The U.S. is obliged to go to war for 67 countries, including Cuba

Thanks to a complicated mesh of treaties and other deals put in place since the end of World War II, the United States is (theoretically) obligated to defend 67 nations — comprising about a quarter of the world's population — in the event of war. This data comes from Tufts University political scientist Michael Beckley, who recently published a study entitled "The Myth of Entangling Alliances."

Some of the countries on the list are obvious (Israel and France, for example), while others, like Cuba, may come as a surprise. Of course, legal obligation does not necessarily translate to military action, particularly if our ally is not attacked within its own borders.

As Beckley notes, for the first 165 years of American history, the U.S. had just one mutual defense agreement, and founding fathers like Jefferson warned against entangling alliances. But Beckley concludes that today American wars are due less to these treaties and more to "the tendency of U.S. leaders to define national interests expansively, to exaggerate the magnitude of foreign threats, and to underestimate the costs of military intervention."

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