1898-1902:
Cuba
Victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898 left the
U.S. in possession of Spain’s last major Caribbean
colony. After independence in 1902, Washington sent
troops back well into the 1930s, when Fulgencio
Batista seized power. The U.S. helped keep him there
until Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. |
Washington governed the Philippines as a province from
the end of the Spanish-American war until 1946. A
hefty garrison force fought a bloody conflict with
pro-independence Filipino rebels. By the time Japan
conquered the Philippines in 1942, however, a path
toward independence already had been agreed. After
independence in 1946, U.S. troops remained on two
large bases leased from Manila until 1999 and
Washington routinely intervened in domestic politics. |
1904-1999: Panama
Washington won rights “in perpetuity” to the
territory around the Panama Canal after helping locals
secede from Colombia. Washington did little to promote
democracy for decades. In 1999, the canal and adjacent
territory were turned over to local sovereignty and
the county currently is a functioning democracy. |
| U.S. Marines intervened and occupied this nation on
the eastern side of Hispanola after European states
hinted they would intervene to stave off the
nation’s bankruptcy. American troops left in 1924,
but the U.S. Treasury controlled the country’s
finances until 1941. In 1965, Marines imposed a new
pro-American government. True democratization failed
to take root until the mid-1970s. Today, the country
is a functioning democracy. |
1912-1925: Nicaragua
American Marines ruled Nicaragua for 13 years
beginning in 1912, fighting nationalist rebels before
leaving in 1925. They returned in 1928 to fight a new
rebel leader, Augusto César Sandino. The U.S.
withdrew in 1934 after killing Sandino, leaving
Anastasio Somoza in charge. Somoza ruled as U.S.-based
dictator until his overthrow by Soviet-inspired
Sandinista guerrillas in 1979. A CIA-based war against
them ended in 1989, when free elections forced the
Sandinista regime out of power. |
| U.S. Marines entered Haiti in 1915 after a mob
killed the Haitian ruler. Some 20,000 American troops
stayed there, running the country via military
administration, until 1934. The Marines left power in
the hands of Haiti’s national guard, which, in turn,
installed the brutal Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier
into power. He and his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc”
Duvalier ruled until 1986, when Baby Doc fled to
Paris. |
1945-1952: Japan
Gen. Douglas MacArthur sat as military governor of
Japan between 1945-1949. By absolving Emperor Hirohito
of his wartime guilt, MacArthur successfully blunted
opposition to the democratization of Japan, most
notably the drafting of a new constitution that
foreswore war and established electoral laws. In
April, 1952, a peace treaty took effect and the Allied
occupation ended. |
| The four victorious Allied powers occupied sectors
of German territory and quadrants of its capital city,
Berlin. The occupation quickly broke down into rival
Western vs. Soviet zones. “De-Nazification” and
Marshal Plan aid began to transform Western Germany by
the early 1950s, and in 1954 it emerged as the
independent West German state. |
1945-1948: South Korea
The defeat of Japan left Korea, a Japanese colony,
split between U.S. and Soviet control. The U.S.
military governed the southern part of the peninsula
until 1948, when elections established the Republic of
Korea. U.S. forces remained, however, when the
Soviet-backed north refused to hold elections. In
1950, North Korea attacked and war raged until 1953.
U.S. forces – some 38,000 – have stayed ever
since. |
| As in Germany, Austria – which had been annexed by
the Germans in 1938 – was split between victorious
powers. Austria's status remained unclear for a decade
until a treaty ended the occupation, recognized
independence and forbade unification with Germany. |
1965-73: South Vietnam
When communist guerillas defeated French efforts to
reestablish its Indochina colony in 1953, the U.S.
stepped in to back the anti-communist Vietnamese
government. Drawn progressively into the maelstrom,
Washington formally landed combat troops in 1965,
their numbers topping out at 500,000 in 1969.
Throughout, the South’s government remained
undemocratic and corrupt. The U.S. pulled out in 1973,
and the South was overrun by communist North
Vietnamese troops in 1975. |
| U.S. troops landed on this tiny Caribbean island,
citing the arrival of Cuban military advisers and the
threat they allegedly posed to American medical
students studying there. After a short battle, U.S.
troops took control of the island, deposed its
left-leaning “military council” and organized free
elections before leaving in 1984. The country is now a
functioning democracy. |
1994-99: Haiti
When the Duvalier dictatorships ended in 1986, the
Haitian military took direct control of the country.
An election in 1993 quickly led to a coup, which in
turn caused the U.S. to threaten invasion. The threat
forced the generals into exile, restoring the ousted
president, Jean-Bertrande Aristide. U.S. and other
international forces patrolled the country until 1999. |
| The collapse of Yugoslavia beginning in 1990 led to
civil war in its most ethnically diverse republic,
Bosnia-Hercegovina. European-led U.N. force tried to
restore order but failed. In 1995, after years of
steering clear, the U.S. intervened and imposed a
peace treaty that included a NATO-led occupation of
the fractured state. Some 6,000 U.S. troops are still
there, along with 40,000 other forces, in 2003. A
democratic state is struggling to emerge, |
1999-present: Kosovo
Repression by Serbia in ethnic Albanian province of
Kosovo spiraled into civil war in 1999, and the U.S.
led a NATO invasion of the country to force an end to
Serb efforts to deport the Albanian population. Some
60,000 U.S., British, French and German troops
occupied Kosovo after the war, and a force about half
that size remained in place in 2003. Prospects for
democracy in Kosovo and in Serbia remain uncertain. |
| A U.S.-led campaign to find al-Qaida leaders
harbored by the Taliban government swept elements of
both from the central Asian nation. Prospects for
democracy remain extremely fragile. In early 2003,
some 9,000 U.S. forces remained in and around
Afghanistan, many engaged in the hunt for Osama bin
Laden. |
