The Foreign Service Journal, March 2003

America’s Authentic Imperialism First Great Triumph Warren Zimmermann, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002, $30.00, hardcover, 562 pages with index. R EVIEWED BY H ARRY C. B LANEY III Ambassador Warren Zimmer- mann’s latest book, First Great Triumph , could hardly be timed bet- ter in its appearance. Just as we are poised on the brink of war with Iraq, it takes us back to a key decade in U.S. diplomatic history — the one beginning in 1898 with the war with Spain, which he says “began the long process of preparing the United States for global leadership.” His central thesis is that America’s global ambitions were formed a century ago by five “remarkable men by any measure” — namely, Secretaries of State John Hay and Elihu Root, naval strate- gist Capt. Alfred T. Mahan, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge and, not least, President Theodore Roosevelt. Zimmermann does not flinch from terming these men imperialists, despite the baggage long associated with that concept for many of us. But he does qualify his assessment some- what by contending that “they created an authentic American imperialism that was confident in its objectives but modest in its application.” The com- plication is that most of the putative originators of the doctrine would dis- avow the word — as I believe would WoodrowWilson and almost all of the other American leaders who Zimmermann says took up the same cause during the past century. Furthermore, while the term “imperi- alism” suggests a purposeful policy, Zimmermann himself says that “American imperialism was an inspired amateurism” and he notes that Roosevelt disavowed the term in McKinley’s 1900 re-election cam- paign. So why does he believe the term fits these men? For starters, he assumes that each late-19th century U.S. incursion or military action was part of a deliberate strategy to con- quer and permanently control regions beyond its own territory inhabited by foreign societies, as the British, French, Japanese, Germans, and Belgians were already doing. But I am not convinced that such was the clear and unambiguous intention of our national leadership a century ago. Rather, what they sought to do was to extend the influ- ence and trade of America and to strengthen American defenses. Take, for example, Zimmer- mann’s account of Theodore Roosevelt’s determination to build the Panama Canal. For all his rhetoric about the Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny, Roosevelt’s main goal was not to occupy either Columbia or Panama, but to build a shorter route for American ships between the two oceans to project power and defend American coasts. Still, whatever one thinks of some of Zimmermann’s analysis of the roots of American imperialism, he is clearly right that a key legacy of these five men was “their prepara- tion of the United States to be a great power.” He is also correct that the American concern with pre- paredness for war that Roosevelt and Mahan, in particular, launched won no less a convert than [Woodrow] Wilson himself. Zimmermann then brings us full circle by assessing our present chal- lenges on the global stage. He wor- ries that “since the end of the Cold War, both the power and self-confi- dence that sustained this century- long international influence has been eroding,” and cites the weak- ening of the U.S. presidency and the decline of “usable” American power. While he approves of our leadership in the Persian Gulf War, the Kosovo campaign, and the Afghanistan Zimmermann does not hesitate to call Teddy Roosevelt and his cohorts “imperialists,” despite the baggage that term carries for many. B OOKS 54 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 3