Boot\'s Book, the Savage Wars

¶ … Boot's book, the Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, adopts the topic of a handful of recent works focusing upon the oftentimes overlooked conflicts in American history. Essentially, Boot attempts to chronicle a history of the United States' more minor conflicts, yet he does so from an unabashedly neoconservative and neo-imperial perspective. In other words, Boot claims that small conflicts, which are typically those over colonies and foreign resources, are necessary to the overall creation and survival of an empire. Boot, by documenting the success and failures of the United States' military machine over the past several centuries, attempts to generate a picture of how American power has expanded and been sustained. He writes, "If there is one theme that emerges from this book it is that, though the reasons have changed over the years, the United States has always found itself being drawn into the 'the savage wars of peace.' America's strategic situation today presents more opportunities than ever before for such entanglements," (Book xix). To Boot, these conflicts are central toward the creation of empire, and they become increasingly inevitable as the United States assumes the role of a global police force, as well as a massive economic entity, possessing vast corporate interests abroad.

Other authors, most notably Sam Sarkesian, have termed the wars Boot focuses upon "forgotten" wars. Essentially, the overlooked wars of America's past have landed in an obscure place in history specifically because they were unsuccessful and unconventional: they were not the grand, strategic battles of the First or Second World Wars. This, it would seem, is one of Boot's major motivations for focusing upon these conflicts: they are little-known and little understood. Yet, according to Boot, they provide valuable lessons militaristically and diplomatically for the present and the future; after all, Boot believes that such wars are, on the whole, unavoidable.

Nevertheless, the United States continues to approach military training, practice, policies, and implementation in preparation for another conventional war, and this has been one of the repeated mistakes made by military command over the years. The fact remains that many of America's past conflicts have been waged against vastly inferior forces and, accordingly, have followed the patterns of counterrevolutionary or insurgent warfare. Additionally, with the overwhelming current American superiority in the areas of conventional warfare, Boot argues, it should be anticipated that most of the future conflicts that the United States will find itself in will be of the counterrevolutionary variety. Recognizing this, it is almost unimaginable that the United States should continue to make the mistakes of the past. Of course, Boot hopes that this book may add to the stock of knowledge surrounding unconventional wars, and help the United States avoid the mistakes of the past. Boot writes this book in a somewhat optimistic tone; he hopes that a serious examination of America's counterrevolutionary experience can set the United States military on a different course.

Boot defines a small war as a conflict that is less involved than the large, all-out wars of American history, but more than simple strategic strikes: "Small war is necessarily an elastic, inexact term. They are not America's major conventional conflicts.... nor, at the other end of the spectrum is this a book concerned with pure shows of force," (Boot xvi). He also makes it clear that small wars, by his definition, are not necessarily short in the time span; he points out that the Vietnam War lasted for decades, but must still be considered a small war. Furthermore, these wars have typically -- and, so he says, rightly -- been termed imperial conflicts (Boot xvi). Naturally, this is because small wars, from his point-of-view, involve limited engagements of large military powers against enemies possessing inferior numbers, resources, and weapons capabilities. These circumstances generate a setting within which non-conventional methods of warfare must be employed by the conventionally outmanned forces if they have any hope of defeating the imperial forces against whom they fight.

Boot attempts to tell this story of America's rise to global power in three major steps; he characterizes three phases of American military history, and details the history of the small wars that took place in these phases. First, he describes three small wars America found itself in during it's time as a "commercial power." These occurred in the nineteenth century, during a time in which the United States' federal government, according to Boot, was not altogether powerful enough to completely cash-in, in a militaristic sense, on the growing economic might of the young nation. This changes, says Boot, in the first half of the twentieth century when America began to make its colonial interests abroad felt, largely by scooping-up many of the Central American colonies the Spanish could no longer sustain. Prior to the Second World War, Boot describes the United States as one of the "great powers." However, after World War II, and few would argue against this point, the United States emerges as a global "superpower." This portion of the book primarily handles the war in Vietnam and the lessons that the military should take away from this failed small war.

Boot is widely known as an author and historian who does not shy away from the notion that the Untied States has repeatedly gone to war for the purposes of economic prosperity, and that this is oftentimes the obligation of powerful nations to do so. In this light, he describes the United States' first small war, the Barbary Wars, as the nation's first step toward becoming the world's police force. This is because, he argues, the United States involved itself in this conflict in an effort to expand open trade in the seas, and make their economic interests felt abroad. Accordingly, the Barbary Wars were a supreme success for the United States' navy, and started to increase the nation's economic toeholds overseas.

