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The main landmass of the United States is bounded by Canada and Mexico and contains 48 of its 50 states. The two others, Alaska at the northwest tip of the Americas and Hawaii in the Pacific, became states in 1959. The US was not built on ethnic identity but on a concept of nationhood intimately bound up with the 18th-century founding fathers' ideas of democracy and liberty – still powerful touchstones in both a political and an economic sense. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US holds a unique position – but arouses extreme opinions – as the sole world superpower. Its political, military, and economic dominance means that its foreign policy in particular is the subject of global interest, criticism, and debate.