A Patriot's History of the Modern World (6 page)

Whether the newly acquired territories would be better off beneath the American flag was not in question, even for the Spanish. One Spanish writer noted that “everyone who is reliable and serious in Cuba prefers the Yankees a thousand times over to separatism” (that is, independence), and a Russian journalist predicted the “joy of the Philippine insurgents” in securing American aid would secure liberty and peace there.
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The first evidence of American policies could be seen in Cuba, where the United States introduced education and fiscal reforms. When Congress undertook an investigation of the war, European republicans were astounded at the openness of the system. Although a few Europeans looked dimly on Spain's ouster at the hands of a money-centered United States (the Austrian
Wiener Journal
, certainly not alone, claimed “the Yankees are businessmen and nothing else”), this view remained in the minority, with most glumly admitting that progress and freedom tended to follow in the Americans' wake.
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One Spanish
writer prophesied that “in all the colonies they have just acquired the Yankees will do in a few years what we have been unable to do in centuries…. that will be our greatest shame.”
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German commentators agreed, viewing the American victory as “a triumph for progress and a gain for mankind”; while a Russian newspaper predicted the U.S. victory would transform the political balance of the world.
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To a few, the American victory marked the end, as one American prelate wrote to Rome, “of all that is old & vile & mean & rotten & cruel & false in Europe…. When Spain is swept [from the oceans] much of the meanness & narrowness of old Europe goes with it, to be replaced by the freedom & openness of America.” He added, “This is God's way of developing the world.”
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German intellectuals and writers condescendingly snarled that Spain had shrunk “to the rank of a small Asiatic people, decadent and mummified.”
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Not long after the Spanish surrender, Cuban officials met General Leonard Wood on a steamer in Havana harbor. Wood's goal was to create “a republic modeled closely upon the lines of our great Anglo-Saxon republic.”
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That Cuba possessed none of the attributes that were necessary for an American-style republic was simply not recognized at the time. Wood, the son of a physician, attended Harvard Medical School, then served with the U.S. Army fighting the Apaches. In 1886, after carrying dispatches one hundred miles through Indian territory, Wood was awarded a Medal of Honor. Later, he became a star football player at Georgia School of Technology (now Georgia Tech), before organizing the Rough Riders with Theodore Roosevelt. Far from seeking to “colonialize” Cuba, Wood set out to educate the Cubans (by 1902, some 250,000 students passed through the schools he established), and oversaw a massive reform of public works, including sewer projects, drainage of swamps, street repairs, and construction of hospitals. Americans under Wood translated textbooks into Spanish, trained 1,300 Cuban teachers, opened thousands of schools (modeled on Ohio's public school system), and diligently sought to “infuse new life, new principles and new methods of doing things” into the island. He also imposed judicial reforms, especially those that emphasized private property rights.
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American soldiers distributed food, waged a sanitary campaign, rooted out corrupt officials, built roads and bridges, and dredged Havana harbor. But the greatest achievement under Wood's tenure involved Dr. Walter Reed's discovery in 1900 that a particular mosquito transmitted yellow fever. Through the efforts of the Army Medical Corps, mosquito netting was put up in sleeping quarters, standing bodies of stagnant water were
drained, and fumigation became commonplace. By 1902 not a single case of yellow fever was reported in Havana, whereas 1,400 cases had been reported in 1900.
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Cuban sugar planters, who had suffered mightily during the insurrection, bordered on bankruptcy. Wood put a moratorium on the collection of debts from the planters, which lapsed in 1902. Critics therefore could attack Wood regardless of his policies: if he kept the moratorium, he was merely propping up the “imperialist puppets,” and if he allowed the moratorium to lapse, he was sounding the “death knell for much of the island's planter class.”
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When American corporations bought the bankrupt Cuban sugar plantations, Wood was accused of acting for “U.S. interests.” Americans acquired about 15 percent of Cuban land, bringing in new technology and infrastructure. The Platt Amendment gave the United States long-term leases on bases in Cuba, leading to the construction of the naval base at Guantánamo Bay (made permanent by the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903), and prohibited Cuba from transferring land to any power other than the United States, or engaging in any treaty with another country “which will…impair the independence of Cuba.” At that point, the Army withdrew.

