Blume outlines American Wars
ALTAMONT The Spanish-American War made the United States a world power and marked the beginning of modern diplomacy, says a local professor.
Ken Blume sees similar patterns between that 19th-Century war and our 21st-Century war with Iraq.
"We didn’t have any ambassadors at all until the 1890’s," said Blume.
An Altamont resident, Blume is a professor of history and chairs the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Albany College of Pharmacy where he has taught for 17 years. Scrawcrow Press, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., recently published his book Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy from the Civil War to World War I.
His new book alphabetically outlines all of the terms and phrases used from the Civil War to the First World War.
"I wasn’t quite sure how to approach writing a reference type book like this. When I got into it I found it quite fun. The challenge was finding a reasonable word limit," Blume said. "It was an opportunity to think about a lot of these big issues. It gave me a perspective I never had before, even though I have studied this period for the better part of my career."
"The stakes were very different," said Blume about 19th-Century diplomacy, "depending on your assessment of the world today."
Blume was not exactly comfortable with word "parallel" when comparing the Spanish-American War and the current Iraq war. There are many variables in the conditions leading up to both wars, Blume said.
"It wasn’t a matter of needing Cuban sugar, or we would die," said Blume. "After all, the weapons were not as destructive during that time."
He did, however, say that patterns in American diplomacy leading up to both wars were similar.
"There was probably an over-emphasis with the threat that the situation posed to the United States," Blume said.
The media factor
Media and its effect on public opinion was a big factor in the lead-up to both wars, said Blume. The Spanish-American War had the first major, and often sensationalized, media coverage. With the explosion of the U.S.S. Maine in Cubas Havana Harbor, newspapers quickly polarized the American public even before a proper investigation of the explosion was conducted.
Slogans such as, "Remember the Maine, and to hell with Spain," quickly become a part of the public mentality toward a second-rate imperial European power.
"The media was the newspaper in the Spanish-American War," said Blume.
Blume joked about William Randolph Hearst, an American newspaper magnate from California sending an artist to Cuba to sketch pictures for his flagship paper, The San Francisco Examiner.
When the artist said there was no war to sketch, Hearst supposedly told him, "You send me the picture, and I’ll find the war." This type of rationale was often the case with sensationalizing newspapers during that time period, said Blume.
"The newspapers blew it out of proportion, no pun intended," Blume said, as he described the rise of yellow journalism and tabloid news during the Spanish-American War.
Blume pointed to a recent study of the Maine which suggests the explosion was the result of internal complications and not because of foreign sabotage.
Media is still being used in modern times, as during the buildup to ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. News outlets aired images over and over of then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, standing before the United Nations with a small glass vile, saying that a similar amount of a biological agent could wipe out an entire city. Similarly, no American can forget the images played over and over of the terrorists attacks which took place on Sept. 11, 2001.
Much of the American public believed Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, partly because of vast media coverage, even though the United States Government later announced that its intelligence information was inaccurate. Powell has since told several media outlets, that, if he had known the information was faulty at that time, he may not have called for the use of military force in Iraq.
The media has the ability of making the general public aware of what is going on in the world and in their own backyards, said Blume.
"Technology in the late 19th-Century and now, have made war a more immediate experience"and more and more average people are aware of what their government is doing," Blume told The Enterprise, about the correlations between technology, media, and public awareness.
A major difference between diplomacy leading to the Spanish-American War and the Iraq war is a direct result of the changing technology. Blume said, because of delays in communication in the 1800s, people were more easily calmed because the events were less current, less immediate. Those making foreign policy at that time were better able to keep things balanced, added Blume.
Today that is not possible with several different forms of instant communication and people traveling around the world much faster than previously.
The first war photographs taken, said Blume, were during the Civil War. The pictures showed fields of dead bodies and many people lost their romanticized view of war as a result.
"People were shocked to see this, and for it to seem so real," said Blume, about people’s reactions to the Civil War photographs.
Blume explained, much like the Vietnam conflict being broadcast into the homes of millions of Americans, the photographs taken during the Civil War changed the way Americans viewed war.
Forgetting the past"
"It is typically American to have very short memories," said Blume. Dismissing the cliché, "History repeats itself," Blume said, that similar patterns are apparent which most probably have to do with human nature more than anything else.
"A nation is made up of people, and people act in a certain way," said Blume. "International diplomacy is made by people and carved out by people."
"Lessons of the past" can be used as reminders and guideposts for the future, said Blume. All too often, Americans do not recognize these patterns and therefore either fall into similar patterns or simply do not prepare for them.
Americans also tend to look at their successes and not at their failures, according to Blume.
"There is an overwhelming sense of optimism in America, and it is historically an American trait," said Blume. "The problem with the U.S. and the American people is that we haven’t had enough failure. The American people have always been very successful."
Blume said he believes, in modern times, the United States uses a World War II model as an approach to international diplomacy and our role in the world. He adds, "The lessons of these positive experiences is what we always expect to happen."
However, that is not always the case, which is part of the reason why Americans still carry around bruised egos from the controversial Vietnam conflict in the 1960s and 70s, said Blume.
"In the Gulf War, you could almost see the government trying to avoid what happened in Vietnam. That doesn’t seem to be the case in the Iraq war," Blume told The Enterprise.
Much like Yugoslavia, Blume said, maybe Iraq should not be a single country, because historically it never was.
"It is American naïveté to think we can walk in, snap our finger, wave a magic wand, and make everything democratic," said Blume.
The 19th-Century was drastically different since America was not a targeted enemy, and there were not adequate weapons for smaller nations to threaten the United States security, explained Blume.
"During the Cold War period, you could say, for example, that the Soviet Union was the number-one enemy. Now, you can say this international network of terrorists is our enemy," Blume said. "You couldn’t do that in the 19th-Century. America didn’t have any one enemy. Certain countries did not like the U.S., but they we were not enemies."
Today, however, there is a feeling that American growth and prosperity is connected with international ties, Blume said, and that as Americans we are trying to find out what we are to the world today.
"If you read the words of the politicians of that period," he said of the late 19th-Century, "you can still hear it today. What is the role of the U.S. as a beacon of liberty and freedom" We liked to talk about it then and we still do today," Blume said.
"Once slavery was abolished after the Civil War, the United States could be a moral beacon again"These lofty ideals, the right ideals, these concepts all came from the period of the Spanish-American War," said Blume.
Today there is still a lot of rhetoric," Blume said, "about how the U.S. has to do good things around the world."
