Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Which of these countries has the United States never declared war on?

Ahh, foreign policy.  War, trade, tariffs, sanction, mental evaluations of foreign leaders health...wait, what?  Let's just move on.  We don't deal with foreign policy much in either of our games, but this is one of those questions that does, and it's on a big subject: war.  So, from our Pocket Trivia: US History game:  Which of these countries has the United States never declared war on?  Britain, France, Spain or Hungary?  


This one isn't too hard if you know your foreign history.

The U.S. declared war on Britain in 1812 during the appropriately named War of 1812.  I didn't count the revolutionary war since that wasn't necessarily the "United States" declaring war (at least as the United States exists today), but the War of 1812 was the first time that the United States ever actually declared war.

The U.S. declared war on Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American war.  The war lasted a mere four months and saw the U.S. bushwhacking the Spanish and annexing Puerto Rico, the Philippians and Guam.

The U.S. declared war on Hungary during World War II.  The U.S. actually made three separate declarations of war during World War II - on December 8, 1941, the U.S. declared war on Japan, then followed up three days later by declaring war on Nazi Germany.  A third and final declaration of war was issued on June 5, 1942, against Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.  That is the last time that the U.S. has declared war on anyone.

That leaves France - yes, despite the advent of Freedom Fries, the U.S. has never declared war on France - in fact, were it not for their assistance during the Revolutionary War, the U.S. may not be a country to this day.

Above: An Undeclared War?

No comments:

Post a Comment