Talk:Foreign interventions by the United States

Questionable Source
In the section "After the Cold War" is using the Weekly Standard's statement calling "the most successful nation-building exercise by the United States in this century" appropriate? This seems like the espousal of opinion by a clearly biased source and does not add to the information base at all.
 * Yes, that certainly looks dodgy at first glance; I'll look over it later. Vanamonde93 (talk) 15:55, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

No to mergers
list-o-military history / overseas expansion / overseas intervention are three different things Esmehwp 23:23, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
 * But the List of United States military history events has sections on interventions, so this duplicates this.Ultramarine 23:29, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

then shouldn't they link it across to intervention article? ... fine merge them if you want as long as long as you're doin it in good faith Esmehwp 00:13, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I think if you are going to merge the information you should be proactive and argue with the folks who think the information is article worthy in and of itself, e.g. talk to Travb.... Mrdthree 21:45, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * The criticisms not being simply a list of interventions should be merged with the "Opposition to United States foreign policy" article. "Travb" has not objected since I started editing these article series, so he is probably retired.Ultramarine 21:50, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Strongly against. These are two separate subject. Moreover, until a merger is decided upon, please don't gut this article of entries that other editors have deemed necessary to this article. Griot 21:51, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Both articles lists interventions (although the other one has sources). Much of the material here is simply a very incomplete duplication of the other article.Ultramarine 21:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Another editor have pointed out that the other article is a list, while this can have more detail. I think this is a good argument, so I will remove the merger proposal.Ultramarine 00:06, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

If this one may have more detail, it must have solid references that deal with the topic in a way of summary, rather than just a former list expanded with editorializing by a wikipedian. `'Miikka 23:05, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

STRONGLY IN FAVOR OF MERGER -- this article is duplicative of existing articles, and I see no indication (per comment from Miikka) that any proposed revisions will offer anything new. Is this a list of US Military Actions/overseas conflicts? Then it is covered under that article. Is this is a list of U.S. overseas annexations? Then it is covered under that article. I say: delete it and be done with it. Jkp1187 (talk) 22:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Against- As I understand it, the Military Actions Overseas is exactly that, overt military actions by the United States, as admitted to by congressional reports. It does not include covert military, political and economic actions by the United States in foreign countries. Where for instance should US involvement in the 1954 overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala be listed?--David Barba (talk) 00:54, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Needs Total Reworking
It is difficult to tell exactly what happened to this article, other than Ultramarine removed huge amounts of material without discussion. However, I do prefer the current historic, rather geographic division of US interventions as it previously stood. As it stands, the article is currently a poorly written butchered stub. The Cold War section needs the most work, additions. There is extensive scholarly research on US interventions in the world (largely the Third World) since WWII (Cold War). I will shortly begin adding and hope others will join me in rewriting what should be a good and extensive article rather than this stub. I understand a lot of POV issues arise with this sort of subject, so let scholarly work be our bench mark.--David Barba (talk) 09:31, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've come up with a list of countries for US interventions during the Post-WWII/Cold War period. If anyone wants to help out with the leg work of writing bits for each country, feel free. I am sure I missed countries, not too up on my African Cold War history. I put question marks next to countries I am not certain of. Thanks--David Barba (talk) 21:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Cold War: Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, Granada, Haiti?, Honduras?, Nicaragua, Venezuela? Africa: Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), Egypt, Libya, Liberia, Mozambique, South Africa? Asia: Afghanistan, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Korea, Laos, Lebanon, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam, Yemen? Europe: Germany, Greece, Italy

Reversion
I reverted the article to an older version due to the massive deletions made by single user Ultramarine, the effect of which was a butchering of the article to a useless and void stub. The previous version has citation, writing style, and possible POV issues but it is a more fulling fleshed out text, easier from which to work with and improve rather than rewrite wholesale. I hope others assists in the task.--David Barba (talk) 00:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Where is the annexation of Hawaii?
Why no mention? Chwyatt (talk) 09:19, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

List of countries in which the US intervened during Obama
List the countries in which the US intervened during the Arab Spring.

Use this dataset for a comprehensive list of US electoral interventions 1946-2000
http://isq.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/02/13/isq.sqv016

March 1949 Syrian coup d'état
As of 2016-12-23, the article claims that the US frequently used the CIA to covertly interfere in the internal affairs of foreign countries, "starting under President Dwight Eisenhower." The evidence for the US involvement in the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état is not as clear as for the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, but there seems to be universal agreement that (a) the US obtained approval for a pipeline that had been held up in the Syrian parliament, and (b) US officials had contact with the leader of that coup, Za'im, before it actually occurred. Harry Truman was president in 1949.

