The War That Made America a Superpower (No, Not World War II)

The National Interest ^ | February 26, 2017 | By Kyle Mizokami

[Brad from Tennessee]

The end of the Second World War is often considered the defining moment when the United States became a global power. In fact, it was another war forty years earlier, a war that ended with America having an empire of its own stretching thousands of miles beyond its continental borders. The Spanish-American War, which lasted five months, catapulted the United States from provincial to global power.

The Spanish-American War was a classic example of the “Thucydides Trap,” in which tensions between a declining power, Spain, and a rising power, the United States, resulted in war. By the end of the nineteenth century, Spain was clearly in decline, and Madrid’s grasp on its empire was increasingly tenuous. Cuba and the Philippines both experienced anti-Spanish revolts, and Spain’s difficulty in putting them down merely illustrated to the rest of the world how frail the empire actually was.

Meanwhile, in North America, the American doctrine of Manifest Destiny had run its course. The admission of Washington State to the Union in 1890 had consolidated America’s hold on the continent. Americans with an eye toward expanding America’s business interests and even creating an American empire couldn’t help but notice weakly held European colonial possessions in the New World and the Pacific. The march towards war in America was multifaceted: even liberal-minded Americans favored war to liberate Cuba from a brutal military occupation. . .

[Bulwyf]

Canadians broke the German backs in WW1. The USA was a bit late to that game, but a welcome addition all the same.

I would agree with the article that the Spanish-American war was the rise of the US as a global power.

[Bulwyf]

Colossal mistake there. The US should of nabbed British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan off the get go heh.

[SkyDancer]

Yeah, the Canadians at Vimy Ridge? They showed the Brits and French how it's really done. The Germans in learning we'd entered the war saw the writing on the wall and tried desperate measures to defeat the Allies before we really got into it; it was there when the Marines were nicknamed "Mad Dogs" in the way they fought.

In reading the history of the S/A war it was basically instigated by the Hearst news org with their fake news at the time. (Guns Of August)

[Oatka]

The attack on Pearl Harbor was the big one but we had already begun to stir before that.

A good book on that is Freedom's Forge," detailing how we had been marshaling our industrial might in the late '30s up until late '41, so that when TSHTF, all we had to do is ramp up what was already in place. IMO, William Knudsen and Henry Kaiser are unsung heroes.