Aroop Mukharji
When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry lamented that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behaving “in a nineteenth-century fashion” after invading Crimea in 2014, Kerry probably did not anticipate how accurately his remark would describe U.S. foreign policy today. Analysts have drawn many historical parallels to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela last week—indeed, the twentieth century is replete with choices. But the period that resonates most today is the era when cyclical, heavy-handed U.S. interventions in Latin America began. That story starts in 1898.
After defeating Spain in the War of 1898 (also known as the Spanish-American War), the United States acquired former Spanish colonies in Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico and established a protectorate over Cuba. Separately, it annexed Hawaii and was exploring an isthmian canal through Nicaragua (later, Panama), as well as attempting to purchase territory from Denmark in the Caribbean. For half a century after 1898, the sun never set on the American empire.
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