Gunboat Diplomacy
After rising to the U.S. presidency in 1901, Roosevelt encapsulated his approach to military policy with the adage: “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” He comprehended the essential but unpleasant fact that great power conferred enormous responsibilities upon a nation. His platitudes also complemented the assumptions of Anglo-Saxon dominance. The Roosevelt administration touted what became known as “Gunboat Diplomacy,” that is, the pursuit of international objectives with conspicuous displays of military strength.
Figure 9.4 U.S. interventions in Latin America, 1900–1935
Military strength became a necessity after the Spanish–American War, especially in regard to administering the former colonies of Spain. In 1901, the Platt Amendment to an Army appropriations bill stipulated the right to preserve “a government adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty” in an independent Cuba. In addition, a proviso granted U.S. control over the naval base at Guantánamo Bay. When an insurrection erupted on the island a few years later, American troops quickly suppressed it. U.S. forces reduced their footprint in the Philippine archipelago but endeavored to make the inhabitants “fit for self-government.” The commander-in-chief insisted that “our whole attention was concentrated upon the welfare of the Filipinos themselves, if anything, to the neglect of our own interests.” As arranged by the War Department, the U.S. maintained “peculiar relations” with Cuba and the Philippines.
Transit across the Isthmus of Panama excited interest in the U.S., even though some Latin Americans balked. The Hay–Herrán Treaty of 1903 established a Canal Zone, but the government of Colombia rejected it. Because the Colombian province of Panama revolted that fall, Americans seized the opportunity to negotiate a deal with the separatist government in Colón. On November 4, the U.S.S. Nashville ported, showed the flag, and placed boots on the ground. Two more U.S. warships blocked the sea lanes from Colombia. A week later, Roosevelt received the Panamanian ambassador, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, and agreed to a new deal. The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty that year gave the U.S. a 10-mile-wide Canal Zone for $10 million down and $250,000 a year “in perpetuity.” After Congress created the Isthmian Canal Commission, the Army began to make the “dirt fly.” Colonel George W. Goethels, the chief engineer, constructed the locks and administered the project. Creating a pathway for the interoceanic cruises of the Navy, the Panama Canal opened on August 15, 1914.
Even before the armed intervention in Panama, Roosevelt appreciated the military implications of the Monroe Doctrine. Great Britain and Germany took action in Venezuela to collect unpaid debts, spurring him to send the Navy to monitor their exit in 1902. When another debt crisis occurred in the Dominican Republic two years later, the Roosevelt Corollary refined an enduring strategic concept. As an addendum to the Monroe Doctrine, his annual message to Congress declared that the U.S. intended to exercise “international police power” in the western hemisphere. To forestall “chronic wrongdoing,” the U.S. temporarily took over the Dominican customs and revenue service and ensured that the unstable government repaid its debts. Over the years, U.S. presidents used force to stabilize Latin American regimes again and again.
Before retiring from the presidency, Roosevelt wanted to form a first line of defense commensurate with the doctrine of sea power. Indeed, American shipyards turned out new battleships with impressive capabilities. Nevertheless, technical flaws occasionally resulted in catastrophic explosions and sparked public debate about the costly vessels. Line officers known as the “Young Turks” gained the upper hand in regard to naval policies, as the General Board in the Navy Department began to organize a battle fleet. Along with making upgrades in firepower and in machinery, the Navy also grappled with emergent technologies such as fixed, floating, and mobile torpedoes and submarine mines. With the British launch of H.M.S. Dreadnought in 1906, the U.S. accelerated plans for manufacturing all-big-gun capital ships. For the foreseeable future, the “big stick” undoubtedly meant a “big navy.”
The rapid growth of a “big navy” did not result in adequate numbers of sailors to man the ships, though. Most vessels lacked about 10 percent of the intended complement, while shortages in petty officers and skilled technicians persisted over time. Though precluded from other jobs, women joined the Navy Nurse Corps after 1908. The Navy's sister service, the Marine Corps, officially created an Advanced Base Force under Commandant William P. Biddle. Whereas the Navy Department had established the Office of Naval Militia years earlier, Congress sanctioned a reserve component with the Naval Militia Affairs Act of 1914. Recruiting for maritime service continued to lag, which undermined U.S. efforts to keep pace with the Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet.
To make warfare beneath the waters possible, the U.S. commissioned its first submarine in 1900. John R. Holland, an engineer living in New Jersey, designed the Type VI craft. He combined the internal combustion engine for surface cruising with a battery-powered electric motor for submerged operations. Christened the U.S.S. Holland, it constituted an effective weapon for close-to-shore coastal defense. However, it lacked the capacity for attacking battle fleets on the high seas. Since the submarine possessed no significant commercial applications, its technological development depended almost entirely on appropriations from Congress. By 1914, generous federal expenditures enabled the Navy to acquire 34 underwater vessels.
