President McKinley and the Meddle Trap

The next appointment From an article published by Aroop Mukharji on October 1, 2023 in the International security magazineprovides information on President William McKinley’s handling of the Philippine Islands and military intervention in the late 1890s. He read,

The meddler trap denotes a self-entanglement situation, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels he can solve it, and values ​​the solution to the new problem more because of the initial intervention. Inflated valuation is driven by a cognitive bias called the endowment effect, whereby individuals tend to overvalue assets they feel they own. A military intervention provokes a feeling of ownership of the foreign territory, triggering the endowment effect.

According to a simple definition from Dictionary.com, “meddle” means “to become involved in a matter without right or invitation; interfere in an unofficial and unwanted manner.” Meddling defines many US foreign policy decisions where the “Meddling Trap” begins with President McKinley.

President McKinley did not initially set out to annex the Philippines. The declaration of Spanish-American War, passed in 1898 by the United States Senate, allowed the American army to place around 14,000 troops in the Philippines, leading to the conquest of the island chain. This is where the mentality (cognitive bias) of valuing what you “own” comes into play. When you value something that comes from conquest, like a nation, then it is difficult to let it run on its own without interference or oversight.

The Philippine Islands are the size of the US state of Arizona, with around nine million inhabitants in 1898 and more than 6,500 miles west of California. The islands were poor in natural resources and a non-existent manufacturing base in 1898. President McKinley’s thoughts were unclear as to why he pushed for the annexation of the Philippines. This is because he did not leave enough documents for historians to clearly discern his decision-making process.

Fighting broke out on February 4, 1899 between American forces and Filipino nationalists seeking independence. The Philippines was annexed on February 6, 1899, with the approval of the Treaty of Paris by the United States Senate. It was the largest American annexation outside our hemisphere.

The next Filipino-American War It lasted three years and resulted in the deaths of more than 4,200 American soldiers and more than 20,000 Filipino combatants. Up to 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, hunger and disease. Would this war have happened if the United States had not annexed or militarily intervened in the Philippines? This is an unintended result of the busybody trap. According to Mukharji,

Individuals tend to overvalue assets that they feel they already possess (regardless of whether in fact possess the good). The deployment of troops fosters an expanded sense of ownership over territory. Before the intervention, problems abroad may seem distant and unimportant. But after the intervention, even minor problems abroad take center stage. In other words, military intervention abroad can boost perceptions of national interest, and not just the other way around…

(McKinley) believed that the Philippines was important to American interests because he already felt he owned the Philippines. That sense of ownership produced the endowment effect, leading McKinley to overvalue the Philippines.

He wanted to solve the problem that the original act of intervention created, but he valued solving that problem more because of the initial intervention. The busybody trap leads to a circle of intervention when the way out of the circle is to not intervene at all. Mukharji continue,

The counterintuitive idea that McKinley valued the Philippines primarily because American forces were already there captures the tangled essence of the meddler’s trap. National interests can often drive a military presence abroad. But McKinley’s decision illustrates that a military presence abroad can also advance national interests.

America’s foreign wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were traps for meddlers. American leaders had great difficulty removing American military personnel from military interventions abroad, even with bipartisan support. The appeal of maintaining an American military presence in a nation leads to an entitlement mentality where this problem and this nation are ours to influence.

The history of Vietnam dates back centuries before Columbus discovered America in the 1490s. Iraq has at least four thousand years of civilizations. Afghanistan is known as the “cemetery of empires”—Alexander the Great’s campaign in 330 BC. C., the British from 1839 to 1842 and 1878 to 1880, Russia’s attempt in the 1980s, and the United States from 2001 to 2021. This history implies that the United States should not intervene financially, militarily, and politically in any nation.

Many national leaders and their citizens do not like another nation telling them what to do, especially when they have not asked for advice. Meddling is a centuries-old problem that can be greatly reduced by asking this question: Is what another nation is doing causing harm to my country? If the answer is doubtful or clearly not, then do not meddle in their affairs. It is easy to apply in human relationships and can be applied to foreign relations.