Book: First Great Triumph
Author: Warren Zimmermann
Price: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30
Much of the current debate about US hyperpower, how it will be deployed and the constraints, if any, that it will accept or that can be applied to it, is based on the assumption that nothing like it has been seen before. On a world scale that is true. But the manner in which the US became a hemispheric hyperpower 100 years ago-by winning the Spanish-American war-and how it went on to use that power provide a disturbing set of precedents to today's debate.
Where there are now hawks and doves there were then jingoes and goo-goos. The leaders of the latter were distinguished and learned and, for the most part, ineffective. The most dynamic and influential of the former, whose vigour and aggression were widely thought to epitomise the spirit of the new century, was Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909. Warren Zimmermann's book focuses on him and his major allies-Elihu Root, successively secretary of war and of state; John Hay, who began his career as Lincoln's secretary and ended it as Roosevelt's secretary of state; Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee and Admiral Alfred Mahan, the great philosopher of naval power.
The document that set out their view on hemispheric relations in words that eerily anticipate today's doctrine of pre-emptive action is known as the Roosevelt corollary to the Monroe doctrine. Enunciated by Roosevelt in his annual presidential message of December 1904, it asserted that: "Chronic wrongdoing or impotence, which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilised society" in the American hemisphere "may force the US... to the exercise of an international police power." By then, the US had acquired Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, eastern Samoa and, indirectly, Panama, and the corollary was in the nature of an ex post justification as well as a guide to future policy.
What would now be described as human rights abuses could be invoked to justify the invasion of Cuba. But the real trigger was the desire to eliminate the last vestiges of Spanish empire in the Americas and to become the dominant power in the Caribbean. For some, including Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy, war was just a means to assert US power. The Philippines were irrelevant to the attack on Cuba, but Roosevelt ensured that a naval squadron was on hand to capture them too when hostilities began.
In the case of Panama strategic considerations were paramount. With Cuba to the east and the Philippines to the west under its belt, it had become a priority for the US that a canal should be built to link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The isthmus of Panama, then part of Colombia, was the favoured site. A deal to lease the land on terms favourable to the US was negotiated between US and Colombian representatives, only to be rejected by the Colombian Senate. The US then threw its support behind Panamanian separatist rebels and did a deal with the new government of an independent Panama. Strategic considerations-notably the desire to obtain Pearl Harbour-were also much to the fore with Hawaii; with economic factors playing a part too.
Under Roosevelt and his successors, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, US troops landed at different times in Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Panama. In 1916, as Europeans turned to him as the conscience of the west, Wilson proposed to make a speech on self-determination. "It shall not lie with the American people to dictate to another what their government shall be..." he wrote. His secretary of state, Robert Lansing, minuted in the margin: "Haiti, S Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama" and the speech was rewritten.
Zimmermann, a distinguished former US ambassador, continues the story up to our own times. In his view, US support for right-wing dictators like Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua and Batista in Cuba, and the overthrow of such left-wing ones as Arbenz in Guatemala and Allende in Chile, as well as Reagan's assault on Grenada in 1983, the capture and abduction of the Panamanian dictator Noriega by the first President Bush in 1990, and Clinton's expulsion of the Haitian junta in 1994, can all "be seen as consistent with Theodore Roosevelt's corollary to the Monroe doctrine."
Zimmermann's account of why the US Senate, at the urging of Henry Cabot Lodge, rejected Wilson's proposal that the US should join the League of Nations after the first world war also has echoes today. In Europe that decision was characterised as isolationist. Zimmermann, however, argues that Cabot Lodge was "a consistent advocate of extending US power in the world." What he and his supporters didn't like was the restraints they believed that the League would place on the exercise of US sovereignty.
So where do we stand following the Iraq war (which took place after this book was written) with the US bestriding the world as it has for so long its own hemisphere? The US model with which most of the world has become familiar since the second world war was laid down by Theodore Roosevelt's cousin President Franklin D Roosevelt and his successor Harry S Truman. This is an America that regards itself as the leader of an alliance and its allies as partners-albeit junior-in a common enterprise. Policy is something to be agreed upon first and acted upon afterwards, even if the US role is generally understood to count for more than any other. It is an America dedicated to the observance of the rules and conventions of international law, in the creation of which it has played such a large part. The ghosts of these two cousins are now contending for the spirit of America.
On a purely military assessment, the advantage lies with Theodore. The US is as able to project force across the world now as it was across the western hemisphere in his day. But much else has changed. Against today's terrorism, military might is not enough. The co-operation of other governments, their legal systems, their police and intelligence agencies and their financial regulators are all required. The role of the Pakistani authorities in tracking down associates of Osama bin Laden provides a case in point.
Another is US public opinion. As in all countries, it is prone to shift under the pressure of events. But for several decades now it has been clear that, except in the western hemisphere, it wants to act with allies and feels uncomfortable at the prospect of the US acting alone. The events of 9/11 do not seem to have changed that.
Linked to this is the habit and experience of diplomatic co-operation with allies. For over 50 years, US administrations of both parties have grown accustomed to acting in concert with others. This does not necessarily mean doing what they want but it does mean taking their views into account. Successive US administrations have learned that whether in economic, trade, financial or military matters, multilateral policies in which others have a stake are more likely to achieve lasting success, however tedious they are to agree, than those pursued unilaterally.
The end of the cold war has not changed this reality. Indeed, it has enmeshed the US even more than it was before in a global economic, trading and financial system. At the time of the "first great triumph" and for many decades thereafter the US was, in these respects, almost an island. Now, its current account deficit, need for inward investment, large investments abroad, appetite for foreign goods and raw materials, and need for foreign markets, all serve to embed it ever more deeply in a wider world.
Moreover, even if it can project power across the world now as easily as it has long been able to do across its own hemisphere, the consequences are very different. In the western hemisphere, US forces could usually be in and out having achieved their objective very quickly. But achieving political change in a place like Iraq is a long-term project. It will require an unrewarding occupation, with uncertain results-all done in the full glare of the media spotlight. It is hard to imagine US public opinion tolerating such commitments on an ever-extending basis.
For Theodore Roosevelt war, among its other merits, was an aid to winning elections. In the early 1990s, the present president's father found this was not always true. For all these reasons my money-and hopes-are on Franklin.
