In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 Prologue Analogies of Empire I O 2003, as Baghdad bathed in blood from bombs detonated in opposition to the U.S. occupation, President George W. Bush flew toward Manila aboard Air Force One on a mission of historical affirmation. Over the Pacific the president’s entourage recast the past for reporters with a briefing paper explaining that U.S. colonial rule over the Philippines “was always declared to be temporary and aimed to develop institutions that would . . . encourage the eventual establishment of a free and independent government.” The formal reason for this Manila visit was, of course, to assure the Philippines’ continuing participation in the “Coalition of the Willing,” that curious mélange of middling and small states cobbled together for the war in Iraq when most of Washington’s major European allies remained aloof. This colonial past, the memo continued, confirmed the correctness of the Bush administration’s current mission to bring “institutions of democracy to Iraq.”1 Repeating these themes in an address to the Philippine Congress, President Bush’s words erased the years of brutal pacification that had followed the U.S. occupation in 1898. “America,” he said, “is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule.” Those who questioned the wisdom of his current course in Iraq should, the president chided, be mindful of history’s lessons. “The same doubts,” he explained, “were once expressed about the culture of Asia. These doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic nation in Asia.”2 Analogy is arguably the lowest form of history, stripping both cases of nuance to make some tendentious political point. But the war in Iraq has produced a succession of parallels with this Philippine past too numerous to dismiss as merely incidental or ironic. Despite all that has changed in the intervening century , close comparison of these two conflicts reveals some striking similarities, though not those the Bush administration imagined. Indeed, anyone who has followed the Iraq War even casually in the press will be struck, as they read the chapters that follow, by deep resonances from this Philippine past in our Iraqi present. This study shares the Bush administration’s conviction that the Philippines reveals a great deal about America as a world power, albeit from a critical rather than celebratory perspective. At first glance, this book seems a study of Philippine policing, both colonial and national, throughout the twentieth century. At a deeper level, however, this is an essay on the exercise of American power, from imperial rule over a string of scattered islands in 1898 to today’s worldwide dominion . By focusing on the actual mechanisms of Washington’s global reach, both conventional and covert operations, this study explores the nature of U.S. force projection and its long-term consequences for both the nations within America’s ambit and America itself. The growing relevance of this book’s subject, the U.S. pacification and policing of the colonial Philippines, was an unintended, even unwelcome result of spending a decade on its research and writing. Yet this relevance cannot be denied . In the midst of this protracted crisis over Iraq, it would be, in my view, irresponsible to leave these lessons to political partisans whose aims are exculpatory rather than explanatory. Indeed, the U.S. Army has a long tradition of studying military history closely, carefully, to mine the past for prescriptions to guide future operations. Frankly, I would be gratified if in some small way this book could contribute to mitigating some future foreign policy disaster like that of Iraq. Instead of saving these lessons for the book’s final chapter, let me offer them here at the outset in part to serve the needs of the political present and in part to move on, unencumbered, to the broader problems of colonial rule and state formation central to this study. For those who prefer their history pointed and pragmatic, this prologue offers a quick review of Philippine-Iraq parallels followed by a summary of their implications for contemporary U.S. policy. In reading this redacted history the reader should be aware that contrasts are often more revealing than similarities. From a strategic perspective the U.S. invasions of the Philippines and Iraq began as secondary theaters in larger global conflicts: the Spanish-American War and the global...

Share