Matt Yglesias notes a Ross Douthat column that invokes one of William McKinley’s splendid little wars, this one in the Philippines. He points out that the military and naval counterinsurgency effort in the Philippines worked, but then wonders if anything beneficial actually came out of it:
It seems to me that unless you look at victory and conquest as being their own reward, it’s hard to see any. Anti-American rebels lost, but we didn’t really win anything of note. We spent a lot of money, suffered some casualties, killed a lot of people and in exchange got some military bases that were overrun by the Japanese as soon as it looked like they might be strategically useful.
Knowing something of the conflict, I would go further than Yglesias: taking the Philippines was possibly the worst single foreign policy decision in American history, rivaling the one which took us to war with Britain in 1812.
First, some background. The Philippines in 1898 was one of the last major possessions of the long-failing Spanish empire. As part of its war with them, the United States destroyed Spanish authority in the islands and then purchased the archipelago in the peace settlement for $20 million. Filipino insurgents, led by their leader Emilio Aguinaldo, resented this and fought back, first conventionally and then using the tactics of insurgency. What resulted was a three-year conflict, bloody and ugly on all sides, that resulted in an American victory (the Moro Insurgency, which broke out shortly thereafter, was a distinct conflict, though putting the two together is not terminally objectionable).
The U.S. saw the Philippines largely as a stepping-stone to China. This was the era of John Hay’s “Open Door” policy, when all the imperial powers were struggling to broaden their influence in China, at the expense of each other and the Chinese. The Philippines, in addition to being seen as a new frontier for Americans, was also to be the first great acquisition for an American Empire.
The problem was that the Philippines was simply not really usable militarily. It was way out at the end of an extended supply line from the United States, 5300 miles to Hawaii and 7300 miles to San Diego. It consisted of 7107 islands, large and small, which made it essentially impossible to defend. Most critically, it sat directly on the supply route between Japan, a newly powerful military nation, and its sources of raw materials in southeast Asia. As long as the United States held the Philippines and the deep water port of Manila, where a fleet could be stationed, the Japanese felt insecure. By 1915, American strategists were already writing that:
The taking of the Philippines may be ranked among the worst military blunders committed by any American government–it is difficult to put the matter more strongly. It is a weak, ex-centric military position, fundamentally indefensible against any strong transpacific power, but inevitably a magnet to draw troops and ships away from our shores. [1]
Taking the Philippines essentially put the United States and Japan on a collision course out of which it was hard to steer. This was not inevitable. At the turn of the century, Japan’s attention was towards the mainland of Asia and southeast Asia, and away from the broad Pacific that separated it from the United States. It was worried about Russia, China, and the European powers that held so much of mainland Asia. The Americans and Japanese got along rather well. During the Boxer Rebellion, when American and Japanese units served together, there was quite a friendly relationship between the two. American ships coaled at Nagasaki, where they played baseball games for Japanese crowds. There was an American naval hospital there for several decades. The relationship that was building was one similar to the United States and Great Britain, two growing naval powers separated by a large ocean that nonetheless had essentially decided NOT to be rivals.
The Philippines changed that. It made America an Asian power and an Asian power that presented a direct threat to the Japanese. Coupled with the radical militarization of Japan that occurred in the 1920s and 30s, it led directly to the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, a war in which the Philippines fell almost immediately to a Japanese invasion and a war in which 354,000 American casualties (106,000 dead, 248,000 wounded; figures approximate). By itself, the Pacific War was America’s third worst in terms of casualties; by itself, about 15% of all American combat deaths in our history happened in the Pacific from 1941-1945. The Americans came again to Nagasaki, but this time with fire and sword.
Taking the Philippines put us on the line for that train-wreck. It did not particularly help us gain entry to China, despite our ongoing fascination with that nation through the early 20th century. Other than that, the conquest brought little in the way of benefits. “I shall return,” was MacArthur’s famous declaration upon leaving the islands in 1942, to which an ironic response might well have been, “Why did we come in the first place?”
Update: I highly esteem Spencer Ackerman, but he’s just wrong here:
But the hinge point in U.S.-Philippine history — what yielded the friendship and closeness that the two nations presently enjoy — was the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. What the Japanese inflicted upon the Philippines and its people was by orders of magnitude far worse than anything the U.S. ever dared. You probably know the rest: MacArthur declares he Shall Return; he does; the battle of Leyte Gulf is one of the largest in the history of naval warfare; we drive the Japanese from the Philippines; the amount of gratitude is overwhelming; a partnership has been our inheritance ever since.
American-Filipino relationships were friendly well before the start of World War II. The Japanese occupation certainly cemented them, but the reconciliation had started much earlier.
—
[1] Silbey, War of Frontier and Empire, 213.
The Edge of the American West 
59 comments
July 28, 2009 at 9:47 am
silbey
Hat tip to Eric for pointing out the Yglesias post.
July 28, 2009 at 9:49 am
eric
MacArthur snark is an underpracticed genre.
July 28, 2009 at 9:52 am
eric
… and you know why that is, don’t you? MacArthur snark melts in the dark.
July 28, 2009 at 10:08 am
Charlieford
Someone left the Philippines out in the rain.
July 28, 2009 at 10:23 am
Scott Madin
Except when it’s a Boojum, of course.
July 28, 2009 at 10:36 am
CharleyCarp
One hopes, in vain I’m afraid, that we’ll never have that recipe again.
July 28, 2009 at 10:40 am
rea
A big part of our reasoning at the time was that if we didn’t grab the Phillipines, someone else, most likely Germany, would.
One can imagine an alternative history in which Japan ends up on the Allied side in WWII . . .
July 28, 2009 at 11:19 am
Tenured radical
Eric Love’s Race Over Empire has a particularly fine take on this little problem, one that is a larger foreign policy problem: are there moments when all the options are bad (ie, the 1898 war freed the Philippines from Spanish control) and, as Rea said, the risk was that it would become folded into another empire immediately and/or devolve into an internal civil war. The parallels to the Iraq dilemma are interesting: if you have wrecked the governing structure with your first war, ethically speaking, do you just get to walk away?
July 28, 2009 at 11:22 am
ekogan
Taking the Philippines essentially put the United States and Japan on a collision course out of which it was hard to steer.
So if the US didn’t conquer the Philippines, the US would’ve sat out World War II, Japan would’ve attacked the Soviet Union instead, and the victorious Axis powers would have divided Eurasia between them? Hooray for McKinley then. Counterfactuals are fun, and WWII counterfactuals doubly so.
