Then, chastened, we retreat - until the cycle begins again.Īmerica’s interventionist urge, however, is not truly cyclical. Confident in our power, we launch wars and depose governments. At some moments we are aflame with righteous anger. Our enthusiasm for foreign intervention seems to ebb and flow like the tides, or swing back and forth like a pendulum. Put differently: Should we charge violently into faraway lands, or allow others to work out their own destinies? Put one way: Should we defend our freedom, or turn inward and ignore growing threats? For more than a century we have debated with ourselves. How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Book Excerpt: 'The True Flag' The cover of "The True Flag," by Stephen Kinzer. Kinzer ( joins Here & Now's Robin Young to discuss how the debate still resonates today. " The True Flag" explores the battle between imperialists, led by Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and Rudyard Kipling - who wanted to seize countries like Cuba and the Philippines - and anti-imperialists, led by Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie and Booker T.
(Hulton Archive/Getty Images) This article is more than 6 years old.Īuthor and longtime foreign correspondent Stephen Kinzer's new book takes up a forgotten and fascinating chapter in American history. (Feb.President Theodore Roosevelt, a leading American interventionist. foreign policy history and convincingly arguing that the imperial/anti-imperial dichotomy remains a dominant feature of the American psyche. Kinzer ably conveys the passion and ferment of this brief period, situating this grand debate in the context of U.S. In Kinzer’s gripping narrative, the egotistical Theodore Roosevelt emerges in his aggressively hypermasculine fashion as the most outspoken expansionist, while Mark Twain embarks on the “least-known phase of his career” to resist the violent drive toward empire. soon controlled Cuba and annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, and the Philippines in a swift series of subjugations. The former largely triumphed, as the U.S. Expansionists proclaimed benevolent intent and a civilizing mission while touting the economic benefits of conquest anti-imperialists recalled America’s anticolonial origins and condemned imperialist violence and brutality.
The nation plunged into arguably “the farthest-reaching debate” in its history with political and intellectual giants contesting “the imperial idea” to determine America’s place in the world and in history. encountered the opportunity to expand overseas by capturing Spanish colonial possessions and other territories and peoples within its reach. After a century of continental expansion, the U.S. Acclaimed journalist Kinzer ( The Brothers) spotlights the domestic discord and clamor over America’s imperial ventures at the dawn of the 20th century.
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