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Centro Journal ISSN: 1538-6279 [email protected] The City University of New York Estados Unidos Stephanson, Anders Reseña de "Global Intrigues: The Era of the Spanish-American War and the Rise of the United States to World Power" de Juan R. Torruella Centro Journal, vol. XXI, núm. 1, 2009, pp. 275-277 The City University of New York New York, Estados Unidos Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=37721248022 How to cite Complete issue More information about this article Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Scientific Information System Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative By Juan R. Torruella San Juan: La Editorial, Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2007 224 pages; $21.95 [paper] reviewer : Anders Stephanson, Columbia University There is something stubbornly unfashionable about Torruella’s book here, which I find appealing. Not for him the cultural turn, the peculiarities of the constructed imaginaries of this and that identity in question: what excites his interest instead is the geopolitical game and the “intrigues” that form such a prominent part of it. The ultimate ground on which he approaches that problematic is that of law or, rather, international law, which is his professional background and on which topic he has written extensively. Thus, while he deals in depth with the antagonists themselves, his central object of inquiry is, technically speaking, the geopolitics of the “non-belligerents” in the Spanish-American War, the war of many names that took place in 1898 (or, depending on one’s perspective, perhaps between 1895 and 1903). The scholarly pitch, as the title suggests, is ambitious, not to say grand. The result is a valuable addition to the existing (and certainly the current) literature but, perhaps inevitably, rather less than promised. Torruella wants to evaluate the place and effects of the War of 1898 in terms of the global balance of power, with particular reference to what is usually referred to as the rise of the United States. In a given, though changing, configuration of world power, there appears to have been, at least initially, a regional conflict between two states over an insurrection in a colony belonging to one of the two. Everyone, alas, turns out to have some stake or other in this, if only indirectly, and acts more or less powerfully to defend that interest. Torruella has a great deal to say about these interests and actions, but less about systemic shifts and the actual nature of U.S. geopolitics, that is to say, about the ultimate significance of the conflict. Torruella’s idea is original, even by the standards of the older literature on great powers, geopolitics, and diplomacy. To be sure, lots has been written about how the war affected, say, relations between the United States and Great Britain, or, more accurately, how it became part of the overall rapprochement that had begun earlier and was only momentarily disturbed by the unpleasantness over the Venezuela-Guyiana border dispute in 1895. There is also a large literature on the effects, or, non-effects, as regards the United States. There is little, however, on the specific actions and shifts that interest Torruella. In short, his concern and problem is the Spanish-American War as a geopolitical event (to bring in a Deleuzian term). Thus we get an intriguing overview of the situation of the main (and some minor) actors of world politics and how the looming conflict fit into the view of things: Great Britain, Germany, France, Austro-Hungary, Portugal, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Japan, China, and of course Spain and the United States themselves. He also takes proper care to discuss the colonial aspect, what was happening in the context of Cuba and the Philippines (to a lesser extent Puerto Rico). In drawing this map, he follows in the empirical and conceptual footsteps of Paul Kennedy and his various accounts of the resources and interests of the Great Powers in the 19th and early 20th century, all along the familiar thematic of “rise and fall.” Nothing less than the imperialist transformation of the whole of the 19th century is brought into view. Torruella’s originality, then, lies not [ 275 ] book reviews Global Intrigues: The Era of the Spanish-American War and the Rise of the United States to World Power in the geopolitical generalities but in his specific analysis of how the War of 1898 came into play in that framework. Given the insular nature and the location (the Caribbean and East Asia) of the places at stake and the potential destabilization of the European order because of the destabilization of Spain itself, all the European powers of note had an interest in the unfolding sequence of events, as did, obviously, the very much ascending Japan. The catalytic ingredient is undoubtedly the emerging Anglo-German rivalry, as expressed above all in the naval domain. This, after all, is the heyday of navalism and the influence of Alfred Mahan’s naval determinism. (It is curious that a U.S. figure at some remove from the heart of the international order becomes such a towering political presence, a kind of organic intellectual of naval power everywhere). The increasingly aggressive German challenge of British world and especially naval hegemony is what gives the events of 1898 its global meaning and effects. Without that challenge, in other words, the British would not have conceded with such suave ease regional hegemony to the United States in the Caribbean. The increasingly fragile situation in China, where British de facto control was being undermined by several powers but, again, most dangerously by the Germans, played a considerable role as well. This is well known of course. Torruella’s central contribution, however, lies in the precise analysis of the events of 1898 within that context. In particular, he reveals the breaches of neutrality, along with the “intrigues,” on the part of Germany, Japan, Great Britain and also, in the end, France. He is a little divided on these moves. On the one hand, as a renowned international lawyer and scholar, he dislikes transgressions. For example, he gets quite excited (in terms of details and pages) about the British steps taken to prevent the Philippine-bound Spanish squadron through the Suez Canal. On the other hand, as