Ranking second in the world to Great Britain, the Navy abandoned its dispersed squadron deployments to concentrate its battle fleet in the Atlantic Ocean. Painted white with gilded scrollwork on their bows, the 16 battleships inspired the nickname, “Great White Fleet.” Under the command of Rear Admiral Robley D. Evans, the U.S.S. Connecticut served as the flagship. His crew expected “a feast, a frolic, or a fight,” or so he said. They departed from Hampton Roads, Virginia, on December 16, 1907, for a world tour. Manned by 14,000 personnel, the steamers covered some 43,000 miles on the voyage and made 20 port calls on six different continents. With a rousing celebration, Roosevelt welcomed them home on February 22, 1909. Thus, the “Great White Fleet” symbolized American military strength in a progressive era.
Conclusion
No longer insulated from international affairs, the armed forces of the U.S. encountered a dynamic world by the end of the nineteenth century. Americans expressed enthusiasm for the doctrine of sea power, which insisted that naval assets determined the outcome of armed conflicts. After a battleship sank one hot night in Havana, Congress declared war on Spain. U.S. forces won a swift victory over the Spanish military during 1898, when their offensives in the Philippines, Guam, Cuba, and Puerto Rico proved decisive. In addition to winning battles, they built hospitals, schools, roads, and canals on foreign soil. Technological and organizational changes enabled them to flex their proverbial muscles, although their reach sometimes exceeded their grasp. Civilian authorities provided an administrative framework for managing a more robust military. Instead of remaining an unassailable yet isolated nation, the U.S. competed in a race for empire with offshore holdings that spanned the globe.
The U.S. experienced a power surge inadvertently, even if the new proponents of Manifest Destiny considered it a godsend. While the Army and the Navy adapted to the emergent trends, only the latter seemed prepared for military action. Because the former lacked a grand strategist comparable to Mahan, U.S. commanders fielded what amounted to a constabulary force to wage war. The War Department maintained a defensive shield, but only the Navy Department honed capabilities akin to an offensive sword. Unlike Europeans in an age of imperialism, Americans seldom worried about the threat of either a land invasion or a naval assault. Likewise, only a few appreciated the tactical or logistical challenges of countering insurgencies. Facing the prospect of foreign adventures for years to come, many repeated ideological statements about America's mission that sounded like jingoistic nonsense. In other words, the U.S. would not become a truly great power without more “savage wars of peace.”
The Spanish–
American War represented a small war in many respects, but its impact on the U.S. was large. To a remarkable extent, the expansionists of 1898 helped to resolve a domestic crisis caused by the disappearance of a frontier region and the panic of an economic decline. With Washington D.C. taking the initiative, the momentous turn seemed bold and purposeful. Service members liberated a number of colonized people under Spanish dominion, although the evolving missions revealed a combination of harshness and conciliation. Defending national interests led soldiers, sailors, and marines to plant the U.S. flag in faraway places. They inspired the myth of an imperial republic, which mixed aggressive acts with anti-colonial sentiments. With each step into a new century, Americans in the military found themselves, as Roosevelt famously put it, “in the arena.”
Because of Americans in the military, the U.S. represented not only an unrivaled power in the western hemisphere but also a leading actor on the world stage. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, intellectuals dismissed the cruelty of war as an aberration of a “less civilized” age. Global partnerships made the clash of arms nothing if not unnatural. International conferences at The Hague forged agreements to “humanize” combat, although the congenial rhetoric resonated mostly with elites. Even the pugnacious Roosevelt earned a Nobel Peace Prize, making him the first American recipient of the award. As for the use of force in peacetime, a host of bureaucratic rules and regulations attempted to impose order upon military operations within diverse environments. The nation soon learned that newfound responsibilities for overseas possessions and the commercial interests of industrial societies made any reversion to insularity unrealistic.
Essential Questions
1 How did the doctrine of sea power influence strategic thought before 1898?
2 In what ways were U.S. forces improved by progressive reforms?
3 Did the Spanish–American War mark a turning point in American military history? Why, or why not?
Suggested Readings
Abrahamson, James L. America Arms for a New Century: The Making of a Great Military Power. New York: Free Press, 1981.
Boot, Max. The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Challener, Richard D. Admirals, Generals, and American Foreign Policy, 1898–1914. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
Cirillo, Vincent J. Bullets and Bacilli: The Spanish–American War and Military Medicine. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999.
Hoganson, Kristin. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish–American and Philippine–American Wars. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Linn, Brian McAllister. The Philippine War, 1899–1902. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999.
McBride, William M. Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
McCartney, Paul T. Power and Progress: American National Identity, the War of 1898, and the Rise of American Imperialism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
Musicant, Ivan. Empire by Default: The Spanish–American War and the Dawn of the American Century. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
Preston, Diana. The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China's War on Foreigners that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900. New York: Walker & Company, 2000.
Reardon, Carol. Soldiers and Scholars: The U.S. Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865–1920. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.
Shulman, Mark Russell. Navalism and the Emergence of American Sea Power, 1882–1893. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995.
Sibley, David. War of Frontier and Empire: The Philippine–American War, 1899–1902. New York: Hill & Wang, 2007.