July 28, 2009 at 11:28 am
ekogan
Here’s something interesting. From Economics and World History by Paul Bairoch, pg 77
July 28, 2009 at 11:41 am
silbey
I haven’t read Bairoch, but I have some immediate problems with the implications of that analysis. The colonial powers _were_ the colonial powers because they were already large and established countries able to take colonies. The countries that were non-colonial powers in the late 19th century were likely in the process of industrializing, and thus tending to grow faster than the powers that had already industrialized. Is there a similar analysis for the early 19th century?
As to the Netherlands, if you get starved and ground down by four years of war, fast economic growth when that war ends is hardly unusual. That it coincides with decolonization is not really indicative.
Japan would’ve attacked the Soviet Union instead, and the victorious Axis powers would have divided Eurasia between them
Or the Soviet Union would have beaten them both, but the massive strain would have caused the collapse of Communism forty years earlier, leading to peace and flowers for everyone. And ponies.
as Rea said, the risk was that it would become folded into another empire immediately and/or devolve into an internal civil war. The parallels to the Iraq dilemma are interesting: if you have wrecked the governing structure with your first war, ethically speaking, do you just get to walk away?
Sure, and the Germans were already sniffing around the Philippines during the 1898 war (Dewey complained about German ships acting obstreperous in Manila Bay), but there was no reason for Dewey to be there in the first place. Destroying Spanish control over the Philippines was not a necessary part of a war over Cuba. As to the ethical question, I think that–like Iraq–you have a moral responsibility to help that nation rebuild itself, not to move in and take over the rebuilding yourself.
(You drive your car into a china shop, causing mass breakage. Should you pay financial restitution? Sure. Should you insist on moving into the shop and rebuilding it yourself? I don’t believe so.)
July 28, 2009 at 12:11 pm
kid bitzer
by “terminally” do you mean “terminologically”?
awesome post. great example of what history can do on policy disputes. (e.g. show that douthat is deeply ignorant. again. but more than that.)
July 28, 2009 at 12:23 pm
ekogan
The colonial powers _were_ the colonial powers because they were already large and established countries able to take colonies. The countries that were non-colonial powers in the late 19th century were likely in the process of industrializing, and thus tending to grow faster than the powers that had already industrialized. Is there a similar analysis for the early 19th century?
That would explain lower growth for Britain vs. continental countries, however doesn’t explain Belgium vs. the Netherlands or France vs. Germany, who, AFAIK, industrialized at the same time. By the way, Bairoch does not say that his data cover only late 19th century, he just says “19th century”. Also, for some states on this list, their colonial empires predate industrialization: Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Britain.
July 28, 2009 at 12:27 pm
silbey
Does he break them down by country? I.E. if you pulled out the “rising powers” of the 19th century–Germany and the United States–and the “declining powers”–Spain and Portugal–what would the result be? I’m just suspicious that it’s causation rather than coincidence.
Now I’m going to have to look at the book (into the pile!). Thanks for the cite.
July 28, 2009 at 12:44 pm
barefootrooster
Hi there — this may be my official delurking. I quite enjoy what you folks do over here at EOTAW. This may be slightly tangential, given that you’re addressing Douthat and discussing foreign policy strategy, but I do think it is important to consider domestic motivations for foreign policy decisions. I wonder whether something like the taking of the Philippines (and earlier US involvement in Cuba) gets more complicated if we look at homefront politics/pressures as well as the international context here. (I’m thinking of things like Kristin Hoganson’s Fighting for American Manhood, Daniel Rodgers’ Atlantic Crossings, as well as some of the scholarship out there on World’s Fairs/empire, etc.)
July 28, 2009 at 12:56 pm
silbey
this may be my official delurking
Welcome! Always good to delurk. The issue of domestic pressure is an excellent one to raise, and it surely influenced McKinley, who did a tour of the Midwest, giving speeches and measuring public opinion, before he decided to take the Philippines.
July 28, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Doug M.
There is a fairly large piece missing from your analysis, Silbey, and that’s that the Japanese already had their eyes on the Philippines. Japanese discussion of “acquiring” the Philippines dates back to the 1870s, and by the 1890s it was a steady background noise. The US acquisition of the archipelago aroused tremendous resentment in Japan, not because it was a “threat” but because the US pre-empted Japan’s own ambitions there.
And speaking of the “threat” issue: the Philippines were just not a strategic menace to Japan. Tokyo to Manila is about the same distance as Washington to Caracas, Venezuela. The nearest outpost of the Japanese Empire was their recent acquisition of Taiwan — separated from the Philippines by 700 miles of ocean.
The US naval commitment to the archipelago was consistently modest; at no time did we have a force there that was any kind of threat to Japan. For most of the colonial period, the Manila-based “Asiatic Fleet” (distinct from the “Pacific Fleet”, which was based on the West Coast and then at Pearl) consisted of a single cruiser flagging a handful of destroyers and gunboats. And the Asiatic Fleet was spread very thin; it was supposed to be responsible for everything from Manchuria to Singpore to Australia. The _Augusta_, its flagship from 1933 to 1940, spend almost all of its time outside of the archipelago, “showing the flag” in various ports, evacuating Americans from wartorn Shanghai, and the like. So for much of this period the Philippines were, to a first approximation, completely undefended. Even in late 1941, when the Asiatic Fleet was stronger than it had ever been, we had a grand total of two capital ships in theater — the heavy cruiser _Houston_ and the light cruiser _Boise_. (And _Boise_ wasn’t even part of the Asiatic Fleet; it was a Pacific Fleet ship temporarily detailed to the Philippines.)
None of this invalidates your thesis. My point is narrower: you’re overreaching with the “threat to Japan” thing.
On an unrelated note, keep in mind that by the early 1930s — just the time Japan was revving up for serious conquest — the US was openly planning to get rid of the Philippines. The first bill to dump them was introduced in 1930, passed in 1931 and vetoed by Hoover in 1932; the one that did the job passed just two years later. It’s not hard to imagine a counterfactual where this moved just a bit faster, so that the Philippines were fully independent by 1941. Possible effects of this on (for instance) Japanese grand strategy are left as an exercise for the student.
Doug M.
