From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (53 page)

Dealing with insurgent forces in Cuba and the Philippines proved more complex and costly. Americans took to Cuba genuine enthusiasm for a noble cause, "the first war of its kind," a fictional soldier averred. "We are coming with Old Glory," a popular song proclaimed.
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Their idealism barely outlasted their initial encounters with Cuban rebels. Viewing
Cuba Libre
through the idealized prism of their own revolution, Americans were not prepared for what they encountered. They had no sense of what a guerrilla army three years in the field might look like. They brought with their weapons and knapsacks the heavy burden of deeply entrenched racism. The Cubans thus appeared to them "ragged and half-starved," a "wretched mongrel lot," "utter tatterdemalions." From a military standpoint, they seemed useless, not worthy allies. Their participation was quickly limited to support roles, the sort of menial tasks
African Americans were expected to perform at home. The proud rebels' rejection of such assignments reinforced negative stereotypes. Indeed, Americans came to look more favorably upon the once despised Spanish soldiers, viewing them as a source of order, a safeguard for property, and a protection against a possible race war.
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Popular perceptions nicely complemented the nation's political goals. Cuba in fact had made significant progress toward self-government in the last days of Spanish rule, but this was lost on the invaders. The ragtag Cubans were no more fit for self-government than "gunpowder is for hell," General Shafter thundered, and from the moment they landed Americans set out to establish complete control regardless of the Teller Amendment.
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The United States ignored the provisional government already in place and refused to recognize the insurgents or army. It did not consult Cubans regarding peace aims or negotiations and did not permit them even a ceremonial role in the surrender at Santiago or the overall surrender of the island. They were required to recognize the military authority of the United States, which, to their consternation, refused any commitment for future independence.

The United States handled the Philippines in much the same way. There as in Cuba, Americans encountered revolution, the first anti-colonial revolt in the Pacific region, a middle-class uprising launched in 1896 by well-educated, relatively prosperous Filipinos such as the twentynine-year-old Emilio Aguinaldo. Seeing the exiled Aguinaldo as possibly useful in undermining Spanish authority, U.S. officials had helped him get home, perhaps deluding him into believing they would not stay. Once there, he declared the islands independent, established a "provisional dictatorship" with himself as head, and even designed a red, white, and blue flag. Americans on the scene conceded that Aguinaldo's group included "men of education and ability" but also conveniently concluded that it did not have broad popular support and could not sustain itself against European predators. McKinley gave no more than fleeting thought to independence and rejected a U.S. protectorate. He instructed the U.S. military to compel the rebels to accept its authority. The United States refused to recognize Aguinaldo's government, as with the Cubans, keeping it at arm's length. In December 1898, McKinley proclaimed a military government. He vowed to respect the rights of Filipinos but made no promises of self-government. On the scene, tensions mounted
between U.S. occupation forces and the thirty thousand Filipinos besieging Manila.
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From the late summer of 1898 until after the election of 1900, one of those periodic great debates over the nation's role in the world raged in the United States. The central issue was the Philippines. Defenders of annexation pointed to obvious strategic and commercial advantages, fine harbors for naval bases, a "key to the wealth of the Orient." The islands would themselves provide important markets and in addition furnish a vital outpost from which to capture a share of the fabled China market. The imperialists easily rationalized the subjugation of alien peoples. Indeed, they argued, the United States by virtue of its superior institutions had an obligation to rescue lesser peoples from barbarism and ignorance and bring them the blessings of Anglo-Saxon civilization. As McKinley allegedly put it to a delegation of visiting churchmen, there seemed nothing to do but to "educate the Filipinos, and uplift them and civilize them and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them."
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If America were to abandon the islands after rescuing them from Spain, they might be snapped up by another nation—Germany had displayed more than passing interest. They could fall victim to their own incapacity for self-government. The United States could not in good conscience escape the responsibilities thrust upon it. "My countrymen," McKinley proclaimed in October 1898, "the currents of destiny flow through the hearts of the people . . . . Who will divert them? Who will stop them?"
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An anti-imperialist movement including some of the nation's political and intellectual leaders challenged the expansionist argument on every count. Political independents, the anti-imperialists eloquently warned that expansion would compromise America's ideals and its special mission in the world.
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The acquisition of overseas territory with no prospect for statehood violated the Constitution. More important, it undermined the republican principles upon which the nation was founded. The United States could not join the Old World in exploiting other peoples without betraying its anti-colonial tradition. The acquisition of overseas empire would require a large standing army and higher taxes. It would
compel U.S. involvement in the dangerous power politics of East Asia and the Pacific.

