage. The failure of the American political system to work with the indigenous political factions resulted in those factions reorganizing themselves in preparation for engaging in a long insurgency against the American occupation.

The inheritance of a colonial empire triggered political debate within both executive and legislative branches. For the executive branch, President William McKinley, as well as future presidents, was responsible for the security and governance of Cuba and the Philippines. Facing pressure from certain political factions in Congress and American society, the executive branch played a balancing act to appease all interests. For imperialists, the executive branch catered to the possibility of the Philippines and Cuba staying within the sphere of the American influence; while for anti-imperialists, it hinted that these territories were being prepared for eventual independence. Meanwhile, Congress was divided about the best course of action for handling these new American acquisitions. While it was understood within U.S. political circles that Cuba would eventually become an independent, sovereign nation, the Philippines was another matter.

Occupation was not the original objective of the American political and military leadership during the Spanish-American War. The Philippines came under the control of the United States as a geopolitical necessity because the archipelago was about to collapse into chaos and become prey to the Germans and Japanese. The landing of American ground forces was merely a stopgap measure until the United States’ political leadership could figure out what to do with the islands. When Spain relinquished control of the Philippines to the United States, congressional members were split on the future of the island chain. Some argued for retaining it as an American territory where it would be pacified and developed to such an extent that it would eventually become a state of the United States. Others did not believe in keeping the Philippines, but instead argued for either immediate or eventual independence. The territorial future of the Philippines was based essentially on the fundamental principles of what the United States stood for in the world and what its relationship should be with future territories that could come under the control of the American republic.

The debate within Congress was exacerbated by the Philippine Insurrection against the American occupation, which began shortly after the Spanish-American War. The Filipinos, under their revolutionary leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, fought against the American forces when it became apparent that the United States had no intention of granting the Philippines its independence and leaving the country. The Philippine-American War soon raged in a series of bloody engagements outside Manila and throughout the main island of Luzon. After Aguinaldo’s forces were crushed and the insurgent leader captured, the insurgency broke apart into small units in order to continue resisting and harassing the American occupation from other smaller, more isolated islands.¹³⁴ In order to deal with the insurrection, the United States employed more men, weapons, equipment, and money to clear, hold, and build stability in the Philippines in order to win the hearts and minds of the Filipino population.

Despite systematically clearing the Philippines of insurgents from the islands by using its ground, naval, and amphibious capabilities, the American occupation force and the United States had to deal with several political issues. The American republic first had to establish a stable, legitimate government in the Philippines that could provide basic security and services to the Filipino population. In laying the foundation of governmental services and infrastructure for the island, the United States had to recruit thousands of specialists, contractors, servicemen, government workers, and scientists who could perform the groundwork in setting up a viable, legitimate government that the native population could trust. More importantly, in establishing an island government, the United States needed the Filipinos to be willing to participate in the political system. However, political cooperation in the islands was going to be difficult to achieve, because the Philippines’ indigenous population included more than twenty major ethnic groups and countless smaller tribes.¹³⁵

The language and cultural barrier of an exotic population, combined with the difficult geography and extreme weather of the Philippines, created conditions that tested American political and military leadership. Disease, typhoons, poisonous plants, dangerous animals, and hostile Filipino peoples all combined to take their toll on the occupational force. In doing so, the friction and frustration of handling the overwhelming difficulties and barriers of the Philippine islands inevitably led to abuses and reprisals, therefore creating an “us versus them” relationship. Despite the appointment of progressive governor generals with competent civilian administrative staffs that oversaw the construction of roads, railroads, hospitals, telegraph lines, schools, universities, sewer systems, and police and fire departments, the Filipino population in certain parts of the island chain continued to resist American governance and waged long, often brutal, campaigns against the American military, as seen in Balangiga, Mabitac, Paye, and Samar.¹³⁶

