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hey, all. ive gotten to 1898 in rewriting (part of) my ASB ATL, and decided a long time ago that the OTL Spanish-American War would be considerably different ITTL. some things i decided on were:
that Spain retains Cuba, but is forced to give them almost absolute autonomy as a condition of surrender; this stems from Teddy Roosevelt leaving the American command just before their last and most important push to seize Cuba
Roosevelt still leads the Rough Riders and other Americans to victory at San Juan Hill, which may take place later ITTL; the idea with him leaving the American command is that he sees some soldiers not under his command harassing Cuban civilians and beats them up for it, which results in him being removed from Cuba, a big mistake on the part of the other American commanders (based on a story about Patton in WW2)
as a result of the war, the US annexes Puerto Rico and the Philippines but, as mentioned before, Cuba is retained by Spain; this is because Spain manages to retake all of its lost territory on Cuba, perhaps using early submarines to both reinforce Cuba and disrupt American vessels (the use of submarines would be due to butterflies; perhaps Spain is the first country to use submarines on a large scale instead of Germany). however, the other Spanish possessions mentioned are completely overrun by American forces and later annexed and made into states
Mexico is involved in the war on the side of the United States and may play a major role in the conquest of the Philipines (it is also more stable and more pro-America)
the war itself may take longer than a few months, perhaps reaching into the early 1900s (1903 at the longest, i'd say); the US still wins the war, though
i already wrote up roughly how i want the war to go ITTL, but would like some more opinions to figure out how different everyone thinks it will be and how to plausibly get the results and changes that i already listed