Several historians today believe that the ship was not blown up by a mine, as reported by the U.S. Navy after the incident, but that it just failed to function, and that was, ultimately, the cause of the explosion. Since the U.S. Navy did not specifically blame any person or country and since Spain (which controlled Cuba at that time and whom the U.S. public eventually held responsible for the explosion) offered to participate in an arbitration process in order to resolve the dispute, it could be argued that the United States should not have gone to war with Spain and that the conflict between Cuba and Spain should have been resolved exclusively between those two nations.