America's First Guerrilla War

Although the Spanish-American War ended with the United States in official possession of the Philippines, actual control required America to engage in its first foreign war against guerrilla forces. McKinley sent Dewey against the Spanish and provided land forces to take control of the islands primarily to obtain a bargaining chip with Spain for negotiations over Cuba.
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Step by step, however, McKinley was drawn into a situation neither foreseen nor desired—namely, America's first foray into imperialism. The Germans and British were interested in the islands, and McKinley built up his forces with the apparent intent to provide, as in Cuba, an orderly transition to self-rule. Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of an army of Filipino irregulars, proclaimed the independence of the Philippines on June 12, 1898, followed by the announcement of a revolutionary government eleven days later. General Wesley Merritt arrived in July to take command of the American forces, with an order from McKinley to issue a proclamation declaring that the United States came to protect the inhabitants and their property and to guarantee their individual rights.
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The Spanish governor agreed to surrender his men to the Americans, who in turn promised to
keep the Filipino irregulars out of Manila. In June, the 15,000 American soldiers who had gone ashore to mop up Spanish resistance against a Spanish commander putting up token resistance to avoid a court martial back in Spain now faced Aguinaldo, who felt betrayed by his American allies. Negotiations with the Filipinos kept them at bay for a time, but on August 17, the War Department declared there would be no joint occupation between the Filipinos and the United States and that the “insurgents and all others must recognize the military occupation and authority of the United States.”
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When Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, officially handing over the Philippines to American control, the situation became irretrievable. McKinley stated that “the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.”
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Others had a slightly less noble view of the affair. Speaker of the House Thomas Reed quipped, “We have bought ten million Malays at $2.00 a head unpicked, and nobody knows what it will cost to pick them.”
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Fighting with Aguinaldo, who had set up a republic at Malolos, broke out in February 1899, pitting some 15,000 actual U.S. combat forces against twice that number of
insurrectos
. It took only a month for the Army to slice through the Filipino resistance, capturing Malolos in March. But General Elwell Otis found that he could not extend his forces too far from the cities due to the monsoons and disease that eroded the fighting capabilities of units by up to 60 percent. When the state volunteers left in September 1899, Otis had only 27,000 men, and actual fighting units of perhaps half that. Resupplied and regrouped, Otis's forces set out in the fall and defeated Aguinaldo's troops again and again, though the leader himself always escaped. In November 1899, Aguinaldo dispersed his soldiers as organized forces and sent them into the jungles to engage in guerrilla warfare.

The United States added 34,000 more troops over the next two years, although an average of 24,000 to 44,000 were actual combat troops. Predating the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq over a century later, Aguinaldo quickly ascertained that he could not defeat the American military—even in guerrilla war—rather, he had to “sour Americans on the war and ensure the victory of the anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan in the presidential election.”
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Filipino general Francisco Macabulos said the objective of the
insurrectos
was “not to vanquish the [U.S. Army] but to inflict on them constant losses” so as to affect public attitudes in the United States.
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The strategy failed with the application of a carrot-and-stick response from American
commanders, who steadily separated villages from the guerrillas, then sequestered them so that the “fish,” as Mao Zedong would later put it, would have no “sea” to swim in. Regiments lived among the villagers, maintaining regular and reliable intelligence. They drew another 15,000 Filipinos to the U.S. side—the famed Philippine Scouts and the Philippine Constabulary.

At the same time, to win the confidence, respect, and loyalty of the population, Americans engaged in a great deal of what is today called “nation building.” English was added to Spanish as an official language in the islands, while Army engineers constructed dams and irrigation canals, cleared roads and ports, reformed the currency and laws, and produced medical near-miracles, including the elimination of cholera and smallpox and a drastic reduction in malaria. Perhaps the charge that the United States sought coaling stations or bases has a kernel of truth, as certainly Mahan's doctrine had by then convinced most knowledgeable naval minds that ready access to coal was essential to protecting American interests. Not surprisingly, the United States—like the European colonizers—poured far more into the territories it acquired than it took out.

