Imperial Perspectives (Part VIII)

by Jim Miles

2005

The history of ‘diplomacy’ is replete with force used, not as a last minute means, but often as a first initiative to create ‘spheres of influence’ or ‘open doors’. American history, once it reached the California coast, became filled with incidents of aggressive actions or shady actions that were in one way or another accomplished using ships of one form or another. Part VIII of Imperial Perspectives weaves a net around a series of these ‘incidences’ leading into the discussion of the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbour.

VIII. Too Many Boats

Gunboats

One of the more ‘famous’ exploits was the arrival of Admiral Perry in Tokyo Bay in 1853, and the following opening up of Japan to the west. One of the outcomes of that action was the Japanese defeat of the Russians, in particular with naval battles in the Japanese-Russian war of 1905. Having achieved ‘western’ military status Japan went on to create its own spheres of influence in Manchuria, Korea, and China, eventually bringing them back into conflict with the United States in the race for military and resource control of the Pacific Basin. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion in China required the services of several gunboats removed from the Philippine wars in order to secure spheres of influence in China.

In World War II the destroyer Greer, which had been helping the British Navy attack a German submarine before America had entered the war, was in turn attacked by the submarine. The sub, according to Roosevelt, had fired first and without warning; other records indicate it was active in the chase. [1] More gunboat troubles arrived in the Gulf of Tonkin with the U.S. fully involved in South Vietnam and allowing them to excuse and apologize their way into bombing North Vietnam. The USS Maddox had been infiltrating North Vietnamese territorial waters in 1964 and executing small shore raids before it faked an attack by North Vietnamese gunboats. In modern warfare, an Iraqi Mirage jet fired two Exocet missiles into the USS Stark, crippling it and killing dozens of sailors. As a result, Ronald Reagan twisted the story and turned the blame on the Iranians, creating the illusion of Iranian culpability for the whole war and leading America into deeper involvement to protect the flow of oil. [2]

Intelligence

Not quite gunboats, several U.S. intelligence gathering ships made news in modern history headlines. The USS Liberty was attacked and crippled by the Israelis during the Israeli attacks on Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War. Later studies indicated the attack came to guard against revealing military atrocities that the Israelis perpetrated against Egyptian prisoners of war. The next year, near North Korea, the USS Pueblo was captured – or hijacked depending on your point of view – as it spied on North Korea. There were no eventful repercussions to this incident, leaving the reasons why not open to speculations about what was going on during that part of the Cold War.

Further removed from actual gunboats, and returning back in time, the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 created the stir that allowed the Americans to enter World War I on the allied side. It was a British ship, but more than likely carried an illegal cargo of American supplied munitions, a contraband cargo forbidden by American law. True to form, the Americans charged the Germans with acting “contrary to international law and the conventions of all civilized nations” [3] conveniently ignoring its own probable role in its sinking and highlighting its involvement in the ‘civilized’ wars of Europe. More gunboat diplomacy, combined with media propaganda, led the U.S. into the Philippines.

Colony of the Philippines

The events in the Philippines began in the long history of American hostility to Spanish territories in North and South America. Long before hostilities broke out the United States proclaimed its rights and interests in the Monroe Doctrine during a time of imperial reshaping between Russia, France, Spain, Great Britain, the U.S. and newly independent South American republics. In a Congressional speech given on December 02, 1823, President Monroe said “We owe it, therefore, to candour and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.” [4] This doctrine has persisted and been interpreted in many ways with many different actions taken in defence not so much of the independence of the Latin Republics but to safeguard and enhance American trading opportunities and corporate interests throughout the region. With the Spanish Empire in decline, rife with rebellion, the Americans looked at this as an opportune time to become more involved within the Caribbean trade area and – recognizing the proximity of the Philippines to China and its East Pacific bases – as an opportunity to develop bases closer to the Chinese markets.

Well before the Spanish War, American forces had intervened at least forty times for different reasons in Latin American countries, most times ostensibly to protect American citizens during time of rebellion. [5] Sent on what was essentially a reconnaissance mission to Cuba, the USS Maine, one of the larger ‘gunboat’ incidents, anchored in Havana harbour to perform its mission. It sunk from an explosion on February 15, 1898.