Boot writes, "Much of the growing American role overseas needed no guidance from Washington. It was a result of the restless Yankee's inexorable progress across the North American continent and beyond, a process dubbed 'manifest destiny' by journalist John O'Sulliban in 1839," (Boot 39). In other words, Boot contends that the expansion of the United States on the North American continent -- which was, to a substantial extent, achieved by the army's actions against Native Americans and the Mexicans -- provided an exponentially growing stock of resources and wealth for the young nation. This, in turn, made it possible for the navy to start making its power felt overseas. Although the army was continually embroiled in these conflicts of expansion, and little attention was paid to the navy, America's small wars of the nineteenth century often involved overzealous admirals and other naval officials who believed they saw opportunities for expansion and exploitation.

Another obvious reason why America's wars abroad remained small wars, says Boot, is because of the general isolationist attitude that the nation came to embrace at repeated times in it's history. Essentially, it was widely believed that very little money and resources needed to be applied to defending the United States from external threats -- which would have required the creation of a large and powerful navy -- simply because the nation was so isolated geographically from any significant threats. He writes, "Congress did not want to spend much money on defense and, with wide expanses of open space on either side of the United States, did not feel that it needed to do so," (Boot 55). This mentality meant that America's efforts to become a colonial power during this time period would remain quite limited, and suffer failures because outright invasions were not realistically possible.

Still, Boot notes, a turning point in military history began with one of most bloody conflict in American history: the American Civil War. This was not merely a turning point because it resulted in a finally solidified and centralized federal government; it was also a turning point because it pushed the evolution of weapons technology and tactics closer to the modern age. In other words, the United States managed to build its armed forces into arguably the most advanced and formidable in the world -- at the grim cost of some six-hundred thousand lives. The Civil War became a grisly reminder that Napoleonic tactics and methods of warfare had officially become obsolete; and it also introduced the world to the first iron clad vessels. However, Boot argues, these advances were almost immediately followed by a drastic downsizing of the American military, and a return to a pacifist stance, as the nation focused upon the reconstruction of the South. Yet, although the military became smaller and far less formidable to the other world nations, it remained technologically far beyond most other nations of the world; thus permitting for a series of small military operations to expand the nation's imperialistic and colonial goals: "now U.S. forces were staying in foreign countries and trying to manipulate their politics, if not annex them outright. Normally this practice is known as imperialism, even though Americans, belonging to a country born of revolt against an empire, are sensitive about applying the term to their own conduct," (Boot 66). In short, the United States became more aggressive in attaining foreign resources and access to trade. This was a result of the expansive nature of empires, and the fact that America, as characterized by Boot, was gradually becoming a "great power."

Largely, the Great Powers of the modern world have come into being as emerging economic and political trends have allowed. The ever shifting tides of the world's social foundations have tended to produce successive powers that rise and fall over the course of history. Generally, what make these powers great are their military capabilities, but of course, these are commanded by the economic base supporting them. A powerful economy can allow for enormous military expenditures, and generate vast influence across the planet.

Naturally, the economic crux of a great power can vary in form. Most obviously, the great power of the ancient world -- Rome -- relied upon the slave trade for its riches and influence; but today, in the wake of the industrial revolution, manufacturing tends to demand which nations become great powers and which languish in mediocrity. Basically, wealth and an efficient economy generate the type of nations that hold the potential to become great powers. The key is to balance a nation's wealth with the military expenditures that become inevitable once a country achieves great status.

Greatness means that a country's influence can be felt from across continents, oceans, and time. A great power holds many obligations and has many interests throughout the world. Doubtlessly, power has always been relative. Nations and dynasties have reached their greatness as vacuums of power and influence made themselves evident. Often, serendipitous events have placed specific nations in positions where they had the unique opportunity to make their authority felt on a grand scale, or in ways that were never felt before. The United States came to world dominance -- what Boot calls a superpower -- following the Second World War. Yet, it had been recognized well before that period that the U.S. possessed the capability to achieve such levels of greatness. With the enormous agricultural base inherited by the Louisiana Purchase and subsequent escapades, the United States, like Russia, found its self in a unique social situation; this was a situation that was extremely conducive, if not demanding of growth.

