According to one strand of leftist thinking, progressives should embrace U.S. global dominance as a vehicle for global emancipation. If that sounds crazy, it’s because it is. And while only a very few, relatively marginal figures today openly profess it—Christopher Hitchens was probably the last famous and unabashed proponent—the theory is, in fact, all too alive and operative on the mainstream left, albeit in unacknowledged fashion.

On March 20, 2003, what was officially one of America's shorter wars began with an airstrike on Saddam Hussein's presidential palace in Baghdad. U.S. armed forces, 160,000 strong, moved out of Kuwait and across Iraq, and after overcoming a few small roadblocks along the way took the capital city within three weeks. On May 1, President George W. Bush declared victory from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, off the coast of San Diego. With combat over, "our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country," Bush said.

Canada has agreed to pay C$2.8bn ($2.9bn; £1.68bn) to settle a class-action lawsuit seeking compensation for the loss of language and culture caused by its residential school system.

Government-funded compulsory boarding schools were part of a policy meant to assimilate children and destroy indigenous cultures and languages.

The money will be paid to a non-profit trust independent of the government.

But the settlement must still be finalised and approved by a court...

With Russian military forces gathering on three sides of Ukraine last month, advisers to President Volodymyr Zelensky urged a low-key response. His top national security adviser, in a cellphone call, counseled him with two words: “Olympian calm.”

The following day, Mr. Zelensky addressed the nation on television and said the threat of war was no greater than any other time since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded portions of the country in 2014.

At last, the U.S. is pushing back on Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s energy imperialism.

His plan to buy out a controlling stake in a major refinery near Houston hit a last-minute delay late last month, when the Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States said it would review the deal.

Democrats face a structural problem in national politics: A good-sized majority of American voters support the party, but that currently translates into a tenuous hold on government. One straightforward solution—some say—is to restructure things by adding more states.

Seventeen years ago, the U.S. and some of its allies launched an illegal invasion for the express purpose of overthrowing the Iraqi government using the bogus justification of eliminating “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist. This magazine was founded in 2002 in large part to oppose that war and the destructive, hubristic foreign policy ideas that fueled it. Seventeen years later, the U.S. is still fighting in Iraq.

"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all." According to legend, Secretary of State Colin Powell offered that pithy thought to George W. Bush in 2002 as they contemplated invading Iraq. As The Washington Post's Bob Woodward later wrote: "Powell…called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it."

For Donald Trump, all is personal.

And in his view, he is not the executive of the company. He is the embodiment of the country. He runs the country the way he ran his business, as the curating and promotion of his personal brand.

The people who support him are customers — people to be sold a vision and a dream. The people who criticize or oppose him threaten the brand and must be dealt with.

President Trump has reportedly talked to his aides and allies about whether the US could buy Greenland – but the country’s foreign minister said Friday that the world’s biggest island is not on the market.

“We are open for business, but we’re NOT for sale,” Ane Lone Bagger told Reuters.

People familiar with the deliberations said Trump asked his White House counsel to look into the matter, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported about his interest.