Given this, I think it's incorrect to claim that covert CIA interventions in foreign countries started "under President Dwight Eisenhower." I will change this. DavidMCEddy (talk) 03:36, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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I have just modified 4 external links on Overseas interventions of the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110805041252/http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/teach/ends/opening.htm to http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/teach/ends/opening.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100116115623/http://www.lyd.com:80/noticias/violencia/what_really.html to http://www.lyd.com/noticias/violencia/what_really.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110529025020/http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=582 to http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=582
 * Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/5PwqRh8BE?url=http%3A%2F%2Fclinton6.nara.gov%2F1999%2F06%2F1999-06-25-press-conference-by-the-president.html to http://clinton6.nara.gov/1999/06/1999-06-25-press-conference-by-the-president.html

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Title needs work
The article includes intervention in Mexico. Also 'of' -can- be read to mean 'interventions by others in the United States'. Suggested retitle: 'Foreign interventions by the United States'. Thoughts? Humanengr (talk) 06:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I Support this change in title. This article is just over a decade old, which raises questions about the need to retitle.  However, I agree with User:Humanegr on this.  DavidMCEddy (talk) 07:53, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Date format
User:Uglemat said, "Cold War: I seem to have invented a new date format". The Wikipedia article on Date format by country summarizes usage in different countries. Usage is not standard even within the same country or city.

ISO 8601 recommends yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss+hh:mm(offset from UTC). For the primary English-speaking countries, the US uses primarily MDY with the month spelled out or abbreviated but occasionally uses DMY. The UK uses primarily DMY but occasionally uses MDY. Canada tends to follow the US in some regions and the UK in others. India primarily uses DMY, but some regions prefer MDY.

When the month is spelled out and the year is given as four digits, there's no ambiguity -- except for dates with months spelled out in languages that are sufficiently different from English to be unusual for someone unfamiliar with the language. For example, someone who does not speak German can probably guess that "Januar" means "January" if the context strongly suggests that it's the name of a month. However, someone who does not know Spanish might be less likely to interpret "enero" as "January".

Fortunately, 2001-09-11 is fairly unambiguously September 11, 2001 (to pick a date for illustration not quite at random). ISO 8601 provides such an unambiguous standard. It has the added advantage that a lexicographical sort will put the dates in the order people expect, and no other date format will do that.

Sadly, ISO 8601 format looks strange and will not easily be adopted. However, I think it's gaining ground, as more people come to see the problem. DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:51, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * The edit summary referred to the comma: I wrote "18 July, 1963". Usually it is written "18 July 1963" or "July 18, 1963". I'm the one who wrote that paragraph, so I'm not sure where I learnt to write that way.
 * Personally I'm a big fan of "18 July 1963". I hope that catches on. People say that ISO 8601 is "unambiguous", but I don't trust it, some people could confuse the month and day part. Uglemat (talk) 00:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)


 * "18 July 1963" is "d mmmm yyyy" in the code used in the Wikipedia article on Date format by country. I found that used in 14 countries in that article.  I found the ISO standard "yyyy-mm-dd" in the the "Details" for 22 countries.  The obvious alternative "yyyy-dd-mm" was not found at all in that article when I checked it just now.


 * I agree that "some people could confuse the month and day part" -- except that if it is ever used, the usage is so rare no one so far has felt it worth mentioning in that article.


 * And "yyyy-mm-dd" IS an international standard. Because it's an international standard -- and (I believe) the only logical alternative as people become more aware of the problems with dates written in different styles -- I think it will eventually become at least as universal as the metric system is today.  That was introduced into France in 1795 but was so unpopular that it was revoked by Napoleon in 1812.  However, it has now conquered nearly the entire world except for the US -- and is slowly making progress there.  DavidMCEddy (talk) 00:41, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

What's "Middle America"?
User:Tobby72 added. This is a useful addition, except that "Middle America" is ambiguous; see the disambiguation page for that term. When I first saw that term in this article, I thought "That's not the US Heartland."

There may not be a better term, but this usage was something of a culture shock for me. DavidMCEddy (talk) 18:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

See also: Foreign interventions by China?
User:2001:5b0:4fc1:c298:497c:a836:edd:6387 deleted the "See also" entry for "Foreign interventions by China". I feel that such a change should be accompanied by a substantive discussion in the companion "Talk" page. That's particularly true for an article with the history of this one: If I read the history correctly, it has been around since 2007. I don't know how long this item has been part of "See also", but I don't think it was added very recently.

Accordingly, I've reverted that deletion. DavidMCEddy (talk) 17:43, 25 December 2018 (UTC)


 * On 2018-12-30 User:2001:5b0:4fc1:c298:497c:a836:edd:6387 again deleted this same "See also" entry. This time,  reverted it before I got to it.  (Thanks, TheTimesAreAChanging.)


