Civilization and Beyond - Learning from History by Scott Nearing
page 60 of 324 (18%)
page 60 of 324 (18%)
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into more than a score of sovereign states. Minor
changes were made in boundary lines and in internal relationships of property and privilege, but the European maps of the period present a record of persistent fragmentation of the continent into strongly frontiered sovereign segments. 2. Break-up of the European empires after two general wars led to the fragmentation of each empire into self-determining sovereign units. 3. The "third world," consisting chiefly of European empire fragments, has not consolidated, but after the Bandung Conference of 1955 has consisted of a fragmented Africa and Asia torn by domestic and inter-state conflicts and harried by the persistent intervention of the western powers. 4. Rivalry in the Pacific and in Asia has been heightened by the meteoric rise of Japan as a world power, the dismemberment of the Japanese Empire after 1945 and the fierce subsequent economic competition between Japan and her planetary competitors, chiefly the United States. 5. United States efforts to coordinate Latin America as a source of raw materials and a market for manufactures and investment capital have not produced a United Latin American front against a common Yankee menace, but a sturdy refusal even of the tiniest Latin American Republic to surrender or limit its sovereignty has pushed a thorn into the vulnerable side of Washington's Monroe Doctrine control of the western hemisphere. |
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