Spector, Ronald. Professors of War: The Naval War College and the Development of the Naval Profession. Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1977.
Tone, John Lawrence. War and Genocide in Cuba, 1895–1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
Trask, David F. The War with Spain in 1898. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
10
The War to End All Wars (1914–1918)
Introduction
Corporal Alvin C. York, a conscript from the backwoods of Tennessee, hugged the ground near Hill 223 in the Argonne Forest. Because a draft board rejected his legal claim as a “conscientious objector,” he found himself among the millions fighting the Great War in Europe. He was part of a detachment from the 82nd “All American” Division, which groped its way through rain, mud, and underbrush. Around 6:10 a.m. on October 8, 1918, he watched German machine guns cut down comrades “like the lawn grass before the mowing machine back home.”
Sergeant Bernard Early led York and 16 others on a patrol around the enemy defensive position while attempting to take the machine-gun nests from behind. They captured a headquarters battalion, but Early fell under hostile fire from the hillside. Suddenly, York became the “acting sergeant” for the patrol. He took cover on the slope, where he saw the Germans shooting from a nest above him about 25 yards away. Because of the slope, however, the gunners were forced to raise their heads above their earthworks just to see him.
Taking a knee, York began to skillfully work his rifle. He emptied several clips in a matter of minutes. Six Germans rose up and charged downhill with bayonets, assuming that no American would be able to kill them all. Calmly, he pulled his pistol and shot them one at a time. “That's the way we shoot wild turkeys at home,” he mused.
York acted instinctively, but he wished to kill no more than necessary. “Give up,” he yelled to the Germans in the gun pits, “and come on down.” A captured German officer attempted to intercede, promising to “make them give up” if York stopped shooting. The officer blew a whistle, which prompted the Germans to throw down their weapons.
The remainder of York's patrol helped him to gather the disarmed men into a column, while he kept his pistol trained on the back of the German officer. Eventually, he marched back to regimental lines with 132 prisoners. For his actions that day, he received the Medal of Honor.
Figure 10.1 Sergeant Alvin C. York, 1919. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
York became the epitome of an American “doughboy” able to do everything by intuition, although no one was prepared for the kind of war that began on August 1, 1914. Triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, it eclipsed all previous wars among the world's most powerful nations. Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy formed the Triple Alliance, or Central Powers, to battle France, Russia, and Great Britain, who formed the Triple Entente, or Allied Powers. The belligerents fought with machine guns, hand grenades, poison gases, recoilless artillery, tanks, airplanes, and submarines. Fighting in the European trenches demanded men and materials, which the U.S. possessed in abundance.
The tugs of trans-Atlantic commerce dragged the U.S. into World War I, albeit belatedly. While the nation tried to steer clear of participation initially, progressive impulses helped to organize an industrial society to feed assembly lines as well as howitzer batteries. With no passion for militarism, President Woodrow Wilson vowed to make the world “safe for democracy” and to make it “at last free.” Pacifists in Congress notwithstanding, Americans grew alarmed about the frightening prospect of German domination in Europe. After declaring war on Germany in 1917, the U.S. devised comprehensive measures to mobilize the armed forces without abandoning democratic principles.
Great Britain and France slighted U.S. contributions to coalition warfare, but the American military gave the Allied Powers a timely advantage in the theater of operations. With exhausted troops staggered by German aggression, the War Department shipped citizen soldiers by the tens of thousands to the Western Front. Naval actions secured sea lanes and protected cargo, which braced many for a prolonged struggle. From Cantigny to Grandpré, the revitalized armies pushed German divisions from their positions
and across the battlefields. Though troubled by it all, American “doughboys” came of age in the dramatic events that ultimately brought the war to an end.
Preparedness
As Europe slid into war, Wilson proclaimed neutrality and urged the American people to remain “impartial in thought as well as in action.” Though none of the belligerents openly threatened the U.S., the War and Navy Departments began to draft proposals for military expansion. A movement for preparedness spread nationwide, which called for a buildup of the armed forces in order to project American power around the world.
Appearing aloof from European affairs, the Wilson administration was primarily concerned with projecting power in the western hemisphere. While deploying Marines to Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, Wilson vowed: “I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men.” Though undertaken to promote progressive ideals abroad, the military interventions in Latin America fostered animosity toward the U.S.
A revolution in Mexico during 1911 degenerated into a civil war, which spawned the dictatorship of General Victoriano Huerta. On April 9, 1914, American sailors were arrested in Tampico, Mexico, where they gathered supplies in support of an insurgent faction. After their release, the naval commander, Rear Admiral Henry T. Mayo, demanded that Mexican officials apologize and salute the U.S. flag. Within weeks, 6,000 Marines and sailors went ashore at Veracruz. More than 200 Mexicans died defending the city, while the American occupiers lost 19 dead and 47 wounded. Wilson ordered a withdrawal of U.S. forces later that year, as Venustiano Carranza, an insurgent leader, took power in Mexico City.
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