At the outbreak of war in 1898, the philosopher William James marveled at how the nation could "puke up its ancient soul . . . in five minutes without a wink of squeamishness." He denounced as "snivelling," "loathsome" cant talk of uplifting the Filipinos. The U.S. Army was at that time suppressing an insurrection with military force, and that, he argued, was the only education the people could expect. "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippines," he exploded.
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Industrialist Andrew Carnegie, contending that the islands would drain the United States economically, offered to buy their independence with a personal check for $20 million. Other anti-imperialists warned that any gains from new markets would be offset by harmful competition with American farmers. Some argued that the United States already had sufficient territory. "We do not want any more States until we can civilize Kansas," sneered journalist E. L. Godkin.
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Many anti-imperialists objected on grounds of race. "Pitchfork Ben" Tilman of South Carolina vehemently opposed injecting into the "body politic of the United States . . . that vitiated blood, that debased and ignorant people."
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The nation already had a "black elephant" in the South, the
New York World
proclaimed. Did it "really need a white elephant in the Philippines, a leper elephant in Hawaii, a brown elephant in Porto Rico and perhaps a yellow elephant in Cuba?"
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The anti-imperialists may have made the stronger case over the long run, but the immediate outcome was not determined by logic or force of argument. The administration had the advantage of the initiative, of offering something positive to a people still heady from military triumphs. Many Americans found seductive the February 1899 appeal of British poet Rudyard Kipling to take up the "white man's burden," first published just days before the Senate took up the issue of annexation. The Republicans also had a solid majority in the Senate. A remarkably heterogeneous group, the anti-imperialists were divided among themselves and lacked effective leadership. They had to "blow cold upon the hot excitement," as James put it.
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In an early example of foreign policy
bipartisanship, William Jennings Bryan, the titular leader of the Democratic opposition, vitiated the anti-imperialist cause and infuriated its leaders by instructing his followers to vote for the peace treaty with Spain, which provided for annexation of the Philippines, in order to end the war. The Philippines could be dealt with later. The outbreak of war in the Philippines on the eve of the Senate vote solidified support for the treaty. In what Lodge called "the hardest, closest fight I have ever known," the Senate approved the treaty 57–21 in February 1899, a bare one vote more than necessary, and a result facilitated by the defection of eleven Democrats.
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McKinley was easily reelected in 1900 in a campaign in which imperialism was no more than a peripheral issue.

As the great debate droned on in the United States, the McKinley administration set about consolidating control over the new empire. The president vowed that the Teller pledge would be "sacredly kept," but he also insisted that the "new Cuba" must be bound to the United States by "ties of singular intimacy and strength." Many Americans believed that annexation was a matter of time and that, as with Texas, California, and Hawaii, it would evolve through natural processes—"annexation by acclamation," one official labeled it. Some indeed thought that the way the United States implemented the occupation would contribute to this outcome. "It is better to have the favors of a lady by her consent, after judicious courtship," Secretary of War Elihu Root observed, "than to ravish her."
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The United States established close ties with Cuban men of property and standing—"our friends," Root called them—many of them expatriates, some U.S. citizens. It created an army closely tied to the United States. It carried out good works. The occupation government imposed ordinances making it easy for outsiders to acquire land, built railroads, and at least indirectly encouraged the emigration of Americans. "Little by little the whole island is passing into the hands of American citizens," a Louisiana journal exclaimed in 1903, "the shortest and surest way to obtain its annexation to the United States."
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The expected outcome did not materialize, and other means had to be found to establish the ties McKinley sought. Except for a small minority
of pro-Americans, sentiment for annexation did not develop in Cuba. Nationalism remained strong and indeed intensified under the occupation. The first elections did not go as Americans wanted; some officials continued to fear that Cubans of African descent might plunge the nation into a "Hayti No. 2." The outbreak of war in the Philippines in early 1899 aroused similar fears for Cuba.