Boot indicates that America's almost natural expansion as a great power occurred in a global setting that was becoming increasingly dangerous for imperialistic nations. This was for two main reasons. First, nations that chose to engage in colonial campaigns began to find, as the Americans did in the Philippines, embroiled in continual and costly insurgent conflicts: "More than three years before, the burgeoning power of the United States had dismembered the remains of the Spanish empire and put the Philippines under the Stars and Stripes. The Filipinos stubbornly resisted their new colonial masters, and though successive U.S. generals proclaimed victory at hand, American soldiers kept dying in ambushes, telegraph lines kept getting cut, and army convoys kept being attacked," (Boot 99). Although the conflict in the Philippines has become one of America's forgotten wars, according to Boot, it offers a great deal of insight into the way in which such conflicts have been addressed by the military. Essentially, America's forgotten wars have all been initially handled as conventional wars; accordingly, the conventional strengths and weaknesses of the enemies were assessed and troops were deployed in a limited capacity. However, the unstable nature of these conflicts eventually demanded more serious involvement.

The second key problem facing the United States as it began to enter the fray as a colonial power was that the colonial nations of the world were beginning to butt heads, and what many believed was an unavoidable war between them was about to drag the United States into the Great War. Imperialism -- which began to truly expand in the 1870s -- guaranteed that as these nations grew more influential, the lands they sought to control would become evermore scarce. Essentially, as the number of valuable colonies dwindled around the world, it grew increasingly apparent that the only way to finalize the global balance of power would be through direct conflict. Since no nations were willing to sacrifice their global might in the aim of international harmony, many were of the belief that war could not be avoided. In short, the cause of the World War I was colonialism; as it would happen, it would remain one of the key causes of World War II.

In the United States, the political stance of Wilson and that of most Americans was that of isolationism. However, once the war began to significantly interfere with American commerce and shipping, it became increasingly difficult for Wilson to remain neutral. Additionally, there was ongoing political pressure from both London and Berlin for the United States to enter the war on either side. Yet, as the war went on, it became German submarine attacks that gradually began to convince many Americans that action needed to be taken against the Germans. After the Lusitanian was sunk, Germany agreed to cease attacks upon merchant vessels; but this ended in 1917 when three American merchant ships were sunk by German submarines. As a result of these attacks, congress declared war upon Germany on April 6, of that year. Ultimately, it was the closer political and economic ties that America held with Britain and France, as well as the type of warfare the Germans were waging that that resulted in the United States declaring war on Germany and its allies.

World War I was the first significant step in transforming the United States -- and Russia as well -- into a global political, economic and militaristic power. Much of this was simply the result of the boosting of manufacturing and production that the war forced the government to subsidize. Of course, technological advancements and innovation came along with this, but the key force was the external political pressure resulting in the near full utilization of the United States' already vast stock of resources. The conflict itself resulted in the expansion of U.S. forces abroad and the correlated extension of American political and economic interests, which could then be facilitated by the already mobilized militaristic force -- such as in the Philippines. This brought the United States on its way toward becoming one of the preeminent global powers; however, since the vast majority of American imperial interests were in the Americas, a relapse into a form of isolationism followed World War I, though it was far less pronounced than prior to U.S. involvement.

Overall, Boot's handling of the United State's small wars during this period of expansion in Central and South America is very forgiving of the goals and methods by which America made its imperialistic power felt abroad. He writes, "Critics of American intervention later charged that the U.S. had deliberately installed dictatorships in Hispaniola and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Very nearly the opposite is true.... Unfortunately, those who came to power were not always of the highest moral caliber. The only thing more unsavory than U.S. intervention, it turned out, was U.S. nonintervention," (Boot 181). Essentially, Boot argues -- although this argument is mostly implicit throughout the book -- that the United States, because of its substantial power and it's basic tenets of freedom and democracy is often morally required to enter into the fray in these small wars. In general, it is contended, American involvement is beneficial, obviously, to America -- when it is successful -- but also to the rest of the world, because it promotes stability, economic freedom, and the ideals of Western democracy.

