The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898–1945. David S. Nasca
for the world community definitely arose. Some liberals would not part with the ideal of the United States as a peace-loving and freedom-loving state, which began military intervention for purely humanitarian and defense purposes.”145
Anti-imperialists were a large segment of the American population who saw the United States’ use of amphibious warfare as simply a means to gain control over Spanish colonies for the sake of American prestige and glory. This technology represented everything that the anti-imperialist did not want the American republic to pursue in terms of an overseas colonial empire and exploitation of native peoples. Harold Baron’s study of the Democratic Party’s involvement in the anti-imperialist movement stated that the anti-imperialists’ moralistic arguments regarding the use of the American military in the violent oppression of indigenous peoples, such as the Filipinos, was seen as interconnected with big business trusts and monopolies. Direct access to new markets and cheap labor and resources through the deployment of the military was seen as a potential threat to the political and social fabric of the American republic. Instead of the government representing the people, the anti-imperialists feared that the wealthy, elite portions of American society were controlling domestic and foreign affairs.146 Therefore, the ability of the United States to now deploy thousands of troops overseas outside the geographic interests of the Western Hemisphere was a dangerous piece of technology that could potentially corrupt American exceptionalism into being no better than the world’s other colonial powers. These American military adventures and the long-term occupation of these overseas territories compromised mainstream democracy in the United States. Involvement in these overseas territories appeared to some people as economic preserves for big business interests. In addition, the increasing number of lives lost in brutal counterinsurgency operations in the Philippines, as well as the brutal accounts of atrocities taking place against the Filipino population, only enraged anti-imperialists and applied more pressure on the American political leadership to reconsider its imperialist position and consider another course of action that would prepare the Philippines for eventual self-government and independence.147
The growing debate between imperialists and anti-imperialists over the United States’ newly acquired overseas territories also led to friction over the issue of big businesses subverting the American free enterprise system through the establishment of trusts, monopolies, cartels, and economic combinations that could potentially harm competition. While the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 was meant to prevent big business from having too much control and influence over the United States’ economy, the federal government was not yet aggressively executing it.148 American expansion overseas was argued to be big business behind the scenes unduly influencing the federal government to use military force to take new lands for economic exploitation and creation of new markets exclusive to American industries without the competition of other foreign industrial powers. As a consequence, antitrust organizations and proponents naturally aligned with the anti-imperialists as another front to combat big business interests as well as to garner more support and attention for their cause. Ernest Crosby’s poem “The Real White Man’s Burden” (with apologies for utilizing Rudyard Kipling’s poem, “White Man’s Burden”) captured some of the essence of the concerns of the anti-imperialist segments of the American population:
Take up the White Man’s burden,
Send forth your sturdy kin
And load them down with Bibles
And cannon-balls and gin.
Throw in a few diseases
To spread in tropic climes,
For there the healthy [people]
Are quite behind the times.
And don’t forget the factories.
On those benighted shores
They have no cheerful iron mills,
Nor eke department stores.
They never work twelve hours a day,
And live in strange content
Altho they never have to pay
A single sou of rent.
Take up the White Man’s burden,
And teach the Philippines
What interest and taxes are
And what a mortgage means.
Give them electrocution chairs,
And prisons, too, galore,
And if they seem inclined to kick,
Then spill their heathen gore.149
The anti-imperialists saw big business as the source of the American republic’s flirtation with imperialism and saw it as the underlying force that sought to push the United States into using military force to conquer peoples and forcibly transform their local customs, economy, and culture into an American, Anglo-Saxon lifestyle.150 With modern weapons, the American government, backed by its military, exterminated indigenous populations’ way of life as it did to the American Indians during the settlement of the North American continent. The concerns about big business also bled into other areas, such as safety, wage regulations, establishment of unions, child labor laws, and environmental destruction. Immigration was also a contentious issue, since the introduction of new sources of labor created a more competitive working environment that drove up the prices for products, but also kept wages low. With the incorporation of the Philippines as an American territory and with Cuba closely tied to the United States based on the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations, questions arose about the possibility of introducing new peoples who could now possibly immigrate to the United States. Even worse, American business leaders might wish to outsource their industries and services to these countries in order to avoid having to negotiate with labor leaders and follow federal and state business regulations. Fear of immigrant radicalism made capitalists like Carnegie, Frick, and Hay weigh the value of immigrant labor against the supposed dangers of imported disorder as a result of the institutional voice of capitalism, the National Association of Manufacturers, who maintained a consistent proimmigration position. Less affluent Americans—the urban working class, the lower middle class, anti-Catholic Protestants, members of earlier waves of immigration—clung to the proposition that the new immigrants were a threat to their livelihood, their way of life, and even their safety.151 Therefore, nativist sentiments were also drawn into the imperialist and anti-imperialist camps, while the issue with the Philippine Islands was still a point of contention in the United States.
3
Growing Use of Amphibious Warfare from 1900 to 1918
The United States Enters a Brave New World
The Spanish-American War, which resulted in the United States taking control of several overseas possessions in both the Caribbean and the Pacific, confirmed the United States as a major world power in the international system. The transformation brought the United States into contact with certain parts of the globe, establishing vital ties to America’s geopolitical position in the world. The occupation of the Philippines and Guam extended American control into the Western Pacific, creating territorial acquisitions that allowed for the forward deployment and garrisoning of large ground and naval forces. The situation was the same in the occupation of Cuba and Puerto Rico. The annexation of Puerto Rico as a commonwealth territory and the Cuban-American Treaty of Relations established strategic locations for the American military to extend its influence over its Caribbean and South American neighbors and, more importantly, to safeguard the construction of a cross-ocean canal in Central America. Therefore, victory over Spain meant that territories seized by the United States through its amphibious capabilities were not necessarily liberated, but incorporated into the American republic in some convoluted form or other. Access to these former colonial possessions meant that U.S. geopolitical power now extended to far-flung parts of the world where it would expand American commercial enterprises abroad and allow for its military forces to be readily available to protect growing