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Map 23.2 Two Faces of an “American Empire”Those who argue that the United States constructed an empire in the second half of the twentieth century point both to its political/military alliances and interventions around the world and to U.S. economic and cultural penetration of many countries. The distribution of U.S. military bases, a partial indication of its open and covert interventions, and the location of McDonald’s restaurants indicate something of the scope of America’s global presence in the early twenty-first century.