The Politics of Intervention

264 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

were willing to follow a more expedient course: to give the
politicos the armed forces they wanted for internal security.
The officers could see no constructive purpose in stimulating
party politics and establishing the governmental machinery
of a working democracy for an undemocratic society, and they
said so. They did not, however, argue their case outside their
own circle of Army associates and the official channels of
the government. To a large degree, they accepted limitations
on their reforms because they could see few possible political
allies in either American or Cuban civil society.
There were other inhibitive influences besides their political
isolation. The most important was the attitude of the Army
itself. In 1906 the new colonial possessions, pacified or not,
presented the United States Army with demanding strategic
problems it did not have before 1898. Confronted with new
tasks, the Army rapidly lost its interest in constabulary duties
and colonial administration. By 1909, it had become thoroughly
involved in planning and organizing for war with one or
another of the major world powers. This was its own in­
evitable adjustment to the United States new stature as an
international force. As the Army redefined its missions and
professional interests, it placed a lower priority on the skills
of maintaining internal security and nation-building. The
officers who had made careers in Cuba and the Philippines
had to refashion them at the Army War College and on the
General Staff within a decade. For the Army, as well as for
the nation, there was little time for unpopular occupations
in the Caribbean and the reform of Latin republics.
Throughout the occupation the Army officers consistently
found themselves thwarted by the central tenet of American
policy: the Provisional Government's function was to liquidate
the intervention of September, 1906. While the officers saw
their tasks as eliminating the causes of insurrection and of
continuing the Americanizing, reformist work of Wood's
military government, Roosevelt, Taft, and Root viewed occu­
pation policy only in relation to restoring a Cuban political
balance which would allow the United States to withdraw.