grammatical number - How to treat a country name that has a plural meaning


I was wondering if there was a sentence that contains a country name (or generally a proper noun) that has a plural word in it - e.g., the United States or The United Emirates - how do we treat it? (Sorry if I sound non-technical, as I'm not exactly very good at language).



The United States of America have done something.



OR



The United States of America has done something.



which one is appropriate? Usually, I've been using "has" for countries (treating it as one entity).



Answer



There are many cases where an entity that's made up of plural words is singular. Obviously, the United States of America is a single entity, so "has" is right. This isn't an exception; this is the rule.



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