In one of the first big acts of media spin, William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal supplied the story of the sinking of the USS Maine, and the “country erupted in righteous anger and patriotic fervour, that led to Congress declaring war on Spain.” [6] That the Maine was destroyed by a not uncommon fire within a coalbunker or by a small mine causing an explosion within a storage room is undetermined, but either way it served as an excuse to go to war. [7] The motives were simple, to relieve the oppressed people of the Spanish Empire from their Spanish oppressors, but the empire had its own attractions other than the liberation of a variety of peoples: overseas military bases both for the navy and for the army; access to foreign markets; control of businesses and the agricultural land base.

Political Consequences

From my reading, there appear to be two main consequences from the successful war against Spain besides the acquisition of a land-based empire. First, the war did not end so simply in the Philippines and turned into an ongoing guerrilla struggle with the native people of the Philippines. Secondly, the rhetoric coming out of the war simply highlighted the dualism of grandiose rhetoric and brutal actions that accompany most military ventures anywhere, the ‘what I do speaks so loud, you can’t hear what I say’ syndrome.

The then existing Philippine government in 1898 collapsed and surrendered very quickly to American forces. It had been under attack by a homegrown insurgency that tried to eliminate the Spanish forces – and may very well have succeeded – if not for the intervening American invasion. As is the case with most American foreign affairs, they could not allow themselves to recognize the indigenous rebellion as a legitimate one and set about to eliminate that as well. After several military defeats in direct confrontation with the American military, the indigenous forces turned to guerrilla warfare as the best and most effective means to defeat the Americans. Unfortunately they met a foe that was both savage in its application of warfare and technologically superior to their own forces.

The Philippines were annexed through the same thought processes that George Bush used for his invasion of Iraq. William McKinley portrayed his decision as that of divine will, “I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night.” His divine orders were to “uplift and civilize and Christianize them and …do the very best we could by them as our fellowmen for whom Christ also died.” [8] McKinley, as with Bush, slept well that night. This small minded thinking, a reliance on the supposed identification of God with the American people and the American government, has caused enormous problems for the people of the world who generally prefer to be left alone to their own devices rather than be saved by some revengeful and savage god that destroys all who are supposedly uncivilized because of skin colour, a pastoral technology, a different religion, and communal rather than corporate beliefs.

Corporate Murder

Unfortunately, this superior civilizing kind of thinking combined with corporate need for new markets and resources, led to an extended guerrilla war in which thousands of Filipinos lost their lives to the American military. For all their talk of the rules of civilized war, the Americans were ordered to take no prisoners, and along with the usual rape, torture and mass killings of civilians, finally overcame the resistance to their occupation, slaughtering “at least 200,000 Filipinos out of a population of less than eight million.” [9]

As with all wars, this one had its ‘memorable massacre’, the Moro massacre. With over 900 men women and children trapped in a volcanic crater, the Americans bombarded them until no one was left alive. President Roosevelt, having taken over from the assassinated McKinley, commended the attacking general, Leonard Wood, writing, “I congratulate you and the officers of your command upon the brilliant feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag.” [10] The thought of the flag as a symbol of honour when it was used to brutally murder an essentially defenceless opposition defies all credible thinking, yet is not an uncommon theme in American history. No wonder the flag burns in many countries of the world.

Well before Vietnam, well before Iraq, the United States established its overseas pattern of using military force transported by boats to combat supposed evils, to deliver economic peace and prosperity through the end of a gun barrel or the torturer’s knife, to gain freedom not for the indigenous people but for American businesses at home and abroad. The next ship to be sunk by evil-doers was the Lusitania, another act of warfare that ignited the patriotic flames within the American breast and led them into the First World War, a war with expectations to be the end of all wars, but became simply another in the deadly series of empire against empire.

Notes

[1] Kevles, Daniel J. et al. Inventing America Vol. 2. W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2003. p. 806.
[2] Fisk, Robert. The Great War for Civilisation, The Conquest of the Middle East. Fourth Estate, London, 2005. p. 267 ff.
[3] The Sinking of the Lusitania.
[4] Monroe Doctrine; December 2, 1823.
[5] “Instances of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1945” Congressional Research Service, 1975, cited in Blum, William. Killing Hope U.S. Military and CIA interventions Sicne World War II. Zed Books, London, 1986.
[6] Johnson, Chalmers. The Sorrows of Empire, Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York. p. 40
[7] see discussion of these possibilities at A Special Report: What Really Sank the Maine at the US Naval Institute.
[8] Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States 1492-Present. Perennial Classics, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2003. p. 313.
[9] Johnson, ibid, p. 43.
[10] Foster, John Bellamy, and McChesney, Robert W. Pox Americana, Exposing the American Empire. Monthly Review Press, New York, 2004. p. 17.

© Jim Miles. Used with permission.