Rebel leaders, dispirited both by American advances in the islands and by McKinley's reelection in 1900, surrendered. Aguinaldo himself was captured personally by Brigadier General Frederick Funston, who posed as a prisoner of war to find the rebel chief. Funston won a Medal of Honor by courageously rafting across the Pampanga River under fire, and after the war was picked by Woodrow Wilson to head the American Expeditionary Force if needed in Europe after World War I broke out. But Funston died of a heart attack before the U.S. declaration of war.

A new American commissioner, William Howard Taft, arrived in late 1900, setting up a Filipino political party and preparing the country for democratic institutions and elections. The last resistance was crushed on the Fourth of July, 1902, although the Muslim “Moros,” who still practiced slavery and polygamy, continued to resist until 1913. Placed under the military control of Governor General John “Black Jack” Pershing, the economy revived and employment rose—hemp and lumber exports increased more than 150 percent in Pershing's tenure. Pershing did respect Islam, donating government land for the construction of mosques, but he also insisted on complete disarmament. When he handed control over Southern Mindanao to the Moros in 1913, Pershing had quashed the tribes' martial inclinations (killing ten Moros for every American soldier lost). Pershing's local civilian administration gained enough respect from the Moros that they made him
a
datto
(tribal chief). In 1903, at age forty-five, Pershing left the Philippines with a case of malaria and a reputation as one of America's best officers and most available bachelors. He returned a married man in 1907 as head of the Department of Mindanao and the civilian governor of the Moro Province for another tour that lasted until 1913 and solidified both American control of Mindanao and Pershing's military reputation.

A Fighting Quaker in a Banana Republic

For several decades following the Spanish-American War, the United States would intervene in the affairs of Caribbean islands and Latin American countries. Santo Domingo (the Dominican Republic) was already in danger of being overrun by the Europeans for failing to pay its debts, and in 1903, rebels there fired on a U.S. ship, killing a sailor. When President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched troops to keep an eye on the rebellion, critics claimed the United States had designs on the island, whereupon Roosevelt retorted, “I have about the same desire to annex [Santo Domingo] as a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong-end-to.”
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A year later, confronted with Europeans demanding debt repayments from Venezuela, Roosevelt sent the fleet under Dewey to demonstrate in the eastern Caribbean, and invoked the Monroe Doctrine to keep the Europeans out. But Roosevelt realized that “If we intend to say ‘hands off' to the powers of Europe, then sooner or later we must keep order ourselves,” as he told Secretary of State Elihu Root. Disorder and chaos in Central America, South America, or the Caribbean
did
affect American interests—and not just businesses—and could easily spill over into revolutions that might spread through Mexico. Recognizing the danger, TR later told Congress, “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation….” The Monroe Doctrine could force the United States, “however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong-doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”
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Thus, the United States sent troops to Cuba in 1906 when the government fell apart (and withdrew them again in 1909 when a new government was stabilized); broke up a coup backed by the United Fruit Company in 1924 in Honduras; and governed Haiti and the Dominican Republic for several years prior to World War I. In 1917, the United States landed troops again in Cuba to quell a rebellion. About 3,000 troops remained in the Dominican Republic throughout World War I, patrolling and battling guerrillas,
until finally, in 1922, the guerrillas agreed to surrender. By then there was a new flare-up in Haiti, sparked by the reinstitution of the French corvée (“forced work”). Although this resulted in the construction of almost five hundred miles of roads, it was a practice deeply resented by the Haitians and a source of much anti-Americanism. Local bandit-militias, the
Cacos
, led by Charlemagne Masséna Péralte, fought a series of battles with the Americans throughout 1919. Whereas in the past, the Marines had easily routed such groups, the new rebellion was more widespread and had greater popular support. A Marine sergeant, Herman Hanneken, who had been commanding a group of local gendarmerie as a “captain,” hired his own
Cacos
and conceived a brilliant ruse to infiltrate Péralte's camp. Dressing Marines as
Cacos
, he managed to get into the camp, whereupon Hanneken shot the rebel leader himself. A few
Cacos
battled on, but by 1920, the Second Caco War was over. A few thousand Marines had succeeded where 27,000 of Napoléon Bonaparte's troops had failed.