Richard Holbrooke
Foreign Affairs
Council on Foreign Relations
November/December 2002


Summary: Warren Zimmermann's First Great Triumph shows that a century ago
Americans were already confronting many of the foreign policy issues on
today's agenda.


The other four men in Zimmermann's book all played major roles in American
foreign policy. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, later Senate majority leader
and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee (at the same time!), was
Roosevelt's best friend -- and ultimately Woodrow Wilson's most dangerous
enemy. Throughout Roosevelt's career, the wily Lodge promoted and guided
the impulsive "Rough Rider." They both believed passionately in a global
role for the United States, focusing on Central America and the Pacific.
Denying the Pacific to the British was often part of their worldview,
although that was not a major consideration for the most Anglophile of the
five men, John Hay. Lodge was also an out-and-out racist, even by the
standards of the time.

John Hay and Elihu Root would both serve as secretary of state for
Roosevelt, but they were very different sorts of men. Root was a
thoughtful and brilliant lawyer, the very epitome of the New York
establishment, and by far the most modern of the five. Hay, who became a
success despite his ambivalent and uneven professional performance, was
forever accorded special treatment because he had been Abraham Lincoln's
private secretary as a very young man. Although both Hay and Root played
important roles in the implementation of foreign policy, they would not
rise to the same level of influence over core events as did Roosevelt,
Lodge, and, strangely enough, the last and most unusual of Zimmermann's
five, Alfred T. Mahan.

Mahan was a naval officer going nowhere inside the Navy when, in 1886, he
obtained an assignment as an instructor at the new Naval War College in
Newport, Rhode Island. There he gave a series of lectures outlining his
belief in the supremacy of naval power as an instrument of state. In his
second year at the Naval War College, he invited as a guest lecturer a man
who, in a book on the War of 1812, had expressed a similar point of view
about seapower. Thus did Mahan meet for the first time Theodore Roosevelt.
It is Zimmermann's thesis that the interaction of these five men turned
"manifest destiny" from a phrase into a full-bodied imperial policy just
as the United States reached its natural continental limits. It is one of
the strengths of this immensely enjoyable book that Zimmermann neither
glorifies nor denigrates the people and the events he describes. For the
most part, the story tells itself, even though Zimmermann is careful to
point out some of the appalling actions that led to the annexation of
Hawaii and the colonial period in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba.
Some of this detachedness comes from the nature of the author. Zimmermann
is no ordinary historian or journalist. In fact, he is, in the tradition
of the great George Kennan himself, a former diplomat who has turned to
writing history informed by a practitioner's eye. (Perhaps it is more than
coincidence that, in Kennan's famous American Foreign Policy 1900-1950,
the first two chapters are on the Spanish-American War and the Open Door
policy, issues covered in some detail by Zimmermann.)

NOW AND THEN

The story Zimmermann tells is essential background for anyone interested
in how the United States arrived at its present place in the world. But it
is not simply its direct relevance to today's headlines that makes First
Great Triumph such a significant book. The story of America's internal
debate, including the bureaucratic politics and press manipulation that
are surprisingly similar to today, carries with it an important reminder
that things are not quite as different today as they may seem. A century
ago Americans were already confronting many of the issues on today's
agenda, with much the same internal divisions. As the nation debates the
appropriate U.S. role in nation building in Afghanistan or "pre-emptive
action" in Iraq, Zimmermann shows surprisingly similar debates a century
ago over Cuba, which he describes as the first American humanitarian
intervention, as well as over Puerto Rico.

There is a well-established rule in international affairs: the unintended
consequence. No one could foresee a century ago that Hawaii, then regarded
as an island of primitive people that had to be denied to the British,
would become the nation's most multiracial state. The Philippines, where
the United States fought a brutal guerrilla war, is now an independent
democracy. Puerto Rico has become a permanent part of the United States,
whose exact status is still under dispute. Cuba remains a constant
adversary as well as a major domestic political issue. And, of course,
this story is far from finished. As Zimmermann brings it back to life, the
nation is debating whether to embark on a new quasi-imperial age, taking
on responsibilities even further from its home shores. No one can predict
what will come of these efforts -- there are sure to be more unintended
consequences -- but one lesson seems clear: an informed and supportive
public must back foreign engagement once it is embarked upon. The
executive branch may have the power to send troops overseas almost at
will, as Boot's book demonstrates. But to achieve their mission, such
deployments must have national backing, starting with Congress.