America and War

America has always had a variety of reasons to choose from in explaining their decisions to go to war. The three wars that Americans fought between the end of the 19th century and the mid point of the 20th century involved reasoning as varied as economic benefits or international tranquility.

When the United States finally declared war against Spain on 25 April 1898, those in charge of making such decisions had an event with which to convince those who were unsure that war was necessary. The explosion of the USS Maine, an American battleship, on 15 February 1898 provided the impetus for declaring war ostensibly under the feeling of national security. In trying to persuade Congress that declaring war was absolutely necessary beyond all other possibilities he neatly summed up the four prevailing opinions of those Americans who had wished for sometime for the United States to become involved in halting the Spanish actions in Cuba. The first reason that McKinley highlighted was the humanitarian aspect of such a mission, for some time Spain had been perpetrating a number of atrocities against the Cubans. Spain’s reconcentration program had devastated the local population through active violence, destruction of foodstuffs, and razing farmland. The second reason that McKinley proclaimed as a reason to go to war with Spain was the belief that the Cubans deserved a government that would support their interests, not the interests of an imperial oppressor, something that should have resonated deeply with Americans, as it was the same thing that the Revolution was fought for.

American economic interests constituted McKinley’s third reason behind his desire to go to war. This aspect was arguably the least reasonable, yet the most likely t...

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...ry interventions of this period, the American decision to intervene in Cuba against Spain presents the most compelling set of reasons for going to war. Putting aside that it is wholly possible that Spain attacked the USS Maine, Cuba is only ninety miles from Florida, posing a genuine threat to American soil. On the additional matter of human rights violations that were occurring, with Cuba being in America’s backyard, the moral imperative to intervene is far stronger. On the other side of the equation, the reasons that were being pushed to get America to intervene in World War II prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor are probably the weakest. There had not yet been an attack on Americans like there was in the Spanish-American War or World War I. The only reasons involve America in a Euro-Asian War prior to that attack were theoretical dangers and moral imperatives.