Sublime

Nothing captured the empty idealism of the age so much as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which was initially signed by fifteen countries in 1928 and eventually included 62 signatories. The parties committed not to resort to war to settle disputes among them. It was less an act of serious foreign policy than an alternative to it—a high-minded statement wi

Since the invasion, Americans have awakened to see more clearly the consequences of America’s recent disengagement from global affairs. The list of damages here is long and demoralizing. It includes all the dire presidential “red lines” against Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea that America never enforced; all the trade and defense agreem

The war may have begun as an empire-wide revolt by Spain’s colonial subjects, but it ended as the “Spanish-American War.” The peace treaty, negotiated in Paris, was between Spain and the United States alone. Spain sold the Philippines to the United States for $20 million. Puerto Rico and Guam (a Micronesian island, valuable as a Mahan-style base) c

Operation MONGOOSE. Right after the Bay of Pigs invasion attempt failed, Kennedy launched a major terrorist operation against Cuba [beginning November 30, 1961]. It was huge—I think it had a $50 million-a-year budget (that’s known);

Democracies flourish when the nation is at peace and the harvest is bountiful—as, historically, was the environment of the professions in the post-World War II era. However, when war is declared or the crops fail, even the most ardent democracy selects a government that will direct the troops and tell factories what to produce. The style, if not th

In the post-war period, much of the non-communist world was opened up to US domination by tactics of this sort. This became the method of choice to fight off the threat of communist insurgencies and revolution, entailing an anti-democratic (and even more emphatically anti-populist and anti-socialist/communist) strategy on the part of the US that pu

Americans often view the Peace Corps as a traditional development organization, although the agency’s goals have never included poverty alleviation. In many ways, the Peace Corps is more like an exchange program: the main purpose is to improve understanding between the United States and other countries.