Eager to get out but determined to maintain control of a nominally independent Cuba, the United States settled on the so-called Platt Amendment to create and sustain a protectorate. Drafted by Root and attached to a military appropriation bill approved by Congress in March 1901, it forbade Cuba from entering into any treaty that would impair its independence, granting concessions to any foreign power, or contracting a public debt in excess of its ability to pay. It explicitly empowered the United States to intervene in Cuba's internal affairs and provided two sites for U.S. naval bases. "There is, of course, little or no independence left Cuba under the Platt Amendment," military governor Gen. Leonard Wood candidly conceded.
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When Cubans resisted this obvious infringement on their sovereignty with street demonstrations, marches, rallies, and petitions, the United States demanded that they incorporate the amendment into their constitution or face an indefinite occupation. It passed by a single vote. "It is either Annexation or a Republic with an Amendment," one Cuban lamented; "I prefer the latter." "Cuba is dead; we are enslaved forever," a patriot protested.
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A 1903 reciprocity treaty provided an economic counterpart to the Platt Amendment. The war left Cuba a wasteland. In its aftermath, the United States set out to construct a neo-colonial economic structure built around sugar and tobacco as major cash crops and tied closely to the U.S. market. Without prodding from their government, Americans stepped in to buy up the sugar estates from fleeing Spaniards and destitute Cubans. Using Hawaii as a model, U.S. officials saw in free trade a means to promote annexation by "natural voluntary and progressive steps honorable alike to both parties." Reciprocity would allegedly revive the sugar industry, solidify the position of Cuba's propertied classes, and promote close ties to the United States. It would deepen Cuba's dependence on one crop and one market. The arrangement naturally provoked complaints from U.S. cane and beet growers. Cuban nationalists protested that it would substitute the United
States for "our old mother country." Approved in 1903, the agreement provided the basis for Cuban-American economic relations for more than a half century. The War of 1898 thus ended with Cuba as a protectorate of the United States. Not surprisingly, it remained for Cubans a "brooding preoccupation." While Americans remembered the war as something they had done
for
Cubans and expected Cuba to show gratitude, Cubans saw it as something done
to
them. The betrayal of 1898 provided the basis for another Cuban revolution at midcentury.
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The acquisition of a Pacific empire elevated the expansionist dream of an isthmian canal to an urgent priority. Defense of Hawaii and the Philippines required easier access to the Pacific, a point highlighted during the war when the battleship
Oregon
required sixty-eight days to steam from Puget Sound to Cuba. A canal would also give the United States a competitive edge in Pacific and East Asian markets. The availability of long-sought naval bases in the Caribbean now provided the means to defend it. Thus after the war with Spain, the McKinley administration pressed Britain to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. The threat of congressional legislation directing the United States to build a canal without reference to the 1850 treaty pushed the British into negotiations. When the Senate vehemently objected to a treaty giving the United States authority to build and operate but not to fortify a canal, the State Department insisted on reopening negotiations. Preoccupied with European issues and its own imperial war in South Africa and eager for good relations with Washington, London conceded the United States in a treaty finally concluded in November 1901 exclusive right to build, operate, and fortify a canal, an unmistakable sign of acceptance of U.S. preeminence in the Caribbean. The way was clear for initiation of a project that would be carried forward with great gusto by McKinley's successor, Theodore Roosevelt.
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