Despite the development of the Philippines and the use of amphibious operations to secure more islands in the archipelago, the United States’ political and moral authority in the Far East was slowly being eroded away. While the United States struggled to utilize its military to regain control over what was becoming a very unpopular war, the situation in Cuba was not as bloody, but no less difficult. Although Cuba had an organized insurgency and a shadow government that quietly operated behind the scenes during its struggle for independence against Spain, the United States hesitated to turn over the island directly to the Cubans. Part of this hesitation was motivated by American economic interests, especially regarding the island’s sugar production and distribution that could potentially hurt American sugar industries at home. Also, the island was a valuable piece of military real estate that allowed increased power projection in the Caribbean and South America and provided powerful, forward-deployed military units to protect the construction of an isthmian canal in Central America.

The United States’ occupation of Cuba allowed for American political and diplomatic leadership to work out more than the establishment of a sovereign government, but also to define the future relationship between the two countries. The U.S. Congress introduced this new relationship with the Platt Amendment within an army appropriations bill that essentially set seven conditions that Cuba must uphold before American military forces could withdraw from the island. This amendment was tied to the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations, which gave the United States exclusive rights to establish military bases on the island; it directed the Cuban government not to go into excessive debt and to take actions to reduce infectious diseases; and finally, it gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba for the maintenance of the host nation’s government.¹³⁷

Despite the controversy the amendment sparked within Congress while passing it for approval, the newly established Cuban government quickly rejected it in the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations.¹³⁸ However, the continued presence of American ground and naval forces on the island, as well as the occupational force’s full control over Cuba’s administration and infrastructure, finally convinced the Cuban political leadership to accept these conditions and introduce them into Cuba’s constitution.

This American diplomatic victory had mixed political ramifications, both at home and in Cuba. Fred Harvey Harrington argues that the anti-imperialist movement was led by those who opposed the annexation of the Philippines and other islands placed within reach by the American victory over Spain. The anti-imperialist movement was based on an abstract principle. While not opposed to expansion based on commercial, constitutional, religious, or humanitarian grounds, the anti-imperialists were against annexation and administration of underdeveloped regions because it compromised American ideals of self-government and isolation.¹³⁹

At home, the anti-imperialists were up in arms over the unfairness of the treaty’s conditions that essentially made Cuba an American colony except by name, while Cubans were outraged at how much power and influence the United States had over Cuba’s affairs. By many, the Platt Amendment was looked at as an act just short of betrayal since the United States’ original intentions to free Cuba for purposes of self-determination now resulted in exchanging Spanish colonial chains for American ones. In other words, American political leadership was now going against its original ideals of freedom and democracy in exchange for narrow national security and economic interests. Cuba was merely the beginning of a more aggressive policy to use military force in support of U.S. geopolitical strategy. Once business over Cuba’s future was concluded, Theodore Roosevelt soon became president of the United States and would later authorize the use of the military to use amphibious warfare to safeguard American interests in the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Morocco.¹⁴⁰

Social Implications of Amphibious Warfare

America’s use of amphibious warfare during the Spanish-American War also had social implications. Because of the major social issues that were raging within American society, America’s easy victory over the Spanish during the war only exacerbated sensitive, volatile conditions at home. The Second Industrial Revolution brought unprecedented economic development and production in the United States, resulting in America quickly transitioning from an agrarian society to one based on industry and urbanization. The rise of technology in American society not only brought the expected economic and educational benefits of modernization, it also introduced problems. The massive flood of immigration from abroad and the growing power of big businesses combined to create issues that would cause hotly contested debates and, at times, violence in the United States. These social issues soon coalesced into the Progressive Movement in which widespread social activism and political reform sought to address the social and political ills within American society.