July 28, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Doug M.
ekogan, the Netherlands and Belgium followed drastically different development paths. Belgium was all about heavy industry from very early on — they had plenty of coal, plenty of iron, great river connections, and flat land for easy railroad construction. By the late 1800s Belgium was one of the most industrialized spots on Earth.
The Netherlands, OTOH, came very late to the party — they were specialized in banking and shipping, to the point where industrialization wasn’t all that interesting. They pretty much skipped over the entire First Industrial Revolution and cut right to the second, starting in the 1880s.
This very much affected their attitudes towards their colonies. The Belgians were more overtly exploitative, viewing colonies primarily as sources of raw materials. The Dutch were more nuanced; they wanted Indonesia to be the center of a trade network, producing both raw and finished goods for sale in both Asia and Europe, allowing the Dutch to make money as middlemen as well as plantation bosses and mine owners. This goes a long way to explain why Indonesia’s postcolonial history has been much less dismal than Congo’s.
Bit of a tangent, but the point is, the different development paths make the two economies really hard to compare — apples and oranges. To a certain extent this is still true today.
Doug M.
July 28, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Ben Alpers
It did not particularly help us gain entry to China, despite our ongoing fascination with that nation through the early 20th century
Glad we got over that ongoing fascination with China about one hundred years ago! Would hate to think where it would have led us in later years…
[/snark]
July 28, 2009 at 2:02 pm
AaLD
The U.S. saw the Philippines largely as a stepping-stone to China.
I wonder if that thinking was partly due to looking at 2-dimensional maps like that above. The west coast of the U.S. is actually closer to Shanghai than to Manila, and if I’m not mistaken, the quickest route would be across the North Pacific (perhaps with a stopover at then-friendly Japan). So it would have been kind of an out-of-the-way stepping stone, at best.
July 28, 2009 at 3:23 pm
rea
So if the US didn’t conquer the Philippines, the US would’ve sat out World War II, Japan would’ve attacked the Soviet Union instead, and the victorious Axis powers would have divided Eurasia between them?
Or alternatively, Germany grabs the Phillipines, ensuring lasting Japanese emnity. A Philippines front in WWI, the Japanese conquest upheld at Versailles, Japan on the Allied side in WWII . . . and the US joins the war somewhat later . . .
July 28, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Doug M.
“Or alternatively, Germany grabs the Phillipines, ensuring lasting Japanese emnity. A Philippines front in WWI, the Japanese conquest upheld at Versailles…”
This is exactly what happened to Germany’s Chinese and Micronesian possessions. The Japanese attacked them in late 1914 and scooped them up without much difficulty. The Marshalls, Carolines and Northern Marianas — which the US would have to fight across with such difficulty in 1942-44 — were all former German possessions.
Philippine front: with the sole exception of East Africa, none of Germany’s colonial possessions lasted more than a few weeks. East Africa was unusual because the Germans had a military genius in charge, and also got very very lucky. Absent that, I’d expect the Philippines campaign to be over fairly quickly.
Doug M.
July 28, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Jay C
@ rea:
Why would a “Philippines front” have even been necessary in WWI? IIRC, the victorious Allies at Versailles liquidated Germany’s Pacific possessions (such as they were) in any case mainly by just ceding control to the Japanese anyway, as a “reward” for Japanese support in the War.
It seems unlikely (though an interesting speculation) that – absent the Spanish-American War – even if Imperial Germany had somehow induced (bullied? bribed?) Spain to cede/sell them The Philippines; say around 1900 or so, that they would have had sufficient time to build up much in the way of defenses that would have allowed them to exploit the islands militarily: either as a base for operations against British/French colonial interests in the Far East, or to hold the Philippines for very long.
Although the notion of a major Pacific War being waged, probably mainly at sea, in 1914-18 would make interesting alt-history. After all, the Kaiser had to do something with all those dreadnoughts they had built….
July 28, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Mike
ekogan’s original comment begs an important question: So, the United States wasn’t a colonial power during the 19th century? Accepting this requires the rather neat trick of pretending that the West really belonged to the United States all along, and that all those wars against Mexicans and Indians–you know, the ones that freed up all those raw materials for 19th-century American industrial growth–were really about something else. With regard to the United States, Bairoch’s conclusion is actually kind of silly. And anyway, silbey, your book makes some pretty direct connections between the American experience in the West and in the Philippines, no?
July 28, 2009 at 5:28 pm
silbey
There is a fairly large piece missing from your analysis, Silbey, and that’s that the Japanese already had their eyes on the Philippines.
I’m not sure the points in your comment particularly change the analysis. The Japanese were surely interested in the Philippines as it would have secured their routes to SE Asia. That fits fine with my analysis. As to the weakness of the Asiatic Fleet, that stems back even earlier, to the arms control treaties of the early 1920s, when the U.S. agreed not to build a major naval base in the Philippines in return for Japanese concessions. It was an American recognition that defending the Philippines was not really possible. It did not help; the Japanese remained convinced that the United States and its possession of the archipelago was a mortal threat.
As to American empire, the distinction I draw (which I should have elucidated in the post a bit more) is between territory acquired with the express idea of incorporating it into the United States as a state and territory acquired for the purpose of being kept as a colony. The latter I would call Empire; the former I wouldn’t. If we did call the former Empire, then we’re going to have to include Florida, upstate New York, and large chunks of the entire United States. I think that the usefulness of the term breaks down at that point.
July 28, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Mike
As to American empire, the distinction I draw (which I should have elucidated in the post a bit more) is between territory acquired with the express idea of incorporating it into the United States as a state and territory acquired for the purpose of being kept as a colony. The latter I would call Empire; the former I wouldn’t. If we did call the former Empire, then we’re going to have to include Florida, upstate New York, and large chunks of the entire United States. I think that the usefulness of the term breaks down at that point.
I have to confess that this is actually how I’ve taught it, but I’ve always been uncomfortable doing so because this definition privileges land over people. Arizona and New Mexico were not states when the U.S. “acquired” the Philippines, for reasons of which we are all aware. It’s also worth acknowledging that while there was always an intention to incorporate the lands in Florida, New York, etc. into the wider polity, the history of Indian citizenship (let alone removal and the popular myth of the “vanishing Indian”) tells a very different story.
Beyond this, the United States acquired the wealth and the natural resources that fueled industrial growth in the 19th century through conquest, and racialized conquest at that. The suggestion that the U.S. is different because the lands could join the republic once there were enough white people living there isn’t really very convincing. Strip away the political rhetoric about incorporating territories and American expansion looks very much like classic European imperialism without the oceans.
