The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898–1945. David S. Nasca
to utilize its military to regain control over what was becoming a very unpopular war, the situation in Cuba was not as bloody, but no less difficult. Although Cuba had an organized insurgency and a shadow government that quietly operated behind the scenes during its struggle for independence against Spain, the United States hesitated to turn over the island directly to the Cubans. Part of this hesitation was motivated by American economic interests, especially regarding the island’s sugar production and distribution that could potentially hurt American sugar industries at home. Also, the island was a valuable piece of military real estate that allowed increased power projection in the Caribbean and South America and provided powerful, forward-deployed military units to protect the construction of an isthmian canal in Central America.
The United States’ occupation of Cuba allowed for American political and diplomatic leadership to work out more than the establishment of a sovereign government, but also to define the future relationship between the two countries. The U.S. Congress introduced this new relationship with the Platt Amendment within an army appropriations bill that essentially set seven conditions that Cuba must uphold before American military forces could withdraw from the island. This amendment was tied to the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations, which gave the United States exclusive rights to establish military bases on the island; it directed the Cuban government not to go into excessive debt and to take actions to reduce infectious diseases; and finally, it gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba for the maintenance of the host nation’s government.137
Despite the controversy the amendment sparked within Congress while passing it for approval, the newly established Cuban government quickly rejected it in the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations.138 However, the continued presence of American ground and naval forces on the island, as well as the occupational force’s full control over Cuba’s administration and infrastructure, finally convinced the Cuban political leadership to accept these conditions and introduce them into Cuba’s constitution.
This American diplomatic victory had mixed political ramifications, both at home and in Cuba. Fred Harvey Harrington argues that the anti-imperialist movement was led by those who opposed the annexation of the Philippines and other islands placed within reach by the American victory over Spain. The anti-imperialist movement was based on an abstract principle. While not opposed to expansion based on commercial, constitutional, religious, or humanitarian grounds, the anti-imperialists were against annexation and administration of underdeveloped regions because it compromised American ideals of self-government and isolation.139
At home, the anti-imperialists were up in arms over the unfairness of the treaty’s conditions that essentially made Cuba an American colony except by name, while Cubans were outraged at how much power and influence the United States had over Cuba’s affairs. By many, the Platt Amendment was looked at as an act just short of betrayal since the United States’ original intentions to free Cuba for purposes of self-determination now resulted in exchanging Spanish colonial chains for American ones. In other words, American political leadership was now going against its original ideals of freedom and democracy in exchange for narrow national security and economic interests. Cuba was merely the beginning of a more aggressive policy to use military force in support of U.S. geopolitical strategy. Once business over Cuba’s future was concluded, Theodore Roosevelt soon became president of the United States and would later authorize the use of the military to use amphibious warfare to safeguard American interests in the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Morocco.140
Social Implications of Amphibious Warfare
America’s use of amphibious warfare during the Spanish-American War also had social implications. Because of the major social issues that were raging within American society, America’s easy victory over the Spanish during the war only exacerbated sensitive, volatile conditions at home. The Second Industrial Revolution brought unprecedented economic development and production in the United States, resulting in America quickly transitioning from an agrarian society to one based on industry and urbanization. The rise of technology in American society not only brought the expected economic and educational benefits of modernization, it also introduced problems. The massive flood of immigration from abroad and the growing power of big businesses combined to create issues that would cause hotly contested debates and, at times, violence in the United States. These social issues soon coalesced into the Progressive Movement in which widespread social activism and political reform sought to address the social and political ills within American society.
The use of amphibious warfare and the quick success it produced in the Spanish-American War allowed for large numbers of American personnel to be deployed and stationed abroad outside the continental United States. No longer being used to protect the empty frontier for the movement and settlement of the American population, the military was instead being used to keep foreign peoples compliant with American political administration and economic development. Certain elements within American society were originally wary of this new use of the American military based on their understanding of the United States’ exceptionalism and uniqueness. While the major powers were caught up in colonial and territorial expansion over weaker peoples, the United States saw itself as an exception to the rule. In Ludmilla Popkova’s study of Russian press coverage of the Spanish-American War, the general consensus of American actions came in the aftermath of the conflict. At first, “The declaration of war against the Spanish monarchy, in the name of defending the freedom and independence of Cuba, as such raised no objections, since it approved the humane goals of the United States. But as events developed, the [periodicals] in [their] summer issues began to express doubt as to whether those goals really were liberation and humanitarianism.”141 It could be argued that the American republic was no better than the other major powers, as shown by its expansion across North America and its extermination of the American Indian tribes; therefore, American expansion beyond the geographic constraints of North America was simply part of the United States’ Manifest Destiny.
To some Americans, imperialism was simply an extension of Manifest Destiny, and the Pacific and Caribbean were regions of the world that were the natural preserve for the United States’ expansionism. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, the American population welcomed the Spanish-American War, where “populists stopped watching the money power, Republicans ceased troubling themselves over repudiation, Democrats forgot the deficit…. The indelible marks of regionalism were all but obliterated as northerners and southerners joined to fight under the same flag…. Immense crowds greeted trains rushing soldiers to the front.”142 These same elements believed that embracing imperialism was essential for the United States in order to continue American territorial expansion, gain recognition as a world power, and contribute to the development and benefit of lesser, underdeveloped peoples. The conquests of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spain provided such opportunities to spread American political, social, and economic benefits and bring these parts of the world into the enlightenment of democracy. William Alden Smith, a member of the committee on foreign affairs in Congress in the late nineteenth century, advocated annexation. He argued, “Annexation is not new to us. In my humble opinion the whole North American continent and every island in the gulf and the Caribbean Sea and such islands in the Pacific as may be deemed desirable are worthy of our ambition. Nor that we are earth hungry, but, as a measure of national protection and advantage, it is the duty of the American people to lay peaceful conquest wherever opportunity may be offered.”143
Anti-imperialists were quick to organize against this mainstream thought and formed the American Anti-Imperialist League. This group felt that the United States should not embrace global imperialism and expansion over foreign peoples because doing so violated the fundamental beliefs that inspired the United States to fight Great Britain for independence during the late eighteenth century: freedom, democracy, and national self-determination. William James, a renowned American philosopher and psychologist during the late nineteenth century, bemoaned, “What could be a more shameless betrayal of American principles? What could be a plainer symptom of greed, ambition, corruption and imperialism?”144 Imperialism also violated the Monroe Doctrine, in which American interests were limited to just the Western Hemisphere. According to Steve J. S. Ickringill, “Discussion about the Monroe doctrine intensified after the negotiation of the truce and the American invasion of the Philippines in August of 1898. Now the question of