Sublime

Tampoco sabían gran cosa sobre el futuro de la República Dominicana, sólo que los Estados Unidos y, por supuesto, Betancourt, Figueres, Muñoz Marín y quién sabe cuántos dirigentes latinoamericanos más pedían que volviera la democracia a este país antes de levantarle el embargo.

Japan began the nineteenth century the same way it had begun and ended the two previous centuries, largely isolated from the outside world. In 1853, the United States (a Pacific country looking for new markets) led the charge to open Japan to trade with the outside world. When American warships showed up uninvited to demand access to Japanese marke

The United States entered the war on the British side in 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson declared that the principle of self-determination should govern any postwar reorganization of territories that were formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire.

The bill passed, and speculators scrambled to stake their claims. It was another land rush, this time in the Pacific and the Caribbean. The first batch of islands was added to the United States in 1857. By 1863, the government had annexed fifty-nine islands. By the time the last claim was filed, in 1902, the United States’ oceanic empire encompasse

A bill granting the Philippines independence in eight years sailed through the House in forty minutes, with Democrats for it voting unanimously. Panicked, Quezon arranged to have it blocked by the Philippine Legislature. But this was not ultimately a tenable position for the head of the Nationalist Party, so he supported a nearly identical bill tha

Yalta proved to be a textbook case of the propensity of American presidents to believe that on the strength of their personal relationship with a foreign leader a resolution to intractable problems could be reached, even if that leader was dictatorial and showed an unwavering devotion to what he judged to be his own national interests.

The United States enjoys many advantages, such as a rich variety of natural resources combined with soil and weather conducive to agriculture, a degree of protection provided by two oceans, and friendly neighbors to its north and south. Other U.S. advantages are man-made, including its political stability, its rule of law, its ability to adapt, its

For its part, the Soviet Union did what it could to promote anti-American, Communist regimes around the Western Hemisphere and succeeded in Cuba and Nicaragua. It had the advantage of aiding individuals and movements who were fighting against unpopular authoritarian governments that offered little to their people. But again the Soviet help was just

A separate treaty parceled out significant parts of the Ottoman Empire to Greece, Italy, France, and Britain. A number of independent countries, including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia, were established in Eastern Europe. The majority of the countries that make up today’s Middle East got their start when the Ottoman Empire collaps