forgetting America’s 1882 pledge of Korean independence. While this might have the short-term gain of smoothing over ruffled diplomatic feathers with Japan, it essentially established spheres of influence for both the United States and Japan in how parts of the Asia-Pacific Region would be divided between the two nations. In the case of the United States, it allowed the Americans to consolidate control over the newly acquired colonial possessions from Spain, while Japan was given a free hand to pursue its expansionist policies in Northeast Asia.127
While Japan saw American intrusion in the Asia-Pacific Region as another potential state challenger to its core interests, its wariness of the United States was surpassed by its hostility toward the Russians, who were encroaching on Japanese interests in the North Pacific as well as in China. Since Russia’s occupation of China’s Maritime Provinces in 1858, Japan had seen the Russians as a major threat to its interests in the region, especially when Russian control extended beyond Siberia into Sakhalin Island and into Manchuria. With a large military presence in Siberia and Manchuria, as well as powerful naval forces in Vladivostok and Port Arthur, Japan could not afford to confront both the Americans and Russians.128 With China removed as a potential threat and now proven to be a weak nation ready for conquest, Japan sought to shift the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific by entertaining the possibility of an alliance with Great Britain. With a history of hostility with both Russia and the United States, Japan saw Great Britain, the most powerful empire on the planet, as an ideal candidate to assist with Japan’s ambitions.
In understanding the power dynamics in the Asia-Pacific Region, both France and Germany had significant colonial possessions and influence in the area as well. France’s occupation and influence in Indochina was already recognized when the French allied with the British to defeat China during the Second Opium War. With China growing increasingly weak from its recent defeat against the European powers and in the Taiping Rebellion, as well as its significant decline in political and economic influence in the region, the French moved quickly against China’s client states in Indochina by quickly incorporating the region into its imperial holdings and looking at possibly carving out a sphere of influence within China’s southern provinces. Meanwhile, Germany had occupied the islands of the Central Pacific, as well as parts of Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific and the Shandong Peninsula in China. Germany’s ability to intimidate the Chinese with its powerful naval and ground forces enabled it to receive additional special trading privileges, and also allowed German capital and investments to shape China’s undeveloped economy.
France and Germany’s movements in the Asia-Pacific made Japan view them as additional potential rivals. Japan’s acceptance of French and German domination in Southeast Asia and the Pacific convinced the Japanese political and military leadership that the focus should essentially be against Russia, China, and the United States. France and Germany saw Russia and the United States as powerful state actors in the international system who also posed the most immediate danger to Japan, while France and Germany could easily be played against each other due to their bitter past antagonism during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). In addition, unlike Russia and the United States, neither France nor Germany were proven to have amphibious capabilities. Russia’s expansion into the North Pacific by landing troops to occupy Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, as well as the United States launching amphibious assaults against Spanish colonial possessions, caused concern in Japan. While Japanese political and military leaders were impressed by Russian and American amphibious capabilities in the Pacific, they were fearful that those capabilities could also be used in a potential invasion of Japan’s home islands. Baron Hayashi believed, “Japan must keep calm and sit tight, so as to lull suspicions nurtured against her; during this time the foundations of national power must be consolidated; and we must watch and wait for the opportunity in the Orient that will surely come one day. When this day arrives, Japan will decide her own fate.”129
While the United States did have advantages and disadvantages in its new geopolitical position thanks to amphibious warfare, it also faced potential political and social hurdles that were not yet fully anticipated in the afterglow of victory in the Spanish-American War. This war, which was initially presented as a good thing for the American people, turned out to be a long, drawn-out, open-ended war that required a significant investment of American lives and resources. Not only did the Philippines become an irritating sore to the American diplomatic community, it also served as a major issue within political and social circles that led to discussions about the United States’ belief in its own exceptionalism and also about how the American republic would preserve its principles and beliefs as a major power in a new, brave world.130 Warren Zimmermann points out from the perspective of some of the anti-imperialists, especially idealistic and powerful industrialists such as Andrew Carnegie, “He feared that annexation would threaten American security…. He also worried that expansion would change the character of America itself by embracing untrustworthy aliens, foreign races bound in time to be false to the Republic in order to be true to themselves.”131
Political Implications of Amphibious Warfare
Victory in the Spanish-American War, gained through amphibious warfare, introduced the United States as a world power; however, America’s elevated geopolitical position had unforeseen political consequences that later became part of American electoral issues and debates. Graham A. Cosmas points out, “The United States liquidated Spain’s colonial empire in the Caribbean and the Far East and began her march to world power. In that period, the [United States] suddenly confronted the task of waging trans-oceanic campaigns and securing and ruling an empire.”132 In addition, it created political situations in which the American occupational force found itself in militarily or morally impossible situations that questioned the purpose and legitimacy of the United States’ policy in those territories. Finally, it awakened segments within American society that led to the formation of new political movements and parties that sought to address these new geopolitical concerns and actions being sanctioned by the United States. In essence, these new overseas obligations questioned the very definition of the United States’ principles and the future direction of its political institutions.
The possession of overseas territories taken from another foreign power introduced challenges that the American republic did not foresee. The establishment of overseas government institutions in the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico was often at odds with governing those areas’ large indigenous populations. Zimmermann observes that the United States was “grappling with the core contradiction inherent in the U.S. seizure of the Philippines and Cuba: Americans may have seen themselves as liberators, but they were regarded by large elements of the local populations as oppressors…. They are alien to American sentiment, thought, and purpose.”133 Differences between the American occupiers and the indigenous populations imposed natural obstacles in regard not only to culture and language, but also to a fundamental understanding of the local politics and issues that concerned those peoples. These distant countries had little desire to become American territories, but wanted to instead become independent nations that were free from the influence and domination of a foreign power. In the case of Cuba and the Philippines, the United States’ failure to withdraw its military forces and transfer governmental authority in preparation for independence created both shock and outrage. The failure of the American political system to work with the indigenous political factions resulted in those factions reorganizing themselves in preparation for engaging in a long insurgency against the American occupation.
The inheritance of a colonial empire triggered political debate within both executive and legislative branches. For the executive branch, President William McKinley, as well as future presidents, was responsible for the security and governance of Cuba and the Philippines. Facing pressure from certain political factions in Congress and American society, the executive branch played a balancing act to appease all interests. For imperialists, the executive branch catered to the possibility of the Philippines and Cuba staying within the sphere of the American influence; while for anti-imperialists, it hinted that these territories were being prepared for eventual independence. Meanwhile, Congress was divided about the best course of action for handling these new American acquisitions. While it was understood