Again, I have used this construction myself for the very reason you cite silbey, but the fact that I haven’t yet come up with a better way isn’t really a point in its favor. And believe me, I’m not being snarky; this has really been bugging me and it’s one reason I read your book.
July 28, 2009 at 7:48 pm
TF Smith
Mike –
Given this statement:
“The suggestion that the U.S. is different because the lands could join the republic once there were enough white people living there isn’t really very convincing. Strip away the political rhetoric about incorporating territories and American expansion looks very much like classic European imperialism without the oceans.”
Do you see a difference between India and Australia…or, for that matter, the Philippines and Hawaii?
Don’t the various migrations, willing and not, between the eastern hemisphere and the western (and, for that matter, the eastern hemisphere and Oceania) suggest there is a very significant difference between the societies that resulted from the Columbian exchange and its aftermath in the 16th-19th centuries, and those that resulted – essentially – from the Industrial Revolution, in the 19th and 20th centuries?
July 28, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Erik Lund
I would argue that the continental United States was different, because everyone knew at some level that the vanishing Indian was a myth, and that what was actually happening was that Indians (and later Hawaiians) were undergoing ethnogenesis as White (or Black) Americans. The fact that no-one was prepared to talk about it only umderlines why the discourse about the Philippines was coded. Since no one could, or apparently even yet can talk about the fundamental facts of the construction of race in North America, no wonder they couldn’t articulate a racialised objective in the Philippines.
July 28, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Mike
Do you see a difference between India and Australia…or, for that matter, the Philippines and Hawaii?
Well, yes. But the question I posed was whether the intent to acquire states rather than colonies really allows the U.S. to escape being labeled a colonial power in the 19th century. While there were and are differences between India and Australia, or between the Philippines and Hawaii, or for that matter between Brazil and Congo, no one, I think, would argue that such places were not part of colonial empires. Nor, I am suggesting, can the American West truly be excluded from the imperial club. The key to understanding the differences you point to lies, as you imply, in “the Columbian Exchange,” or what Crosby later referred to as “crossing the seams.” The differences between these colonial societies lie largely in the effects of disease and not so much in national goals. The national goals were actually remarkably similar. In 17th-century Brazil, the goal was production and export of raw materials (sugar). In 19th-century Congo, the goal was production and export of rubber. In the 19th-century U.S., timber, mineral ores, meat, etc. were marked for extraction. In all cases, indigenous populations were either harnessed to that production or violently shoved aside. Industrial technology makes these activities more efficient, but it doesn’t really change the basic equation.
My point was not so much to draw strict equivalences between European and American colonial projects, and I should have hedged that comment about European imperialism without the oceans a bit. I readily admit that I follow the same distinction described by silbey, but I find it unsatisfying for the reasons I cited above.
Erik, I don’t think it is at all true that everyone knew the “vanishing Indian” was a myth. When California became a state in 1850, there were ~150,000 Indian peoples in the state. Forty years later, the census of 1890 counted ~16,000. Demographic collapse was in fact a tragic reality across the West, and missionary efforts like those of Richard Pratt were a genuine if wrongheaded attempt to stave it off. Removal and the reservation system helped entrench the notion even further. Moreover, while there were those who embraced some sort of theory of ethnogenesis in the early part of the 19th century, by the end, racial categories had hardened and were widely seen as permanent. That really didn’t begin to change again until the culture concept gained currency toward the middle of the 20th century. Lastly, I would argue that Teddy Roosevelt articulated a thoroughly racialized objective in the Philippines patterned on Indian fighting in the West.
July 28, 2009 at 10:33 pm
Carl
Is there any of these counterfactuals in which the Japanese do not embark on a viciously racist conquest of China (lowlighted by the Nanking Massacre) and Southeast Asia? Because if not, Americans and Japanese getting along rather well is altogether plausible but not entirely a cheery image.
July 28, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Lurker
Carl,
The demographic collapse of the American Indians was partly due to deliberate genocide by the American white population. On the other hand, it was partly due to diseases like smallpox, against which the Indians had little resistance. This facilitated the collapse of the Indian social institutions and made sure that the local population density was so low that a relatively small influx of whites could change the demographic of the West. Ethnogenesis played a part, too. Although mixed marriages between whites and Indians were not socially acceptable, they occurred. President Obama’s grandfather’s mother was one-fourth Indian and passed for white. Language change was also possible. While an Indian could not pass for a white Anglosaxon, they could pass for Hispanics, another underclass present in New Mexico, Texas, California and Nevada.
Thus, the American empire-building project in the West is not comparable to European colonial efforts on Asian and African shores. It is much closer to the Russian conquest of Siberia or the British conquest of Australia.
July 29, 2009 at 1:05 am
Doug M.
silbey, not to quibble, but the US /never/ had a large fleet presence in the Philippines after 1902. Teddy Roosevelt pushed for the expansion and upgrading of the Subic Bay base, but Congress (and the Philippine colonial administration) resisted. So the 1922 treaty gave very little away; we committed not to build large bases in a colony where we never planned to do that anyway.
“The Japanese were surely interested in the Philippines as it would have secured their routes to SE Asia” — not in 1898, or indeed until well into the 1920s. Before WWI, Japan had very little trade with SE Asia, and no remotely plausible hope of expanding in this direction. At the time of the American conquest, Japanese interest in these regions — Indochina, Malaya, the East Indies — was minimal. And this does touch on your analysis; while the annexation may have been a mistake, no reasonable person in 1900 could anticipate the First World War and its massive effects on the balance of power in the Far East.
Japan in 1900 was a developing country 2,000 miles away from the Philippines. Its economy was less than a tenth the size of the US’, and its navy included a grand total of three battleships — all built in foreign yards, since Japan lacked the capacity to build capital ships of its own. Japan was, at best, a middleweight regional power with zero ability to project force beyond its home waters. In 1900, there was no reason to think that Japan could be a threat to the Philippines in the foreseeable future.
“the Japanese remained convinced that the United States and its possession of the archipelago was a mortal threat.” — well, no. I’m sorry, but you’re assuming your conclusion here. It’s true that Japanese militarists did rave about the American menace, and the threat of an attack by the Asiatic Fleet was a staple of Japanese naval propagandists (see, e.g., Sato Tetsutaro) . But nobody in power took this seriously. The Japanese had the Philippines wired for sound from very early on, and knew perfectly well how weak the Americans were there. The biggest war scare between the US and pre-militarist Japan, in 1907, had nothing to do with the Philippines; it arose because of anti-Japanese legislation and discrimination in California. Again: the prevailing issue was not a perception of threat, but resentment that the Americans had pre-empted Japanese expansion.