The use of amphibious warfare and the quick success it produced in the Spanish-American War allowed for large numbers of American personnel to be deployed and stationed abroad outside the continental United States. No longer being used to protect the empty frontier for the movement and settlement of the American population, the military was instead being used to keep foreign peoples compliant with American political administration and economic development. Certain elements within American society were originally wary of this new use of the American military based on their understanding of the United States’ exceptionalism and uniqueness. While the major powers were caught up in colonial and territorial expansion over weaker peoples, the United States saw itself as an exception to the rule. In Ludmilla Popkova’s study of Russian press coverage of the Spanish-American War, the general consensus of American actions came in the aftermath of the conflict. At first, “The declaration of war against the Spanish monarchy, in the name of defending the freedom and independence of Cuba, as such raised no objections, since it approved the humane goals of the United States. But as events developed, the [periodicals] in [their] summer issues began to express doubt as to whether those goals really were liberation and humanitarianism.”¹⁴¹ It could be argued that the American republic was no better than the other major powers, as shown by its expansion across North America and its extermination of the American Indian tribes; therefore, American expansion beyond the geographic constraints of North America was simply part of the United States’ Manifest Destiny.

To some Americans, imperialism was simply an extension of Manifest Destiny, and the Pacific and Caribbean were regions of the world that were the natural preserve for the United States’ expansionism. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the American population welcomed the Spanish-American War, where “populists stopped watching the money power, Republicans ceased troubling themselves over repudiation, Democrats forgot the deficit…. The indelible marks of regionalism were all but obliterated as northerners and southerners joined to fight under the same flag…. Immense crowds greeted trains rushing soldiers to the front.”¹⁴² These same elements believed that embracing imperialism was essential for the United States in order to continue American territorial expansion, gain recognition as a world power, and contribute to the development and benefit of lesser, underdeveloped peoples. The conquests of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spain provided such opportunities to spread American political, social, and economic benefits and bring these parts of the world into the enlightenment of democracy. William Alden Smith, a member of the committee on foreign affairs in Congress in the late nineteenth century, advocated annexation. He argued, “Annexation is not new to us. In my humble opinion the whole North American continent and every island in the gulf and the Caribbean Sea and such islands in the Pacific as may be deemed desirable are worthy of our ambition. Nor that we are earth hungry, but, as a measure of national protection and advantage, it is the duty of the American people to lay peaceful conquest wherever opportunity may be offered.”¹⁴³

Anti-imperialists were quick to organize against this mainstream thought and formed the American Anti-Imperialist League. This group felt that the United States should not embrace global imperialism and expansion over foreign peoples because doing so violated the fundamental beliefs that inspired the United States to fight Great Britain for independence during the late eighteenth century: freedom, democracy, and national self-determination. William James, a renowned American philosopher and psychologist during the late nineteenth century, bemoaned, “What could be a more shameless betrayal of American principles? What could be a plainer symptom of greed, ambition, corruption and imperialism?”¹⁴⁴ Imperialism also violated the Monroe Doctrine, in which American interests were limited to just the Western Hemisphere. According to Steve J. S. Ickringill, “Discussion about the Monroe doctrine intensified after the negotiation of the truce and the American invasion of the Philippines in August of 1898. Now the question of the consequences of the war and its importance for the world community definitely arose. Some liberals would not part with the ideal of the United States as a peace-loving and freedom-loving state, which began military intervention for purely humanitarian and defense purposes.”¹⁴⁵

Anti-imperialists were a large segment of the American population who saw the United States’ use of amphibious warfare as simply a means to gain control over Spanish colonies for the sake of American prestige and glory. This technology represented everything that the anti-imperialist did not want the American republic to pursue in terms of an overseas colonial empire and exploitation of native peoples. Harold Baron’s study of the Democratic Party’s involvement in the anti-imperialist movement stated that the anti-imperialists’ moralistic arguments regarding the use of the American military in the violent oppression of indigenous peoples, such as the Filipinos, was seen as interconnected with big business trusts and monopolies. Direct access to new markets and cheap labor and resources through the deployment of the military was seen as a potential threat to the political and social fabric of the American republic. Instead of the government representing the people, the anti-imperialists feared that the wealthy, elite portions of American society were controlling domestic and foreign affairs.¹⁴⁶ Therefore, the ability of the United States to now deploy thousands of troops overseas outside the geographic interests of the Western Hemisphere was a dangerous piece of technology that could potentially corrupt American exceptionalism into being no better than the world’s other colonial powers. These American military adventures and the long-term occupation of these overseas territories compromised mainstream democracy in the United States. Involvement in these overseas territories appeared to some people as economic preserves for big business interests. In addition, the increasing number of lives lost in brutal counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines, as well as the brutal accounts of atrocities taking place against the Filipino population, only enraged anti-imperialists and applied more pressure on the American political leadership to reconsider its imperialist position and consider another course of action that would prepare the Philippines for eventual self-government and independence.¹⁴⁷

