In 1895, following nearly four centuries of colonial rule, Cuba launched its third and final war of independence against the Spanish Empire. Almost immediately, the American population was theatrically captured by the plight of the Cuban people, swayed by oft-exaggerated “yellow journalism” depicting the Cubans as noble warriors and Spain as an archaic evil marked by great barbarism. Publishers of prominent newspapers realized that their financial success depended directly on the spectacle they could manufacture, a revelation that foreshadowed a rapid collapse of journalistic integrity. In turn, the press set out to provoke American intervention; publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst infamously told a reluctant artist, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
The propaganda attained its most hysterical heights following the likely accidental explosion of the USS Maine in February of 1898. To much of the press, Spain’s guilt was instantly beyond dispute. “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” became a widespread rallying cry. Two months later, Congress officially declared war, reasoning that “The people of the island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.” The American people, possessed by a contrived delirium, plunged into war.
The Spanish were rapidly vanquished, but the United States found itself embedded in occupied territory and faced with a new set of possibilities. How could the Cubans possibly expect to receive total autonomy without any concessions to their benevolent liberators? Did they even deserve independence at all? Swayed by material interests, the Americans adapted, along with their propaganda. The press began to cynically depict the Cubans as inferior children incapable of self-rule. Through the Platt Amendment of 1901, Cuba was compelled to forfeit much of its sovereignty for America’s strategic advantage, an arrangement invoked by the United States to permit four subsequent interventions against the former heroes of their story. But soon enough, the convoluted procession of the Spanish-American War escaped the memory of the American people altogether. Although irrevocably conditioning Cuban history, the conflict was represented in American textbooks as a “splendid little war” with minimal repercussions and laid the groundwork for intervention in World War I.
The case of the Spanish-American War is a classic demonstration of a wider phenomenon: American war propaganda exists in a three-stage, self-replicating life cycle, beginning with emotional furor, devolving into cynical self-interest, and finally collapsing into mythology. First, American wars are almost invariably sold through the distinct but intertwined forces of fear and idealism, evoking in the population a dual sensation of terror and inspiration. The enemy nation is to be the source of a two-pronged outrage—one positive, arising from the harm it threatens, and one negative, from the hopeful future it denies. But gradually, propaganda sheds its emotional character in favor of explicit espousal of cold strategic or economic desire. Lastly, propaganda embeds the war in the mythology of American exceptionalism, glorifying its involvement and deflecting moral responsibility for any atrocities committed. In exalting the use of military force, idealization justifies future interventions, and the cycle continues.
Vietnam War propaganda conformed saliently to the three-stage model. The Viet Cong presented an excuse for ideological utopianism and a cause for theatrical paranoia. Unless the United States militarily intervened, Vietnam would not be free to “shape its own destiny,” and soon after, the world at large would tumble like dominoes to the Red Menace. Meanwhile, the press reflected a remarkable servility to the state, parroting outright lies from the White House regarding North Vietnamese attacks on American soldiers and laying the foundation for escalation. But after years spent defending the pursuit of unachievable objectives at the expense of tens of thousands of American lives, the rhetoric degenerated into a coarse defense of strategic interests. As President Lyndon B. Johnson contended in 1965, “If we are driven from the field in Vietnam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promise, or in American protection.” The Vietnamese were increasingly massacred in America’s struggle for self-preservation. As disillusionment set in, media figures advanced the notion that the war was “mired in stalemate,” but championed “a right to carry out aggression against South Vietnam.” A 1967 poll found that 64 percent of respondents had increased support for the war due to TV coverage.
Perhaps most interesting, however, was the transition into the third stage of the cycle. When President Richard Nixon withdrew the last combat troops from Vietnam in 1973, the war was viewed overwhelmingly as a defeat, plunging the country into a period of military isolationism. Yet the propaganda machine was not killed altogether; it simply required more time—and subtlety—to sufficiently reconstruct the narrative of American exceptionalism. Gradually, politicians and the media broadcast the notion that the war itself had been a “noble cause,” but North Vietnamese aggression and the betrayal of antiwar protestors had contorted the well-meaning campaign into an unproductive effort. As argued by President Reagan, “We dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt as if we were doing something shameful.”
The Iraq War further demonstrates this cyclical pattern. Under the guise of spreading democracy and eliminating a nonexistent nuclear threat, media agencies such as the New York Times routinely recycled lies about Iraq’s drive for a nuclear weapon and mocked those skeptical of intervention. The war, at first inordinately popular, eventually devolved into another brutal attempt to safeguard unattainable strategic objectives. When troops were finally withdrawn in 2011, thousands of American soldiers and nearly 200,000 civilians had been killed. Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 Republican primaries was bolstered by an explicit repudiation of the Iraq War.
Now, the second Trump administration exhibits an effort to restore the glory of American military might through rapid, sweeping maneuvers abroad. Most notably, the sudden capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro without any American casualties bespoke a desire to manually jumpstart the propaganda cycle with a renewed faith in military force. Trump wishes the United States to be a power content with its own superiority; by renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War and requesting a $1.5 trillion military budget, he aims—like Reagan—to purge the country of an enduring shame. Moreover, the administration hopes to prove that past disastrous entanglements were not the product of interventionism per se, but merely of political ineptitude. Commenting on his previous incredulity towards military intrusions, Vice President JD Vance stated, “One big difference is that we have a smart president whereas in the past, we’ve had dumb presidents.” Through its dismissal of past catastrophes as strategic rather than structural failures, the administration implicitly safeguards the mythology and allows for further intervention.
Arguably, Trump’s aims have succeeded. Despite his increasing unpopularity, he has now managed to drive the nation into yet another Middle Eastern conflict under a rationale strikingly mirroring that of the Iraq War. But unlike in previous generations, this administration must navigate an unshackled, chaotic media environment largely bereft of institutional influence. With podcasts, YouTube channels, and X accounts supplanting the societal role of mainstream media, no longer can a few pliant news hegemonies shepherd societal opinion into a docile accordance with state policy. As of yet, the consequences of this transition have not been fully revealed. More than a mere shift in form, this development could represent a fatal subversion of the flow of propaganda altogether. Alternatively, internet pundits could simply fold under the weight of state pressure, assuming the responsibility of propaganda dispersion to an audience larger than ever before. Fundamentally, new media poses the opportunity for a deathblow to the propaganda cycle—or its ultimate fortification.