Doug M.
July 29, 2009 at 5:07 am
ajay
But didn’t the French empire also blur the distinction between “territory acquired with the express idea of incorporating it into the [mother country] as a state and territory acquired for the purpose of being kept as a colony”? Algerie Francaise, and all that.
I would also warn against using “colony” – say “imperial possession”. Colony implies colonisation – which there wasn’t much of in, say, Sudan or the Belgian Congo.
Also, how does this empire/non-empire distinction work with, say, Turkey? Or the expansion of Russia?
It sounds, frankly, like a reverse-engineered definition of Empire that allows one to define the world at present as empire-free, despite the existence of the US, Russia and China. (India was British for a lot longer than Xinjiang has been Chinese; what makes one an imperial possession and the other not?)
July 29, 2009 at 6:14 am
Barry
Tenured Radical: ” The parallels to the Iraq dilemma are interesting: if you have wrecked the governing structure with your first war, ethically speaking, do you just get to walk away?”
I’d think that by now this argument would be totally discredited.
July 29, 2009 at 7:56 am
TF Smith
Barry –
I think your definition of colonies vs imperial territories is valid, because it describes two very different types of societies…Saint Domingue vis a vis New France, or Jamaica vis a vis New England; although New France can not be equated with New England in terms of demographics, but still…
That being said, the Pied Noir population in Algeria was never more than about a 10th of the total, IIRC, which makes Algerie Francaise a society more like the post-1910 Union of South Africa in terms of minority/majority control then, say, the Edge of the American West was in the second half of the 20th century…
If it comes down to length of political control (as in your British India vis a vis Chinese Xinjiang), I think a slightly different point is being made…that argument fits as much into political science as history: a federation whose existence is accepted by its citizens is something different than an empire.
Edgistan, for example, has been American seven times as long as it was Mexican, and three times as long as it was Spanish – and despite the ravings of some on the American political right, I don’t see any significant political movement calling for Edgistan to rejoin either the Mexican republic or the Mexican empire – or the Spanish Empire, for that matter…or Chichimeca, if such a realm actually existed and reached that far…
And yes, the “we broke it, we should stay” argument doesn’t work; just look at Vietnam in 1975.
July 29, 2009 at 8:39 am
Anderson
It’s true that Japanese militarists did rave about the American menace, and the threat of an attack by the Asiatic Fleet was a staple of Japanese naval propagandists (see, e.g., Sato Tetsutaro) . But nobody in power took this seriously.
It seems that the Japanese who mattered — the ones who *took* power — did indeed take this seriously enough to rave about.
One has only to replay the mental home movies of Germans shrieking about “encirclement!” and supply Japanese subtitles.
July 29, 2009 at 9:51 am
Erik Lund
I continue to believe that the role of ethnogenesis in the creation of the North American so-called settler states has been vastly understated. That it occurred, no-one can deny, but the facts are contained within safe parameters of the Rockwell “American Family Tree,” a grandmother here and there. Let the New England Genealogical Project discover that only 14,000 of the alleged 40,000 members of the “Great Migration” actually migrated from England, and that their sex ratio was similar to the migration to the South and –well, you can hear a pin drop.
California is an extreme case of this. 150,000 Indians in 1850, 16,000 in 1900. What happened to them? Massacre? To perhaps as many as 10,000 in 50 years, yes. Disease? _There is no genetic component of immunity to smallpox, and the general rule of epidemic disease is that is _has_ no significant demographic effect. And we know enough about the history of California in this period to rule out death rates so high.
Besides, 16,000? California is a huge place, full of ecological niches not overpopulated even today. You could drop 16,000 Epipaleolithic fisherfolk into the Klamath alone and they would survive just fine. Except that they wouldn’t stay there when there were good jobs to be had in the goldfields.
July 29, 2009 at 11:51 am
DaKooch
Taking the sage advice of someone here who noted that those over 50 should never quote from memory and, without access to my library, I would merely suggest to those interested in this topic that George Kennan conducted two lectures, one on the Philippine occupation and another on the Open Door policy back in the 50s. They can be found in “American Diplomacy (Walgreen Foundation Lectures)”, one of those rare gems, a very tiny book with a great deal to say.
I would also contend that the Philippines were a tangential issue at best to Japanese concerns on the eve of Pearl Harbor. The proximate causes were the U.S. economic sanctions imposed over Japanese action in China. One could certainly argue (and I believe Kennan does) that the “Open Door”, with its legalistic/moralistic posturing did far more to involve the U.S. and Japan in WWII. I would defer to Silbey’s expertise in this area, but am inclined to link the work of Mahan rather than John Hay to the U.S. interest in the Philippines or (lest we forget) Guam.
July 29, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Prof B
Dude!
I knew there was a reason I like this blog.
Great post.
July 29, 2009 at 12:57 pm
silbey
Lots of good comments.
silbey, not to quibble, but the US /never/ had a large fleet presence in the Philippines after 1902
Sure, because they realized pretty quickly that stationing a large number of ships way out at the end of that supply line. Doesn’t mean the Japanese didn’t worry about it.
Note also that I’m not suggesting that the U.S. took the Philippines and on February 6, 1899, the Japanese suddenly decided that war with the U.S. was inevitable. It took years for the collision to happen, but taking the Philippines was one of the things that started the process that ended in 1941.
In addition, how many forces the U.S. had stationed in the Philippines in peacetime was less relevant than the fact that the U.S. was committed to the defense of the Philippines and would likely interfere with the Japanese throwing their weight around. The Russian fleet in Asia in 1904 was relatively weak, but that didn’t mean that the Japanese didn’t see them as a threat.
I would also contend that the Philippines were a tangential issue at best to Japanese concerns on the eve of Pearl Harbor. The proximate causes were the U.S. economic sanctions imposed over Japanese action in China
On December 6th, the Japanese were surely worrying about more specific conflicts with the United States. That doesn’t really invalidate anything I said in the post.
readily admit that I follow the same distinction described by silbey, but I find it unsatisfying for the reasons I cited above.
