Problems of Expansion

Congress says Cuba is to be left to its people—but what if they cannot keep the peace? Whitelaw Reid turns that pledge into a harder question: can a nation intervene and then disclaim responsibility for what follows?

Written amid the 1898 war with Spain, these papers and addresses confront an unsettled question: what should the United States do with the territories it has conquered? Beginning with Cuba, Reid argues that duty must come before convenience, weighing the promise of self-government against the danger of leaving the island with a government no better than the one America went to war to remove. He compares the dilemma with England’s continuing involvement in Egypt, and tests the limits of constitutional principle against the obligations of power. When can a nation honestly say its work is done?

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