I left these shores, at Vancouver, a red-hot imperialist. I wanted the American eagle to go screaming into the Pacific. It seemed tiresome and tame for it to content itself with the Rockies.
Why not spread its wings over the Phillippines, I asked myself? And I thought it would be a real good thing to do.
But I have thought some more, since then, and I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Phillippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem.
It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

—Mark Twain, 1900

Excerpt courtesy of the Library of Congress

Using the excerpt, what did Mark Twain believe about the U.S. policy of global expansionism?
A.
He believed that the United States was wrong in trying to impose its control over weaker nations.
B.
He believed that the United States had a moral obligation to take control over weaker nations.
C.
He believed that the United States should limit its economic control to weaker Asian nations.
D.
He believed that the United States should join European countries in controlling weaker nations.

The policy of global expansionism is often justified with the claims that the stronger and more advanced nation (the United States, in this case) has the intention to free the weaker nation from the rule of other colonizer or a certain political regime. Meanwhile, the establishment of the political power and military presence in the Caribbean region were the real incentives of US military involvement in the Cuban War for Independence (1895 - 1898) and the Spanish–American War (1898).

The United States has intended to subjugate Spanish colonies and went to war with Spain in 1898. This short conflict (April 21, 1898 – August 13, 1898) has ended with signing the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898), which ultimately have changed Mark Twain’s opinion about this matter.

The Treaty of Paris is an agreement according to which the control over the Philippines along with Cuba, Puerto Rico and Guam was handed over to the United States. The people of the Philippines continued to fight over their freedom during the subsequent Philippine–American War (1899 - 1902).