Mike (and others): I surely don’t think that this is a perfect distinction and (more to Mike’s point) I certainly don’t think that not calling something “Empire” or “Imperial” lets the U.S. off the hook for all sorts of horrors. I think we can recognize that taking the Philippines–though it had echoes of western expansion–was a different type of conquest. It was largely seen that way at the time and I think that analysis holds up. That doesn’t mean that either were morally good, but that’s really a different question than the one I’m analyzing.
Japan in 1900 was a developing country 2,000 miles away from the Philippines
Japan in 1900 was a suddenly militarily powerful country, which had recently beaten China to the shock of the world, was in the process of handling itself effectively in the Boxer Rebellion, and sat astride the main sea access routes to northeastern China. Within two years, it would sign a treaty of alliance with the British, who recognized that dealing with both the Russians and Japanese in Asia was too much for them. Within five years, it would beat the Russians rather handily, again to the shock of the world. Within seven years, it would cause a war scare in the United States, with popular fears of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. Within eight years, Roosevelt would deliberately send the fleet around the world via the Pacific, stopping at Japan, to demonstrate the reach of American power, a not so subtle message to the Japanese.
It’s true that Japanese militarists did rave about the American menace, and the threat of an attack by the Asiatic Fleet was a staple of Japanese naval propagandists
The Japanese militarists were running the country pretty quickly after World War I and so their ravings became policy.
I knew there was a reason I like this blog.
Great post.
Thanks!
July 29, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Doug M.
“Japan in 1900 was a suddenly militarily powerful country”
…that was still unable to build its own capital ships or manufacture its own heavy artillery.
Beating China? Dude. Belgium beat China.
Great White Fleet: obviously the US was also worried about strategic threats from Chile, Peru and New Zealand.
War scare in California: that had very little to do with Japan, and quite a lot to do with California’s large and growing Japanese minority.
Again… no reasonable analyst would have seen Japan as a threat to the Philippines in 1900. They literally couldn’t get there! Their Navy didn’t have four ships that could cruise from the home islands to Luzon and back.
“The Japanese militarists were running the country pretty quickly after World War I and so their ravings became policy.”
Well, if thirteen years is “pretty quickly”. Japan had mostly liberal, non-aggressive governments all through the 1920s. (Google “Shidehara diplomacy”). Militarism was gurgling away in the background, but it took the Great Depression to trigger the phase change. As late as early 1931, Japan still had an anti-militarist Prime Minister, a openly pacifist Foreign Minister, and a narrow parliamentary majority committed against foreign aggression.
And — I don’t know if repeating this is going to help, but I’ll give it one more try — the militarists weren’t interested in attacking the Philippines because they perceived the US presence there as a threat. They wanted to attack the Philippines because /they wanted to conquer the Philippines/.
(If you want to see how Japanese elites responded when they *did* perceive a real strategic threat, look at their reaction to Chiang Kai-Shek.)
Doug M.
July 30, 2009 at 3:16 am
CharleyCarp
only 14,000 of the alleged 40,000 members of the “Great Migration” actually migrated from England
What?
July 30, 2009 at 1:24 pm
silbey
Again… no reasonable analyst would have seen Japan as a threat to the Philippines in 1900
That’s why I specifically said this in my last comment:
“Note also that I’m not suggesting that the U.S. took the Philippines and on February 6, 1899, the Japanese suddenly decided that war with the U.S. was inevitable. It took years for the collision to happen, but taking the Philippines was one of the things that started the process that ended in 1941.”
And — I don’t know if repeating this is going to help, but I’ll give it one more try — the militarists weren’t interested in attacking the Philippines because they perceived the US presence there as a threat. They wanted to attack the Philippines because /they wanted to conquer the Philippines/.
The problem with repeating it is that it’s largely orthogonal to my point, as are your comments about the weakness of the Asiatic Fleet. American ownership of the Philippines made them committed to action in Asia in a way that they hadn’t been before. It made them a great power–like Russia–with holdings in the area. It made them a great power that could dispute Japanese dominance of the area. With Russia out of the way after 1905 and an alliance with the British, that left the United States. Worse, the Americans were committed to an area that lay astride routes to Japanese raw materials.
Arguing that this was not the case ignores decades of warplanning on both sides, with the U.S. and Japan writing operational outlines that assumed each other as the enemy.
July 30, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Erik Lund
only 14,000 of the alleged 40,000 members of the “Great Migration” actually migrated from England
What?
I’m still serfing the naive and old-fashioned way Microsoft way, so I’m not sure to whom I’m responding, but check it out:
_The great migration begins : immigrants to New England, 1620-1633 _/, Robert Charles Anderson w. the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Published: Boston : New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995-
As to where else they could have come from, well, that’s the point I’m trying to hammer home with all this talk about “ethnogenesis.” But if random facts are wanted, notice that the definitive nineteenth century genealogy of the Burr family notes that Jehu Burr’s wife, Anne Cotton(IIRC), female progenitor of Princeton and Tammany Hall, was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1609.
Now just extend this tendency to put together one and one and a plus sign, and never, ever, get to two, right across the continent to California in 1900, one toe in the water looking at the Philippines, thinking, “can I? Should I?”)
July 30, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Erik Lund
And not to clutter the boards too much, but if you’re wondering how New England c. 1633 could look like the picture I’m conjuring up, look up a fellow named David Ingram, a member of Hawkins’ crew in his 1568 trip to the Caribbean.
July 30, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Doug M.
“It made them a great power that could dispute Japanese dominance of the area.”
Well, but now you’re backtracking from your original statement, which was that the US was “an Asian power that presented a direct threat to the Japanese.”
You’re also mashing up decades in a rather wince-inducing way. The Japanese strategic position changed dramatically over time; if you look at 1900, 1925 and 1941, you’re almost looking at three different countries. Japanese strategic thinking went through similar transformations.
So, frex, this:
“With Russia out of the way after 1905 and an alliance with the British, that left the United States.”
— is an eye-roller. The British alliance was already on the rocks before WWI and died soon thereafter, and by the 1930s the Japanese were more hostile to Britain than they ever were to the US. Meanwhile the recovery of the USSR under Stalin led to steadily rising tensions and an undeclared but bloody border war in 1938-9.
Sure, you can find pre-WWI Japanese war plans for Japan to fight the US. You can also find Japanese war plans for Japan to fight Russia, China, Imperial Germany, and their British allies. And you can find British and French plans to fight Japan — Jellicoe was raving about the Yellow Menace years before WWI, and kept it up steadily through his years as governor of New Zealand.
