Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
Marc T. said:We have? Well, I'll give you the Philippines. It seemed a good idea at the time and the Social Sciences were in their infancy and so no one was as smart as we are today. Then there was Japan, a special case due to circumstances and the persons involved. Other than that, where did we do this imposing? Serious question.

I'll grant it's not the best for many place and people but we haven't tried to impose it all that often. A lot of nations have tried to adopt all or parts of it -- that's their problem; it is not from our pushing it on them...
In all candor, we did flirt rather heavily around imposing things on Mexico more than a couple of times prior to 1900, and there are those who see our involvement in Central and South America as attempts to impose our own vision of democracy (not that I'm saying that this is where Marc is going, but those are case studies that I've seen tossed about in discussions like this). Again, though, most of those events were linked in one way or another (often quite strongly) to domestic considerations and events and were not necessarily part of some grand international design. Most US moves into the Caribbean were triggered by fear of external involvement by European powers (and in some, if not most, cases that fear was exaggerated, but it was usually the trigger), as were the Mexican intrigues after the Civil War. There have always been elements that have wanted the US to take a more active international role in projecting our version of democracy, but it's been relatively rare that they've been able to achieve positions of power allowing them to carry that policy forward.

Vietnam is another deal.