Wednesday, April 2, 2003

More on 1898 Don't you just love it when The New Yorker agrees with you?  Check out James Surowiecki's "Talk of the Town" piece in the current issue.  Here's a bit of it:   In February, 1895, Cuban nationalists seeking independence from Spain took to the hills and started a campaign of guerrilla warfare. When initial efforts to put down the rebellion failed, the Spanish military relocated hundreds of thousands of Cuban farmers into fortified concentration camps, where they soon fell prey to hunger and disease. In the United States, publicity about the camps fanned hostility toward the Spanish and, eventually, inspired calls for U.S. intervention in Cuba (where, not coincidentally, America had important economic and strategic interests). War began in the spring of 1898, and a few months later the Spanish Empire was gone. The end of the war presented a new dilemma. Cuba had a mountain of foreign debt, and during the peace negotiations Spain insisted that the Cubans were responsible for all of it. The logic was perverse; much of that debt had been run up by the colonial authorities in their effort to crush the Cuban struggle for independence. But international law seemed to be on Spain's side. Debt, the Spanish argued, was attached to a territory, not to a regime. The money had been borrowed by Cuba, and Cuba, or the occupying Americans, had to pay it back. The regime might have changed, but the debt remained. The U.S. rejected that argument. The Cuban people had had no say in the decision to borrow the money, and it had been spent in ways that damaged them. Therefore, Cuba should owe nothing. In the end, the new republic repudiated its debts and started over with a clean slate. Before long, the Iraqi people will likely face a similar dilemma. In 1979, when Saddam Hussein took power, Iraq-thanks to the oil boom of the seventies-had a foreign surplus of about thirty-five billion dollars. A decade later, after the war with Iran, it had a foreign debt of some fifty billion dollars. And today, after more war and a dozen years of missed interest payments, the country owes, by many estimates, more than a hundred billion dollars. Its creditors, which include Kuwait, Bulgaria, and the Korean conglomerate Hyundai, are already jockeying for position to be repaid after the war. (thanks to my friend Tom, who always finishes his New Yorker well before our household does, for the reference) 11:57:26 PM    comment []

Is the U.S. now, or has it ever been, an "Empire"? Food For thought: : For good or ill, the United States has entered upon a colonial policy, a policy of expansion, a policy which forces us into the position of a world-power, deep in the complications of international politics and the Eastern Question.  It is now too late to turn back.  Once having reached this position, it is unnecessary to argue the importance of obtaining all the adequate knowledge available on the great questions involved.  American citizens, with the welfare of their country at heart, are endeavoring to familiarize themselves with the details of conditions in these new dominions and in the countries adjacent to them.  Without experience or precedents of our own in a colonial policy, we are forced into the position of creating one, without time for experiment.  We must learn while we govern and govern while we learn, and this too in close comparison with our neighbor nations in the Orient which have spent hundreds of years in the government of colonies and the methods of colonization.     - Trumbull White, Our New Possessions...Four Books in One (Binghamton, New York: Empire Publishing Company, 1898). From a pamphlet that offered tips to salespeople about how to sell the above book, the publishers made the case: DESTINY HAS SUDDENLY MADE THE UNITED STATES AN EMPIRE. In this war for humanity she has not only been made A NATION AMONG THE NATIONS OF THE EARTH, but there have been added to our ownership rich and tropical islands of both the Atlantic and Pacific. By the terms of peace they are declared ours, yet WE, AS A PEOPLE, KNOW THEM NOT. They are far-off strangers. What we now need is accurate knowledge of their location, size, population, wealth, climate, etc., etc., hence More on this later... 12:46:41 PM    comment []