Similarly, by 1940 the Japanese had been at war in China for years; had just finished a small but nasty war with the USSR; were in a state of deep cold war with Britain; and had occupied French Indochina, which would have been an act of war except that Hitler told the Vichy government to suck it up. At that point Japan was picking fights with every single one of its neighbors, without exception. The US was nowhere near the top of the list.
You can argue that the US annexation of the Philippines put us in the path of Japanese expansion and aggression, and I won’t dream of disputing it. But to say that the US annexation of the Philippines provoked Japan is something else again, and just plain silly. 1900 Japan, weak and underdeveloped, couldn’t do anything about it; 1920s Japan, liberal and pacifist, didn’t want to; 1941 Japan was attacking everyone, without much discrimination.
Doug M.
July 31, 2009 at 12:22 am
Bruce
90 percent off-topic, but that’s a charming old use of ex-centric from Silbey.
July 31, 2009 at 9:26 am
CharleyCarp
Erik Lund, you’re responding to CharleyCarp. Nineteenth century genealogies are full of crap, and create the need for work like Anderson’s. The notion that Jehu Burr (of whom I am a descendant, not that it matters) married a Native from what we now call the Pioneer Valley– if that’s what you are implying, is ridiculous, and certainly finds no support in Anderson’s work. She was admitted to the church in Roxbury in 1631: if there was any issue at all about her ethnicity, you can bet it would have been noted then, and repeatedly thereafter. And yet, there’s no hint. Instead, Anderson thinks she was possibly the sister of John Cable.
I don’t know what you’re getting at with Ingram. Whether or not a man walked from Mexico to Canada in the 16th century doesn’t tell us anything at all about the Great Migration. If your point is that a significant number of wives of Plymouth and MB colonists were of partial or completely Native ancestry, I’d like to think you can come up with something that shows this a little more directly.
July 31, 2009 at 9:33 am
CharleyCarp
And certainly some better explanation for attitudes, and the conduct of King Philip’s War. I don’t just mean the attitudes, but the actual conduct: who knew what about what. Really, though, you’re talking about a period that precedes the Pequot War, and so I can pose the same question: what evidence is there of widespread significant relationships in the conduct of this interaction? None, so far as I know (but would be interested to learn of any).
Lest you misunderstand my former comment, I would not be offended in the least if it could be shown that Burr’s wife was a Native: in fact, you can bet that I’d be emailing my parents and all my cousins about it. I just don’t think there’s anything at all to back it up.
July 31, 2009 at 12:04 pm
Erik Lund
CharleyCarp, no-one goes to nineteenth century genealogies for scrupulous accuracy. Still, we have data, even bad data, on the one hand, and speculation on the other. Sister to John Cable? Widow? Is even John Cable’s transatlantic pedigree secure?
As for showing “Native wives,” this isn’t hard, even from secondary sources. Alison Games, _Migration and the origins of the English Atlantic world_ (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1999) has gender breakdowns for migrants. Apart from a small proportion of family groups migrating, the “Great Migration” was demographically identical to that to Virginia –overwhelmingly male, and young. And if there is one thing that the genealogists have established, it is that all these single men then found wives and establishedd great Yengisee dynasties.
And as for David Ingram, take a closer look at his account. He did not walk from Texas to Cape Breton. He and his companions were conducted by a smoothly-functioning trade network, travelling long distances in canoes and greeted at every relay point by generous hosts. This accords with one, not-uncontested interpretation of Neolithic interchange networks in terms of generation social status. Both prestige goods and far-travelled individuals sustain social complexity, and accordingly “prophets, artisans and divine singers,” were guaranteed a welcome wherever they went. We have other evidence that such a network connected Newfoundland to –well, evidently Texas. I’d say more likely the extent of the Algonquinraum, but that’s another story.
Not only can we see Ingram in this Homeric role, his companions, twenty White, Englishmen/Cornishmen, IIRC– chose to stay in “Norumbega” in 1569.
If we want to take a highly un-PC perspective and focus on DNA, how long, and how extensive was this pattern of interchange? (I’ll call it a pattern and invoke various other individuals as needed.) The history of the Newfoundland fishery strongly suggests that it had been going on for a century. More speculatively we can point at Greenland Norse and posit a very low pressure circulation half a millennium older. (This is assuming that the “leaky pump” model predates the formal establishment of New England.)
So, granted we’ve swallowed obnoxious essentialist myth, just how “Indian” was a woman born in Springfield, Mass. in 1600?
(If we don’t accept it, there is no real reason why someone, even someone born an “Indian” can’t just declare herself to be English one day, and none the wiser, at least in the scarce documentarly evidence available four centuries later.)*
Yes, yes, I know, Puritans were precocious racists. After all, didn’t the commit genocide against the Pequots and Naragansetts? The problem is that “King Philip’s War,” could as easily be “Uncas’ Third War of Emergence.” The Mohegans enslaved and massacred their victims with the same enthusiasm as the English. The presumption that racial consciouness drives the atrocities is just that, a presumption.
*Here’s a quick and ostensibly unrelated question: what does Elizabeth Temple (of the Leatherstocking Tales) look like? Note that there’s not only a physical description shortly following her entrance into the Wigwam, but a second hand description later on that makes for interesting reading.)
July 31, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Erik Lund
Oh, and http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1979/3/1979_3_4.shtml
July 31, 2009 at 1:42 pm
CharleyCarp
There wasn’t a Springfield, Mass. in 1609, as I’m sure you know. Anderson links Burr with Cable because Cable called Burr his kinsman in his will, and because of their migrations together. Against this, what’ve you got? Something that’s worse than nothing: the thirteenth chime of a clock.
There’s actually quite a bit of information about 17th century Massachusetts, and if there was intermarriage of statistical significance — much less the massive significance you posit — we’d absolutely see it.
It’s not just that the Puritans were racist. It’s that they didn’t act like they were hunting down brothers-in-law. People they knew. Instead, we have Benjamin Church playing a mediating role. I was just flipping through a collection of correspondence from the MB expedition to Mt. Hope: this is a generation or two after your supposed massive intermarriage, and you’d expect, were it true, there to be cousin relationships all over the place. Instead, it’s clear that the separation is as we have ordinarily understood it. Read Roger Williams’ letters to John Winthrop Jr, which give some flavor of the politics at the outset of the war.
