Review: An imperialist repents in ‘Gangsters of Capitalism’

Plenty of U.S. veterans of the country’s 21-century “forever wars” — men and women who lost buddies and limbs to roadside bombs and suffer psychic scars — struggle to understand the why behind them. Some wonder: Were they instruments of less-than-noble imperialist adventures?

A century ago, a gimlet-eyed Marine who featured in pretty much every early U.S. empire-building expedition — in Cuba, the Philippines, Panama, Mexico, Nicaragua and Haiti — asked himself the same question. His answer: “Yes.” Smedley Butler was the tip of the spear in democracy-thwarting invasions and occupations beginning in 1898 whose beneficiaries included the banker J.P. Morgan and Standard Oil.

Jonathan M. Katz’s lively, deeply researched “Gangsters of Capitalism” tracks Butler’s three decades of foreign conquest. The 344-page biography follows the blood-soaked transformation of Butler, a Quaker from Philadelphia’s Main Line suburbs and congressman’s son, from capitalist tool to repentant antiwar activist. Why haven’t we heard of Butler before? Perhaps because there’s little to glorify here.

The book combines history, scholarship and travelogue. Katz visited nine countries to report it, including China, where Butler was wounded trying to put down the Boxer Rebellion, to help understand how the United States got to where it is now. Perhaps it’s no surprise a defeated president was able to rally a violent mob to storm the U.S. Capitol a year ago and nearly thwart what had long been considered a stable democracy.