Treaties in The Books Store

Discussions abound today about the state of the union, its place in the world, and the founding fathers’ intentions. Did they want the United States to become a republic or an empire? Thomas Jefferson, after all, called the young nation an “empire for liberty.” Later words through two centuries all evoked empire: “manifest destiny” in the 1840s, “benevolent assimilation” in 1898, and “our responsibility to lead” in 2002.

Indeed, since Jefferson’s day, Americans have proudly proclaimed liberty and cherished democracy even as they have often behaved imperially. Habits of Empire documents this expansionist behavior by examining each of the nation’s territorial acquisitions since the first in 1782—how the land was acquired, how its previous occupants were removed or reduced, and how it was then settled and stabilized. By 1853, when the continental United States was fully established from sea to shining sea, the nation’s habit of empire-building had become firmly formed.

Each of the acquisitions is a story in itself. In Paris in 1782, the American negotiators—the crafty Benjamin Franklin, the crabby John Adams, and the crooked John Jay—stubbornly and with much luck pushed the new country’s western boundary to the Mississippi River and almost gained southern Canada as well. Hardly any Americans yet lived west of the Appalachians, and their armies had not conquered the region, but they won it nevertheless. That allowed Robert Livingston and James Monroe in 1803 to accept Napoleon’s astonishing offer to sell all of Louisiana. Through a volatile mix of leadership, luck, aggression, chicanery, rampant population growth, and self-confident ideology came the further acquisitions of Florida, Texas, Oregon, and the Southwest.

From the 1850s through the 1920s, America’s empire-building reached across the Pacific (from Alaska through Hawaii and Samoa to the Philippines) and around the Caribbean (from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and several “protectorates” to the Panama Canal and the Virgin Islands). After 1945, American expansion took a new global form, military and economic, and built on the need to contain the Soviet Union in the Cold War. After 2001 and the start of the “war on terror, ” it became both defensive and assertive.

Acclaimed historian Walter Nugent shows how the United States, asserting republican virtue but employing imperial force, has long lived with the contradiction inherent in Jefferson’s famous phrase “empire for liberty.” Enlightening, empathetic, comprehensive, and well-sourced, this book explains the deep roots of America’s imperialism as no other has done.

The Mexican peso crisis struck in late December 1994, coinciding with a new Mexican administration and the end of the first year of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The crisis poignantly highlighted the success and the inadequacy of the treaty-success in the expansion of trade and capital flows, and inadequacy in institutional capacity. The Canadian, Mexican, and US governments defined the agreement so narrowly that they failed to devise a mechanism that could monitor, anticipate, plan, or even respond to such a serious problem. The new president of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada, has boldly proposed transforming the free trade area into a common market like Europe's. This has evoked lukewarm responses from the Bush and Chrétien administrations, which have not yet developed ways to cope with the new problems stemming from accelerated social and economic integration or to take advantage of North America's opportunities.

In this visionary study, Robert A. Pastor seizes Fox's idea and maps out the paths toward making it a reality. He analyzes NAFTA's success and shortcomings, extracts lessons from the European Union's 40 years of reducing disparities between rich and poor countries, and proposes ways that NAFTA can adapt and incorporate those lessons. The centerpiece of the book is a detailed proposal and specific recommendations for new institutions and "North American policies," including plans for infrastructure and transportation, immigration and customs, a unified currency, and projects aimed to lift the poorer regions. The author addresses issues of sovereignty and national interest and concludes with a look ahead toward a Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The search for durable peace in lands torn by ethno-national conflict is among the most urgent issues of international politics. Looking closely at five flashpoints of regional crisis, Sumantra Bose asks the question upon which our global future may depend: how can peace be made, and kept, between warring groups with seemingly incompatible claims? Global in scope and implications but local in focus and method, Contested Lands critically examines the recent or current peace processes in Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka for an answer.

Israelis and Palestinians, Turkish and Greek Cypriots, Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs, and Croats, Sinhalese and Tamil Sri Lankans, and pro-independence, pro-Pakistan, and pro-India Kashmiris share homelands scarred by clashing aspirations and war. Bose explains why these lands became zones of zero-sum conflict and boldly tackles the question of how durable peace can be achieved. The cases yield important general insights about the benefits of territorial self-rule, cross-border linkages, regional cooperation, and third-party involvement, and the risks of a deliberately gradual ("incremental") strategy of peace-building.

Rich in narrative and incisive in analysis, this book takes us deep into the heartlands of conflict--Jerusalem, Kashmir's Line of Control, the divided cities of Mostar in Bosnia and Nicosia in Cyprus, Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula. Contested Lands illuminates how chronic confrontation can yield to compromise and coexistence in the world's most troubled regions--and what the United States can do to help.