None of the contemporaneous accounts record significant intermarriage — I’m not saying that if Bradford didn’t record it, it didn’t happen, but surely you’d expect him to say something about this, relating to people he didn’t like, at least. Williams — author of The Language of North America — would have said something, don’t you think?
We should adjourn this conversation to another spot, I think. I’ll put a post on my blog, if you want to continue it.
July 31, 2009 at 2:15 pm
CharleyCarp
I’d be interested is seeing a single sentence from Dr. Games book that supports the existence of intermarriage on a mass scale. Certainly the parts of it I see on the internet don’t even remotely point in that direction.
July 31, 2009 at 5:42 pm
silbey
You can argue that the US annexation of the Philippines put us in the path of Japanese expansion and aggression, and I won’t dream of disputing it. But to say that the US annexation of the Philippines provoked Japan is something else again, and just plain silly.
It’s quite strange that you see such a distinctness between the two formulations. I think that they’re rather close to each, once stripped of a kind of ex post facto exculpatory form of phrasing, letting off either a strangely passive United States (the former) or excusing a kind of “they started it” Japan (the latter). But since I’m not attempting to bring out either one of those moral judgments, I’m afraid the only one left for you to argue with is yourself.
August 1, 2009 at 9:51 am
Doug M.
“I think that they’re rather close to each other”
I think they’re not; and I think further that you’re unable to refute the point, and are trying to retreat with dignity intact.
Look, you said that the United States presence in the Philippines “presented a direct threat to the Japanese”. And that’s just a non-fact statement. You could say that ‘it really annoyed the Japanese’, sure. Or that ‘many Japanese perceived it as a threat’, or that ‘it helped bring the US and Japan into collision’. I’d have no problem with any of that.
But “direct threat”… well, you haven’t backed that one up. Instead you’re wiggling about definitions: the US was ‘a rival great power’ that ‘could dispute Japanese dominance’. True enough, but that still doesn’t make the US presence a direct threat to Japan. “In the way of where we want to expand” is a pretty tortured definition of “threat”.
[shrug] It’s your blog.
Doug M.
August 1, 2009 at 10:40 am
silbey
I think they’re not;
I know you do. I find that fascinating, because they’re essentially the same thing, but phrased in ways that make different moral judgments about each of the actors.
And, even more interesting is your continuation with:
Instead you’re wiggling about definitions: the US was ‘a rival great power’ that ‘could dispute Japanese dominance’. True enough, but that still doesn’t make the US presence a direct threat to Japan.
So being a rival great power that could dispute Japanese dominance doesn’t make the US a direct threat to the Japanese? Coupled with the radical militarization of Japan, I think those are pretty much identical, absent a sort of lawyerly parsing of sentences to separate them.
I think they’re not; and I think further that you’re unable to refute the point, and are trying to retreat with dignity intact.
And I think you’re being insulting, and have been for your last several responses (“eye roller”).
August 2, 2009 at 3:17 am
Doug M.
“So being a rival great power that could dispute Japanese dominance doesn’t make the US a direct threat to the Japanese?”
No. I read “direct threat” as an existential threat to the nation, or to absolutely vital security interests of the nation. The United States was none of those things.
You’ve mentioned tsarist Russia. Russia before 1905 was much more of a direct threat to Japan than the US in the Philippines. The Russian Pacific and Siberian fleets combined had seven battleships, fourteen cruisers, and more than thirty smaller ships — a force roughly equal in size to the entire Japanese navy of the time. The Russian fleet regularly steamed through Japanese waters and conducted maneuvers just outside of Japan’s territorial zone.
The Russians had also expanded aggressively on the Pacific coast opposite Japan, seizing Port Arthur, attempting to set up a puppet government in Korea, and embarking upon the de facto annexation of Manchuria. All that made a real threat; the Russians had the ability, and plausibly could have the intent, to attack the Japanese homeland directly. Suppressing this threat was a desperate struggle that cost the Japanese a quarter of a million casualties and left the state teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
The US presence in the Philippines doesn’t bear comparison. It was much smaller, much further away, and American behavior was at all times much less aggressive. When war finally came, the Japanese were able to scoop up the Philippines with a very modest exertion — a mere three army divisions, out of more than fifty, plus about a tenth of the Combined Fleet. The Third Fleet, tasked with attacking the Philippines, had one small carrier and not a single battleship.
The reason for this is, as noted upthread, the Japanese had the Philippines wired for sound; they knew exactly how weak the Americans were, and allocated their forces accordingly.
From a postwar interview with a Japanese officer.
“Q. During the entire [Philippines] campaign, did the Japanese learn any particular lesson which was of value to them in future operations?
“A. No. The opposition was so light that the Japanese forces were not put to a severe test and consequently they concluded that equipment available and the tactics used were satisfactory for future operations. It would have been better for the Japanese if they had encountered more opposition.”
I’m just not seeing how this feeble force constituted a “direct threat” under any reasonable interpretation of the term. It’s like saying the British presence in the Caribbean was a direct threat to the US.
“I think you’re being insulting”
“Eye-roller” is insulting? Then I retract it. Consider it replaced with a simple “that statement is wrong”.
Doug M.
August 2, 2009 at 5:50 am
Doug M.
[some hours later]
Upon consideration, I suspect we’ve reached an impasse; it seems unlikely we’re going to find common ground.
Agree to disagree?
Doug M.
August 4, 2009 at 2:18 pm
silbey
I’m just not seeing how this feeble force constituted a “direct threat” under any reasonable interpretation of the term. It’s like saying the British presence in the Caribbean was a direct threat to the US.
Because you’re misunderstanding what I meant by “direct threat” and when I tried to explain it, you took that as backing off what I had originally said. A lot of the arguments you’ve been making have been to the meaning you perceived in my argument, rather than what I was actually saying. That U.S forces in the Philippines were weak during the entire period was a recognition that it was impossible to defend the Philippines effectively. But establishing an American commitment to the western Pacific, along supply lines that were critical to Japan, made them a rival and threat to the Japanese. That’s why the Japanese Navy, almost immediately after the Russo-Japanese War, began making planning for a war with the U.S. its dominant activity. It required the radical militarization of Japanese government for that to become the dominant political idea (as I said in the original post).
“Eye-roller” is insulting?
Yes, it is. Picture doing that to someone in conversation and imagine the response.
Agree to disagree?
Sure.