“to witness up close a number of civil wars around the globe,” from Central America to the Balkans to Cambodia. The experience gave him a vision of American exceptionalism, or more particularly, exemption from the “cruel edicts of history.”
According to Winik, post-civil-war reconciliations have as bad a track record as republics themselves. Like the Roman Republic, the United Netherlands, and the French Republics I-IV, reunited nations frequently fall apart all over again. It was the good fortune of Americans that they needed not so much to reconcile a nation as to create one that had never really existed in the first place.
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