By GEORGETTE M. DORN
The Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress launched its Ambassadors' Lecture series with a presentation by Ambassador Warren Zimmermann on Oct. 24, in the Mary Pickford Theater. Zimmermann spent 33 years in the Foreign Service; his postings included Venezuela, France, Austria, Spain and the Soviet Union. He was the last U.S. ambassador in Yugoslavia; the book he wrote about that experience, "Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers" (Times Books, 1996), won the American Academy of Diplomacy Award in 1997. Zimmermann has also taught at Columbia and Johns Hopkins universities.
The topic of Zimmermann's lecture was his most recent book, "First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power" (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2002), which he researched entirely using the collections at the Library of Congress.
He began his talk by saying that "[while] today the United States is preparing an attack against Iraq … my book is about the first one, when the United States attacked Spain over Cuba [in 1898]." He went on to analyze a critical period in United States history—between 1898 and 1909—when the nation became one of the world's major colonial powers.
According to Zimmermann, in 1891, on the eve of the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Navy was uncertain whether it could take on its Chilean counterpart after two American sailors were killed in a Valparaiso bar. But after the Spanish-American War, the United States emerged as a world power. There is no doubt that the process "was a culmination not an aberration," according to Zimmermann. Within a dozen years or so, President Theodore Roosevelt could claim that "we have definitely taken our place among the great powers of the world."
Zimmermann made five important points in his presentation. First, he noted that the war against Spain followed a period of growing American expansionism (which included the Mexican-American War and the purchase of Alaska). Also, presidential authority had been strengthened by the end of the 19th century; the war followed an extraordinary post-Civil War economic boom; the nation's military had expanded as a result of the Civil War; and finally, "the opportunity was there." Spain was a weak power and Americans were antagonistic towards that country, he said. But most important, "the right people were there."
Within two months of vanquishing Spain in Cuba, the U.S. Navy destroyed the Spanish fleet off Manila and seized Guam, giving the United States a presence in Asia. America also replaced the Spanish empire as the dominant power in the Caribbean.
Zimmermann spoke about the five "fathers of American imperialism": Theodore Roosevelt, John Cabot Lodge, Alfred T. Mahan, John Hay and Elihu Root. Roosevelt, who fought in Cuba and served as president from 1901 to 1909, was an unabashed expansionist who saw war as a "romantic, ennobling and purifying" undertaking. In many ways he was the moving force in making the United States a world power, said Zimmermann.
Single-minded and self-confident, Lodge pushed Roosevelt "in the right direction." It was John Cabot Lodge who managed the Treaty of Paris, signed on Dec. 10, 1898, under which Spain ceded the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico to the United States.
Naval strategist Alfred T. Mahan, described by Zimmermann as "the austere intellectual sailor," provided a rationale for American expansion and stressed the importance of a two-ocean navy. Within a decade of the Spanish-American War, the country became the world's second naval power after Britain.
John Hay, the most complex of the five, a humane and civil statesman and secretary of state under President McKinley, devised a coherent U.S. policy towards Asia. Although not a "flag-waver" according to Zimmermann, he saw a role for American imperialism modeled on that of Great Britain. More liberal than many of his contemporaries, Hay also favored self-determination for the Cuban people.
Corporate lawyer Elihu Root helped the imperialist venture, reluctantly at first, Zimmermann observed, by creating in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines "America's first colonial administration, transferring to it some of the best features of the American legal system."
In assessing whether the United States was "a good colonial power," Zimmermann said it was "probably better than the others." Among the positive aspects of American imperialism, he noted, was the fact that the United States felt an obligation to improve the condition of its colonial subjects. However, Zimmermann also pointed out America's brutal suppression of the Aguinaldo revolt in the Philippines. On the whole, he said, American foreign policy should have put greater trust in its colonial subjects.
Georgette M. Dorn is chief of the Hispanic Division.