In its peculiar legal status, Guantánamo Bay was not far off from Guam. They’re a fitting pair: two U.S. outposts, spoils of a not-much-remembered nineteenth-century war, both in the United States without being of it. Such places may seem like bizarre vestiges of a long-ago imperialist era, but they aren’t. Small dots on the map like these are the foundation of the United States’ pointillist empire today.
