My Take | America does not do accidental war if history is any guide
- While it is desirable to calm tensions in the South China Sea and over Taiwan, US war history shows it only exploits an ‘accident’ to go to war when it really wants to
Everyone and their dog now fret about the danger of a “military accident”, which could spiral out of control in the South China Sea or over Taiwan. That’s certainly a real possibility when every second-tiered Western power suddenly wants to join the United States to patrol and protect the sea lanes there. Ironically, no country – and certainly not China – has threatened to block those sea lanes, since everyone needs them for both domestic supplies and exports!
But that’s only half the story. Wars are rarely started by accident. History offers some guidance, especially American history. Essentially, an “accident” only becomes a real trigger for a full-blown war when Washington wants one; otherwise, it will sweep it under the carpet, even if it involves heavy American casualties. Seen in this light, the current US narrative aims more to make the Chinese look like rejectionists while acting in the most provocative way possible.
Let’s consider three such “accidents” or “incidents”: the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898 that led to the Spanish-American War; the Gulf of Tonkin incident that caused the first and irreversible escalation of the US war in Vietnam in 1964; and the Israeli attack on the naval spy ship USS Liberty during the Six-Day war in 1967.
The USS Maine
A rebellion broke out in Spanish Cuba. That gave the US a pretext to intervene. The Maine was dispatched to Havana harbour to project American powers, and protect US citizens and properties there.
In mid-February 1898, an explosion sank the warship, killing 266 sailors. An official commission investigated and concluded the explosion occurred outside the ship. “[But] the commission refused to blame the Spanish directly,” wrote Walter LaFeber in The American Search for Opportunity, 1865 – 1913, which is the second volume of the Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations.
LaFeber reminds his readers that a second official investigation concluded decades later, in 1983, that the explosion did start inside the ship. It’s worth mentioning that the Maine used a steam engine, which though advanced by European standards, was not state of the art. 19th-century steam-powered vessels had a way of exploding, and the use of safety valves was, for a long time, guesswork rather than exact science or engineering.
But President William McKinley wanted a war, wrote LaFeber, so the Maine was a good enough excuse. He went ahead and had his “splendid little war” of just three-month duration, and ended up annexing Hawaii, colonising the Philippines (which took much longer and killed a lot of locals), and incorporating Guam and Puerto Rico into US territories.