The Past as Prologue: An Imperial Manual

Where Boot rightly sees continuity, however, others have argued that the United States' current exercise of global power represents a break from past policy. They would do well to read Boot's chapter on the Philippine war (1899-1902). Although the difficulties of battling the insurrectos did much to cure the United States and even Theodore Roosevelt of any taste for a formally colonial empire, the war was also, as Boot concludes, "one of the most successful counterinsurgencies waged by a Western army in modern times." Yes, the United States has done it before, and done it well.

Near the turn of the twentieth century, Spain was weak and reviled by Americans as part of what might have been termed a monarchical "axis of evil." The Spanish-American War of 1898 was to be, as Secretary of State John Hay famously said, a "splendid little war," with the prime purpose being the freedom of Cuba. But when the Treaty of Paris was concluded in December of that year, President William McKinley was stuck with the question of what to do with the Philippines, a fractious group of islands on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. After searching his conscience for several sleepless nights, McKinley reported, "I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance. ... And one night late it came to me ... that there was nothing left for us to do but take them all, and educate the Filipinos and uplift them and civilize and Christianize them and by God's grace do the best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ died."

The United States had important strategic interests in the Philippines, primarily the opportunity to add to its network of coaling stations for the growing Pacific fleet. But this goal alone could not account for the energetic U.S. commitment to shape Filipino internal politics then and for decades after. Rather, it was America's sense of its own historical mission and international role that underpinned this engagement. Local independence leader Emilio Aguinaldo, no democrat himself, was not popular among non-Tagalog Filipinos; once he returned to Manila after the Treaty of Paris was signed, he began eliminating rivals and trying to consolidate his power. "McKinley concluded," writes Boot, "that absent outside rule, the archipelago would sink into chaos and conflict between competing ethnic groups." The president therefore issued a proclamation announcing his policy of "benevolent assimilation" of the Philippines.

This announcement satisfied Roosevelt and the other progressive imperialists of the day, but McKinley's decision was politically risky. Indeed, his goal was not much less ambitious than Bush's current desire to encourage democracy in the Islamic world. The "arrogance" of this bold policy sparked the creation of the Anti-Imperialist League, a diverse coalition not unlike the one that opposes the Bush Doctrine today. Its membership roster read like "a who's who of prominent Americans," including Mark Twain, Samuel Gompers, and Andrew Carnegie -- the latter, in a Ted Turneresque gesture, even offered to buy the islands himself for $20 million in order to keep America out.

Pacifying the turbulent Philippines was physically hazardous as well. Securing Manila and its environs was the easy part; the rest of Luzon was more trouble. McKinley rushed in as many U.S. soldiers as possible, but the rainy season slowed their progress. Boot quotes one officer's lament, in June 1899: "We are no nearer a conclusion of hostilities than we were three months ago." The campaign continued during the winter of 1899-1900, culminating in the battle of Tila Pass, the "Filipino Thermopylae," which destroyed Aguinaldo's Army of Liberation. Even this triumph did not end the war, as Boot observes, because victory in the conventional campaign was met with continued resistance by guerrillas.

It was a complicated war indeed, and Boot does a fine job of highlighting the complexities without slowing his narrative. Americans fought Filipinos, especially the majority Tagalogs, but were aided by other tribes. The insurrectos waged a terror campaign that put immense strain on U.S. soldiers; Aguinaldo increased this violence in the months leading up to the U.S. presidential election of 1900, in the hopes that anti-imperialist and populist Democrat William Jennings Bryan would unseat McKinley. "Some of the more outspoken American anti-imperialists even openly wished for Aguinaldo's victory 'against our army of subjugation, tyranny and oppression,'" writes Boot. But McKinley's reelection -- and perhaps even more important, his death and replacement by Roosevelt -- ensured that the United States was in the Philippines to stay and to win.

NOT YOUR FATHER'S EMPIRE

That victory would require another two years and the improbable good cop, bad cop pair of William Howard Taft as genial proconsul in the Philippines and General Arthur MacArthur (father of Douglas) as military commander. Taft's job was to supervise the transition to civilian administration in pacified areas. He regarded the Filipinos as America's "little brown brothers," but this view arose from more than simple racism -- it also reflected a belief that Filipinos were well on the road to self-government.