The growing debate between imperialists and anti-imperialists over the United States’ newly acquired overseas territories also led to friction over the issue of big businesses subverting the American free enterprise system through the establishment of trusts, monopolies, cartels, and economic combinations that could potentially harm competition. While the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 was meant to prevent big business from having too much control and influence over the United States’ economy, the federal government was not yet aggressively executing it.¹⁴⁸ American expansion overseas was argued to be big business behind the scenes unduly influencing the federal government to use military force to take new lands for economic exploitation and creation of new markets exclusive to American industries without the competition of other foreign industrial powers. As a consequence, antitrust organizations and proponents naturally aligned with the anti-imperialists as another front to combat big business interests as well as to garner more support and attention for their cause. Ernest Crosby’s poem “The Real White Man’s Burden” (with apologies for utilizing Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “White Man’s Burden”) captured some of the essence of the concerns of the anti-imperialist segments of the American population:

Take up the White Man’s burden,

Send forth your sturdy kin

And load them down with Bibles

And cannon-balls and gin.

Throw in a few diseases

To spread in tropic climes,

For there the healthy [people]

Are quite behind the times.

And don’t forget the factories.

On those benighted shores

They have no cheerful iron mills,

Nor eke department stores.

They never work twelve hours a day,

And live in strange content

Altho they never have to pay

A single sou of rent.

Take up the White Man’s burden,

And teach the Philippines

What interest and taxes are

And what a mortgage means.

Give them electrocution chairs,

And prisons, too, galore,

And if they seem inclined to kick,

Then spill their heathen gore.¹⁴⁹

The anti-imperialists saw big business as the source of the American republic’s flirtation with imperialism and saw it as the underlying force that sought to push the United States into using military force to conquer peoples and forcibly transform their local customs, economy, and culture into an American, Anglo-Saxon lifestyle.¹⁵⁰ With modern weapons, the American government, backed by its military, exterminated indigenous populations’ way of life as it did to the American Indians during the settlement of the North American continent. The concerns about big business also bled into other areas, such as safety, wage regulations, establishment of unions, child labor laws, and environmental destruction. Immigration was also a contentious issue, since the introduction of new sources of labor created a more competitive working environment that drove up the prices for products, but also kept wages low. With the incorporation of the Philippines as an American territory and with Cuba closely tied to the United States based on the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations, questions arose about the possibility of introducing new peoples who could now possibly immigrate to the United States. Even worse, American business leaders might wish to outsource their industries and services to these countries in order to avoid having to negotiate with labor leaders and follow federal and state business regulations. Fear of immigrant radicalism made capitalists like Carnegie, Frick, and Hay weigh the value of immigrant labor against the supposed dangers of imported disorder as a result of the institutional voice of capitalism, the National Association of Manufacturers, who maintained a consistent proimmigration position. Less affluent Americans—the urban working class, the lower middle class, anti-Catholic Protestants, members of earlier waves of immigration—clung to the proposition that the new immigrants were a threat to their livelihood, their way of life, and even their safety.¹⁵¹ Therefore, nativist sentiments were also drawn into the imperialist and anti-imperialist camps, while the issue with the Philippine Islands was still a point of contention in the United States.