It’s hard to avoid thinking that the American conquest of the Philippines during the Spanish-American War was a classic example of overreach. We only held the territory for less than half a century, and, having failed to make the investments to defend it from an aggressively imperialist Japan, ended up expending great blood and treasure to liberate it, only to relinquish control just a few years later.
We did get Subic Bay as a naval base out of it (which I think we still have), but it is true in many of these misadventures, the game was probably not worth the candle, especially in a nuclear-powered naval age. It arguably played a role in provoking the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
On the other hand, you might argue that the Filipinos were better off under us than they were under Japan, whereas the relative merits of Spanish colonialism versus American possession are, I suppose, debatable.
I imagine the Spanish had a lighter hand due to the school's military weakness.
We also spent substantial amounts of blood and treasure suppressing the independence movement.
As to the proposition that American suppression of Philippine resistance led to the surveillance state and the beginning of overclassification of government documents, perhaps it was a template, but certainly not one that we successfully applied to Vietnam. I would argue that there was a time in the United States was not comfortable with espionage and intelligence, back in the era when we disbanded the intelligence service that had been instituted during World War I, because according to one of our senior cabinet members, “gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen‘s mail “. Lord knows how much damage that attitude caused, but we became students of the British, who had always been masters of that sort of thing.
I would also argue that the Cold War was the real fuel that rightly spurred the US to develop more of an intelligence capability and more of a surveillance state. It’s undeniable now that we look back on the ‘40s and ‘50s and subsequent history that the Soviet Union had a significant undercover operation in the United States, including the theft of the atomic secrets that set the Cold War, mutually assured destruction paradigm in motion.
I would argue that the Communist sleeper network remains in place today and has penetrated our academic institutions and media.
Not too many people see that and those who don’t usually consider any assertion that it remains alive and well, operating globally in sort of zombie like fashion as evidence of lunacy on the part of those who try to point that out to the rest of the world, but the reality of it is that Putin resurrected a lot of that KGB and Comintern anti-capitalist apparatus and is using it against us to this day in concert with the Chinese.
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is the definitive account, even with some of its issues. Plenty of other books are out there too, but that’s the best known one. I’ll be talking about it one day (particularly about the hero who saved thousands of Chinese who happened to be a Nazi).
Yeah the Pearl Harbor attack was much more directly related to Japan’s expansionist and rapacious tendencies in places like Korea and China being sanctioned by us in the form of oil embargo’s. I find it hard to believe FDR was truly surprised that Japan would react aggressively but I don’t really buy any attempt to claim that it wasn’t a surprise attack by its very nature.
You bring up some good nuances to the thesis made by McCoy. I think he makes his case well but it really felt like a stretch at times. Surveillance has always been a tool, in one form or another.
Awesome article! I just posted about EDSA today that I thought you might like to check out :) https://open.substack.com/pub/liberterianoverwatch/p/anatomy-of-a-regime-change-2001-philippines?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
It’s hard to avoid thinking that the American conquest of the Philippines during the Spanish-American War was a classic example of overreach. We only held the territory for less than half a century, and, having failed to make the investments to defend it from an aggressively imperialist Japan, ended up expending great blood and treasure to liberate it, only to relinquish control just a few years later.
We did get Subic Bay as a naval base out of it (which I think we still have), but it is true in many of these misadventures, the game was probably not worth the candle, especially in a nuclear-powered naval age. It arguably played a role in provoking the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
On the other hand, you might argue that the Filipinos were better off under us than they were under Japan, whereas the relative merits of Spanish colonialism versus American possession are, I suppose, debatable.
I imagine the Spanish had a lighter hand due to the school's military weakness.
We also spent substantial amounts of blood and treasure suppressing the independence movement.
As to the proposition that American suppression of Philippine resistance led to the surveillance state and the beginning of overclassification of government documents, perhaps it was a template, but certainly not one that we successfully applied to Vietnam. I would argue that there was a time in the United States was not comfortable with espionage and intelligence, back in the era when we disbanded the intelligence service that had been instituted during World War I, because according to one of our senior cabinet members, “gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen‘s mail “. Lord knows how much damage that attitude caused, but we became students of the British, who had always been masters of that sort of thing.
I would also argue that the Cold War was the real fuel that rightly spurred the US to develop more of an intelligence capability and more of a surveillance state. It’s undeniable now that we look back on the ‘40s and ‘50s and subsequent history that the Soviet Union had a significant undercover operation in the United States, including the theft of the atomic secrets that set the Cold War, mutually assured destruction paradigm in motion.
I would argue that the Communist sleeper network remains in place today and has penetrated our academic institutions and media.
Not too many people see that and those who don’t usually consider any assertion that it remains alive and well, operating globally in sort of zombie like fashion as evidence of lunacy on the part of those who try to point that out to the rest of the world, but the reality of it is that Putin resurrected a lot of that KGB and Comintern anti-capitalist apparatus and is using it against us to this day in concert with the Chinese.
That would make sense this act provoked Japan to attack us at Pearl Harbour.
That and the oil embargo, but the real evil was Japan’s barbaric invasion of China, which was initiated unilaterally by the army!
atrocious acts; even by the horrific standard always accompanying war.
Which acts?
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang is the definitive account, even with some of its issues. Plenty of other books are out there too, but that’s the best known one. I’ll be talking about it one day (particularly about the hero who saved thousands of Chinese who happened to be a Nazi).
THAT will be a hard one to listen too!
the 'barbaric invasion' of China.
Yeah the Pearl Harbor attack was much more directly related to Japan’s expansionist and rapacious tendencies in places like Korea and China being sanctioned by us in the form of oil embargo’s. I find it hard to believe FDR was truly surprised that Japan would react aggressively but I don’t really buy any attempt to claim that it wasn’t a surprise attack by its very nature.
You bring up some good nuances to the thesis made by McCoy. I think he makes his case well but it really felt like a stretch at times. Surveillance has always been a tool, in one form or another.