a classical realist in international relations, he finds them quite understandable in terms of national interests. It is indeed on the latter grounds that he issues verdicts on the pragmatic value of the sundry policies, official and unofficial. Most saliently, he repeatedly points to the myopia of German brashness. No longer led by the prudent Otto von Bismarck but the volatile Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Germans tend throughout to overplay their hand and, detrimental to their own longterm interests, push the British into embryonic commitments and understandings elsewhere, chiefly with the United States. Thus, the German navy, like a vulture, appears in considerable force in Manila Bay and almost comes to blows with the momentarily overpowered Admiral Dewey. Torruella’s point about German imprudence is no doubt well taken, though it is easier than he would allow to see why, immediately, the Germans think they have as good a right as anyone to meddle. Japan, meanwhile, has much more concrete interests at stake and, once the war proper is over and the U.S. colonial war of subjugation begins in the Philippines, engages in a series of suspect actions, in semi-private guise, to assist the insurgency—all well covered by Torruella. And while the concomitant U.S. annexation of Hawaii is a very serious blow to Japanese prestige and geopolitical concerns in the Pacific, Japan is ultimately quite willing to let the United States concentrate on the problems of this theater, rather than the areas on the Asian mainland, where Japanese expansion is taking place most directly. In creating a Pacific Ring (rather than the “Rim”), a geopolitical sphere stretching from Alaska in the north to the Pacific island groups along to the Philippines in the east and the island groups in the middle and south, the United States nevertheless also opened up a set of vulnerabilities which Japan, in another epoch, would of course exploit in no uncertain terms. About the inner workings of the United States, Torruella has nothing much to say, but he does insist clearly that the war was in fact an American initiative and that William McKinley [ 276 ] [ 277 ] book reviews chose deliberately not to reveal the considerable room for compromise that had emerged, in part through European mediation, in part because of extensive Spanish concessions. In October, after testing the waters of public opinion, the president decides that the Philippines will be annexed, a shift eloquently expressed in the treatment of the Filipino representative. McKinley himself had seen him in early October. Having travelled to Paris, where the negotiations were taking place, he was then completely ignored by the U.S. delegation, as he was too upon his return to Washington. The difference, clearly, was that in the meantime McKinley had decided benevolently that his “little brown brothers” would have to come under unlimited American tutelage. All of which is most useful. To reiterate, geopolitical maps of this kind are not at all the scholarly vogue, but they yield important knowledge. The problem with Torruella’s opus, in its own terms, has rather to do with the ultimate meaning of that map. The buildup is massive; the result, not equally massive. The size of the chapters is indicative. His panorama over the transformed geopolitics of the 19th century is followed by a detailed account of the Great Powers and the origins of the war and a third chapter on the beginnings and events of the war. The coda in the form of peace negotiations, by contrast, is dealt with in a chapter of a few pages, as is the aftermath, followed by an uncertain reflection on the possible parallels between the role and actions of the United States in 1898 and those in Iraq, parallels that Torruella ultimately (and wisely) finds superficial. The book peters out, inconclusively. How, then, might one distinguish the significance of Torruella’s account? One issue is to do with the “rise” of the United States and the War of 1898. Torruella, in the end, is not very clear here. My own view is a revamped version of Samuel Flagg Bemis’s notorious old convention: the imperialist moment was “a great aberration,” viz. the United States ceased very soon afterwards to play the great power game and certainly the imperialist one typical of the late 19th century. It maintained, outside public purview, the imperial acquisitions and began to play a very active interventionist role (not quite the same thing) in its Latin American sphere. This policy continued and continues. Indeed Guam remains today a property, an instrument, of the U.S. Congress, a fact that is enormously important for the people of Guam but not so for Americans. One might make the same point about Puerto Rico, whose political status within the U.S. frame is the vital factor on the island but not at all important in the United States itself except in a minor key in a few localities such as New York. By the early 1900s, in any case, the United States reverted to the kind of politics that is always, in many ways detrimentally, anchored firmly in domestic space and norms. In the First World War, there is another “aberration” represented by the imposing figure of Woodrow Wilson, but the real and irreversible shift does not arrive until 7 December 1941, at which point the geopolitical effects of 1898 become fully evident. What strikes one throughout is the extraordinary degree of arbitrariness and contingency: what the United States does and does not do until the Japanese attack is very largely a product of what the Commander-in-Chief decides to do. William McKinley, in short, might well have chosen otherwise. Indeed, William Jennings Bryan would have chosen otherwise, and so, too, the history of Puerto Rico would have been otherwise. Executive license when it comes to handling crises, real and imagined, is unsteadily open-ended. Meanwhile, the effects of the war on the balance of power must be grasped chiefly as symptomatic rather than decisive. It is hard, in other words, to see that the central actors ultimately would have followed other strategic directions of large policy had the war not occurred. That the war was taken to validate the necessity of massive naval power is certainly true; but this was not news. A more beguiling question is the effects of the war on “Latin America,” on its place and range of possible meanings.