Back to the Spanish-American War of 1898?

A group of Americans dreamed of creating a U.S. empire. Their opening came with the mass death of Americans in a shocking event. Media sensationalism whipped public outrage into a war frenzy. The resulting war was a success, but the subsequent occupation was a failure. Michael Lind asks: Does this describe the invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- or the Spanish-American War of 1898?

A century ago, under President McKinley, the camp of prominent American imperialists included Vice President Theodore Roosevelt and intellectual proponents of empire like Alfred Thayer Mahan, the Admiral and strategist.

Historic parallels

Today, under President George W. Bush, the American proponents of imperialism include Vice President Dick Cheney -- and intellectual proponents of empire like Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Just over a century ago, the target was the Caribbean and the Philippines. The target today, Iraq and the Middle East. In other respects, however, the imperialism of 1898 and of 2003 are strikingly similar.

On February 15, 1898, an explosion destroyed the U.S.S. Maine in Cuban waters. On September 11, 2001, al Qaeda terrorists flew hijacked U.S. jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Fanning the flames of war hysteria

American jingoists in 1898 blamed Spain -- today, a key U.S. ally -- for destroying the Maine. Meanwhile, beginning in September 2001 American hawks sought evidence that Saddam Hussein played a role in the al Qaeda attacks.

In neither case was evidence ever found. Even today, most historians think the explosion of the Maine was an accident, despite the claim of the U.S. Navy at the time that it was destroyed by a Spanish mine or torpedo.

The disinformation age is nothing new

In neither case did facts matter. The United States went to war with Spain under the slogan "Remember the Maine!".

And today, at the presumed height of the "information age", almost half of the American public believe that Iraq is allied with al Qaeda -- even though the U.S. intelligence services dispute that notion.

In both cases, tabloid journalism stirred up American war fever. In the Spanish-American War, the right-wing populist Hearst media empire fanned the flames of hysteria. In the Second Gulf War, Mr. Hearst has been replaced by the right-wing populist media empire of Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox TV and the Weekly Standard.

Connect the dots

The Murdoch empire accomplished an amazing feat: It presented the secular tyrant Saddam Hussein, his theocratic arch-enemy Osama bin Laden -- and secular and religious Palestinians fighting for independence from Israel -- all as part of a generic "Muslim horde".

In both the Spanish-American War and the Second Gulf War, the hawkish camp of the U.S. foreign policy elites used a military conflict to carry out a strategy planned long in advance.

The strategic road map

In the 19th century case Admiral Mahan and others designed the strategy. The goal was U.S. Navy control of key islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

In the case of the Wolfowitzian neoconservatives, the invasion and occupation of Iraq was cast as the first in a series of regional showdowns with Middle Eastern states.

The intimidation, if not invasion of Iran and Syria were scheduled to follow so as to ensure American dominance of the Middle East. If realized, this action would also preserve another key advantage: the regional monopoly by the United States and Israel of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

Splendid little wars

It has been a "splendid little war," America's ambassador to Britain, John Hay, wrote his friend Theodore Roosevelt. Both the 19th and 21st century empire-builders saw their "splendid little wars" as tests of a new American imperialism. Both saw an urgent need to replace what they saw as the nanve, sentimental liberal idealism of the American past.

To survive in a harsh world, the Hobbesians of 1898 and 2003 argued, respectively, that the United States had to emulate the brutal tactics of the European imperial powers. Both groups particularly admired the greatest European empire of all, the British empire.

In 1898, there was much talk about global domination by the two Anglo-Saxon empires. In 2003, American imperialists revived talk of an Anglo-American destiny distinct from that of the "perfidious" French, Germans and Russians -- only this time Britain would be the junior partner.

No rivals

But there is one big difference between the ideas of 1898 and those of today's U.S. imperialists. In 1898, the design was to make the United States an equal to several existing empires. Teddy Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan always assumed that other powerful nations -- like the United Kingdom, Germany or France -- would set limits on the United States.

By contrast, today's U.S. imperialists have explicitly stated a much more ambitious goal. They have stated that the United States should have no rivals in its ambitious attempt at global domination.

Oops -- wrong Roosevelt

The neo-imperialists of 21st century America admire Theodore Roosevelt -- the hero of the Battle of San Juan Hill in the minor Spanish-American War.

But they despise his cousin Franklin, who led the United Nations to victory in the far greater struggle of World War II.

FDR could not have succeeded in assembling a global coalition to defeat Hitler and Hitler's allies, if the petty British-style imperialism favored by Theodore Roosevelt and others in his circle had not been quickly rejected by most Americans as a mistake after 1898.

Moving with the times

Franklin Roosevelt was as much a realist as his cousin. But unlike TR, who shared turn-of-the-century notions of white supremacy, FDR knew that the days of white Christian domination of the world's nonwhite, non-Christian majority were over.

Even as he led the global coalition that crushed the Axis empires, he pressured the British and French into liquidating their own empires over non-white nations. In FDR's vision, joint great-power policing of the world would replace regional spheres of military influence, while an integrated global economy would replace imperial spheres of economic influence.

Undoing the Rooseveltian order

The Cold War prevented much of FDR's core vision from being realized, until the outset of the 1990s.

And it was at that time that the UN Security Council authorized the First Gulf War to punish Iraq for violating the fundamental norms of the post-1945 world -- the bans on wars of conquest and territorial annexation.

When the UN Security Council concluded correctly in 2003 that the threat from a weakened Iraq was too small to justify a second war, George W. Bush ignored the United Nations.

Brave old world?

He chose to invade Iraq -- and seems committed to building a unilateral American empire in the Middle East, comparable to America's unhappy colonial empires in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

In doing so, today's United States is following the example of the wrong Roosevelt. Tragically, in 2003, the ideas of 1898 have triumphed over the ideas of 1945.