In a ravenous fifty-five-day spasm during the summer of 1898, the United States asserted control over five far-flung lands with a total of 11 million inhabitants: Guam, Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines,...
Americans had to choose between permitting them to become democracies or maintaining power over them. It was an easy choice.
Acheson immediately understood the urgency of this message. He summoned Ambassador Franks and told him that the United States resolutely opposed the use of force or the threat of the use of force agai...
According to historian Ellen Hammer, he (Pres. Kennedy) was, 'shaken and depressed.' to realize that, 'the first Catholic ever to become a Vietnamese chief of state was dead, assassinated as a direct...
Most American-sponsored regime change operations have, in the end, weakened rather than strengthened American security.
Americans overthrew governments only when economic interests coincided with ideological ones.
They led to the fall of leaders who embraced American ideals, and the imposition of others who detested everything Americans hold dear.
Dulles had two lifelong obsessions: fighting Communism and protecting the rights of multinational corporations.
We used to be the fucker, one of Anaconda’s lawyers lamented. Now we’re the fuckee.
The central reason that Bush rejected the ambitious option of long-term engagement in Afghanistan, however, was that his attention was focused elsewhere. He understood the importance of stabilizing Af...
Oscar-winning triumph. The New York Times called it a disturbing revelation of the savagery that prevailed in the hearts of the old gun-fighters, who were simply legal killers under the frontier code....
Life is not shaped by what happens to you but by how you react to what happens to you.
Was brought into the firm, but his network of global contacts quickly paid off. Within the firm he became known as the little minister. Although he often worked in Europe, he also became the firm’s ke...
The shah did not tolerate dissent and repressed opposition newspapers, political parties, trade unions, and civic groups. As a result, the only place Iranian dissidents could find a home was in mosque...
The day’s most vivid exchanges were about a delicate but serious matter: the extreme foreignness of native Hawaiians. Both sides used racial arguments. Annexationists said the islanders’ evident savag...
That strengthened the planters’ opposition to democracy, since universal suffrage would most likely have produced a government dominated by nonwhites.
President Kennedy does not announce a clear decision, but the group proceeds as if the United States does support the coup.
Had we to do it over again, he said in an interview sixteen months after the invasion, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic success.
Diem complained about all these soldiers I never asked to come here.
Modern Afghan history shows that an ounce of nation-building prevention will be worth a pound of military-operation cure.