 * There probably should also be similar pages of "Foreign interventions by" the United Kingdom (including Great Britain and England), Russian (including the USSR), France, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Greece (including Alexander the Great), etc. And the Foreign interventions by China should probably include its forceful annexation of Tibet and probably other events as well.  However, I don't know enough about those other events to comment.


 * Wikipedia is an all-volunteer project, not counting those who write software and head up the organizing team for major Wikimedia Foundation events.


 * I'm a US citizen, served time in the US military. To those who might complain that I'm "anti-American", I reply that the US is a great nation, but you don't have to be perfect to succeed at anything:  You only have to be better than the alternatives.  Some of my thoughts on how the US got to be the world's leading superpower appears in Great American Paradox.  DavidMCEddy (talk) 10:12, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

reverting questionable deletion re. US bombing the former Yugoslavia in 1999
On 2019-02-18 User:78.127.114.12 deleted the following initial part of a paragraph:


 * To stop the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Albanians by nationalist Serbians in the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's province of Kosovo,

The rest of that paragraph was retained, which is:


 * Clinton authorized the use of American troops in a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, named Operation Allied Force. The CIA was involved in the failed 1996 coup attempt against Saddam Hussein.

The reason given was as follows:


 * Statements from the U.S administration are not sources for encyclopedical statements, especially when the sources are not even working.

I think the comments retained belong in this article, need citations, and the text deleted including citations that seem reasonable to me. The citations deleted include an earlier version of URLs that no longer work followed by what appear to me to be successful attempts to rescue them.

Accordingly, I'm reverting this deletion, apart from the URLs that no longer work. DavidMCEddy (talk) 13:25, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

POV edits
Please refer to Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents for a discussion about the editing behaviour of User:Alexkyoung. His/her contributions to this page are plainly pushing a particular agenda and violate the WP:NPOV policy. Citobun (talk) 05:42, 25 June 2019 (UTC)


 * There is no POV pushing, and this is completely inappropriate to include here on a talk space. DavidMcEddy thanked me for my contributions, and Jamez42 undid your destructive revert and continued to make edits, as did many others. For those of you new to the conversation, Citobun has of late been going on a rampage, reverting many of my contributions labeling it with this kind of stuff. This disruptive behavior is completely uncivil and unwelcomed to wikipedia; and if he continues to harass users who make positive contributions to this encyclopedia, I would strongly recommend a complaint to be lodged to the same noticeboard that he posted above.

If Citobun is reading this, my only advice is to stop this abusive behavior and destructive reverting at once. Alexkyoung (talk) 04:48, 28 June 2019 (UTC)


 * When mentioning someone else, I think it's common courtesy to "ping" them using Template:Reply to to make sure they get notified of that comment.
 * It's also common courtesy and preferred Wikimedia practice to discuss questionable edits on the associated Talk page before actually making such edits.
 * Most edits are made in a good-faith belief that they are making the article better. Even with someone who is paid to make malicious edits, it's still often best to threat their edits in a professional manner, while possibly referring questions to the appropriate Wikimedia committee for possible action on repeated violations of courtesy and possible conflict of interest editing.
 * Peter Binkley in an invited 2006 article for the Canadian Library Association magazine Feliciter said that on controversial topics "the two sides actually engaged each other and negotiated a version of the [Wikipedia] article that both can more or less live with. This is a rare sight indeed in today’s polarized political atmosphere, where most online forums are echo chambers for one side or the other.” This can help build bridges over the walls created by media that must of necessity please advertisers and other elites.
 * Even if people are paid to be nasty and disruptive, they sometimes defect. I think they are more likely defect if they are treated with respect.  And we don't have to be disrespectful when making a request for action, e.g., to Dispute resolution requests/ArbCom.

Needs more listings between 1918 & 1939
There are no interventions listed between 1918 and 1939. But see "Timeline of United States military operations". Egarobar (talk) 21:12, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Lettergate?
Why is there an entire section on this specific (arguably spurious) intervention? It really doesn't belong on this page: far too detailed for such a small incident in the scale of American interventions. I would certainly remove this, and simply replace it with a small blurb, linking to the main page on the incident. ColonelJJHawkins (talk) 14:34, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Did the Philippine-American War end in 1902 or 1913?
This article presents the entire span of armed conflict in the Philippines as occurring between 1899-1913. However, did the historical episode labeled "Philippine-American War" end in 1902 or 1913? Regarding post-1902 conflicts in the Philippines, a contested claim asserts:

"Some historians consider these unofficial extensions to be part of the war."

This claim is used to justify inclusion of the Moro Rebellion in the article info box of the Philippine-American War. Was the Moro Rebellion part of the "Philippine-American War", or was it a separate military episode running concurrent with the "Philippine-American War"? Chino-Catane (talk) 19:09, 4 July 2024 (UTC) Chino-Catane (talk) 19:09, 4 July 2024 (UTC)