Following the First World War, the United States continued to exert it's control in Central America and the Philippines, although it did so more economically than militaristically: "It would be an exaggeration to say that America turned isolationist, but there is not question that before the Great War, America's military commitments had been expanding, whereas afterward they contracted.... America resorted once again to dollar diplomacy, with private companies extending loans and investment to Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, even to the Soviet Union," (Boot 231). However, with the U.S. incursion into Nicaragua, a handful of valuable lessons were learned about guerrilla warfare: "Of course, as the U.S. learned a few decades later, body counts can hardly be the measure of success in a guerrilla war. On one level, the Nicaragua adventure was frustrating; after all, the marines never managed to catch Sandino of stamp-out his movement. Nevertheless they did keep Sandino on the run," (Boot 252). Again, it was a limited engagement that gradually became much larger than American officials had been prepared for. It was possible to prevent the followers of Sandino from using many overt or conventional means of waging war, but it remained impossible for U.S. forces to eliminate resistance. These important lessons, however, would be forgotten in the wake of the Second World War, and America's great successes in conventional operations.

America also had imperial interests in Asia during this time -- particularly in China. However, other emerging global powers also possessed similar interests. These conflicts would eventually lead to World War II. Japan was still attempting to establish itself as an imperialistic nation -- modeled after the Western powers. Their defeat of the Russians in 1905 had allowed them to annex Korea, take Manchuria, and occupy South Vietnam -- a former French colony. However, a prerequisite of a colonial power was access to oil. Oil played a major role in the conflict. Japan wanted to gain access to the oil fields in the Dutch East Indies and, to a lesser extent, Sarawak and Burma. As a result, President Roosevelt ceased petroleum trade with Japan, which crippled their economy and war machine; from the Japanese colonial perspective, since Japan had no major oil reserves, the only answer was to expand. The occupation of South Vietnam was not nearly enough to bolster public opinion in the United States enough to validate going to war, so Roosevelt banned oil shipments to force the Japanese -- already embroiled in several conflicts abroad -- into a difficult decision. They could back down in China, negotiate a compromise settlement with the United States, or wage a war to seize the oil in Indonesia. Since the Japanese government was not willing to withdraw from China, and the United States was uncooperative in negotiating an agreement, the only legitimate option was open warfare.

Essentially, the United States was not willing to meet the minimum demands of the Japanese; they had already gained control of Indo-China and Thailand by this time. Some have contended that this was deliberate on the part of the United States; they saw the turmoil in Asia as their opportunity to seize control while under the guise of liberators. Still, it was Japan's commitment to colonialism that demanded war as an outcome: they believed that damaging the military might of the West in the Pacific -- at Pearl Harbor -- would allow them to ignore the embargos and take the Philippines. They also believed that although the United States might be able to defeat them in outright war, that the Americans would view entering a major and lengthy conflict to be far too troublesome -- so they would negotiate a peace. However, the Japanese were wrong and the United States officially entered the war against Japan and Germany only days later.

World War II firmly situated the Untied States and Russia as the ultimate global powers. Although their ideologies and economic interests clashed even prior to the war, they had been allies as a result of a shared interest in defeating Japan and Germany. Yet, once these competing powers were eliminated, each nation viewed the other as the sole obstacle toward compete imperial domination of the globe. The U.S., following the war, suddenly was in possession of substantial stocks of natural resources and markets in the East, while Russia took advantage of the opportunities in Eastern Europe. In many ways, the reconstruction of these regions was simultaneously the construction of the foundations of these two global superpowers.

Boot uses this emergence of American power to discuss perhaps the most controversial small war in American history: Vietnam. He explains how there are several schools of thought attempting to account for how the United States lost the war. Ultimately, he argues that it lost because U.S. officials did not handle it as if it was a small war. Initially, it was recognized that it should be a minor conflict; but once conventional means proved unsuccessful with small numbers of soldiers, the answer, it would seem, was to escalate the war by bringing in more soldiers. However, this was counterproductive against apparent masters of guerrilla warfare. Boot explains, "In short, the Communist insurgency really did win the war. Not by defeating U.S. forces on the battlefield -- but that was never their goal. As General Giap later explained, 'We are not strong enough to drive out a half-million American troops, be that wasn't our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American government to continue the war,'" (Boot 316). Boot points out that a small war approach to the war would have centered upon pacification of the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Instead, conventional strategies kept being repeatedly used; and when they failed, they were used on a larger scale.