Download 1 Entangle Empires and Informal Imperialism: The Rise of the

Entangle Empires and Informal Imperialism:
The Rise of the US in the Mid-Twentieth Century
Julian Go
Boston University
1
I.
In 1940, Adolph Berle, the undersecretary in the US Department State, penned a
prescient passage in his diary. “I have been saying to myself and other people, that the
only possible effect of this war would be that the United States would emerge with an
imperial power greater than the world had ever seen.”1 It is unclear what Berle meant
exactly by “imperial power.” But many scholars today would claim Berle’s statement to
be a portent. The United States did rise from the great war as the world’s leading
economic and military power.2 And scholars since have implicitly or explicitly narrated
the rise as an exceptional imperial transition. Intolerant of old-style colonialism, the
United States pushed the old European empires to dismantle and inaugurated a new
global order of open trade, national sovereignty and freedom. Matching its high morals to
its new economic and industrial power, the United States became a new "anti-imperial"
liberal empire. At the very least, America’s rise to power meant the formation of a new
type of empire; a new “informal” empire. By this new “American way of empire,” as
Thomas Bender has called it, indirect rule and influence replaced colonialism; military
bases, client states and financial aid replaced pith helmets, jodhpurs, and rajas.3 Magdoff
initially called this “imperialism without colonies.”4 More recently, others have relabeled
it “empire by remote control” or “nonterritorial imperialism.”5
1Quoted
in Thomas J. McCormick, America's Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After
(Baltimore, 1995)., p. 33.
2
Ibid., p. 47.
3
Thomas Bender, "The American Way of Empire," World Policy Journal XXIII (2006), Thomas Bender, A Nation
Among Nations: America's Place in World History (New York, 2006)..
4
Harry Magdoff, "Imperialism without Colonies," in Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, ed. Roger Owen and Bob
Sutcliffe (London, 1972)..
5
Engseng Ho, "Empire through Diasporic Eyes: A View from the Other Boat," Comparative Studies in Society and
History 46 (2004).; George Steinmetz, "Return to Empire: The New U.S. Imperialism New U.S. Imperialism in
Comparative Historical Perspective," Sociological Theory 23 (2005)..
2
This narrative of transition now begs reconsideration. The rise of the new US
empire did not happen as neatly as these common tales would suggest; nor did the fall of
the older empires occur so simply by America’s hand. As opposed to a simple
“transition” from dying European empires to a new American empire, there was an
entangled web of inter-imperial relations, forces, and networks between them.6 And when
this enchained network of empires began to breakdown, the transition to America’s
informal imperium indeed occurred. But it was not by the valiant agency of the United
States alone. It was rather effected by the agency of the very peripheral peoples that the
empires, both older and new, sought to subdue.
II.
It is unsurprising that World War II has been taken as a momental turning point; a grand
shift away from away from Europe as the center of global power based upon colonial
empires and towards the rise of a new American imperium based instead upon nationstatism. The Great War indeed weakened the old order. It devastated Europe’s
economies, unsettled colonial institutions, and thus contributed to the decolonization of
long-standing colonies such as India and Indonesia. Still, the colonial empires did not just
disappear. As late as 1951, the colonies and trusteeships of the five major European
powers – Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom –
6
Louis and Robinson have intimated some of these relations, but the relations were probably more extensive than even
they uncovered. See William Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson, "The Imperialism of Decolonization," Journal of
Imperial and Commonwealth History 22 (1994)..
3
numbered 85 separate units. Those units covered 8.9 million square miles and held more
than 170 million peoples.7 Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
We have been told that the US – intrinsically anti-imperial given its exceptional
history of anti-colonial revolution and democratic development – pushed European
powers to decolonize their empires. After all, Sumner Welles in 1942 declared that “the
age of imperialism had ended.” Around the same time FDR was articulating lofty anticolonial principles and spoke of a new world order portending the United Nations. We
have also been told that the US likewise pushed for a new world order based upon open
trade rather than imperial blocs; part and parcel of its anti-colonial posture. And, to be
sure, politicians, some sectors of the business community, and policy-makers worring
about postwar access to new markets and raw materials spoke valiantly of opening up
global trade.8 Yet part of the reason for why the colonial empires were still alive and well
in 1951 was because of US support rather in spite of it. In fact, realizing the economic
goals of expanded markets and materials through open trade went hand in hand with the
persistence of the European colonial empires, not their dissolution. As the business sector
and policy-makers repeatedly stressed, the best way for the US to get new markets and
materials was not by dismantling the existing imperial systems but sustaining them and
tapping into them directly.
In the eyes of policy-makers and business elites, the colonial world was critical
for supplying the ever-increasing demand for various raw materials.9 Analysts noted in
7
John E. Orchard, "ECA and the Dependent Territories," Geographical Review 41 (1951)., p. 66.
For a good discussion, see Phillip Darby, Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American approaches to Asia and
Africa, 1870-1970 (New Haven, 1987)., pp. 194-207.
9
Gabriel Kolko, Confronting the Third World. United States Foreign Policy 1945-1980 (New York, 1988)., p. 54-55
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1941 that the “United States is the greatest ultimate consumer of colonial products.”10 In
1950 the State Department produced memos stressing how important Africa was for
providing raw materials and, in general, as a site for American “trade, investment, and
transportation interests.”11 Various investigative commissions under the Truman
administration demonstrated how important minerals, metals, tin, rubber and other
strategic materials were coming from colonies.12 Another analysis stressed in 1952,
“existing and potential production in colonial territories are vital to meeting these needs
of Western industrial countries.”13
The conclusion of these and other reports was that, to keep the supply incoming
and in hopes of finding markets for American products, the US should support European
colonial structures. European rule, stressed a State Department report in 1950, offered
“political and economic stability.” As long as American capital was afforded “equal
treatment”, America’s “economic goals…should be achieved through coordination and
cooperation with the colonial powers.”14 The scholar Rupert Emerson explained in 1947
that “American interest and interests, narrowly interpreted, would be served more
adequately by the maintenance of the old-time colonial set-up than by ventures into the
uncharted waters of autonomy and independence,” not least because the “old-time
colonial set up” rather than a world of independent nation-states could better serve to
meet America’s need for raw materials and markets.15 In 1953, Under-Secretary of State
10
Arthur N. Holcombe, Dependent Areas in the Post-War World (Boston, 1941)., p. 76
FRUS 1950 p. 1527
12
Darby, Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American approaches to Asia and Africa, 1870-1970., p. 205
13
Philip W. Bell, "Colonialism as a Problem in American Foreign Policy," World Politics 5 (1952)., p. 97
14
FRUS 1950 p. 1527
15
Rupert Emerson, "American Policy Toward Pacific Dependencies," Pacific Affairs 20 (1947)., p. 270.
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5
Byroade added that supporting Europe’s empires would also serve to maintain Europe’s
economy (and so ultimately America’s economy too):
…the granting of complete freedom to those who were not yet ready for it would
serve the best interests neither of the US nor the free world as a whole…Let us be
frank in recognizing our stake in the strength and stability of certain European nations
which exercise influence in the dependent areas. They are our allies. A sudden break
in economic relations might seriously injure the European economy upon which our
Atlantic defence system depends, and at the same time prove equally injurious to the
dependent territories themselves.16
These were not idle words. By the time Byroade made his speech, the American state had
already put its strategy of supporting the European empires into action. Decidedly
retreating from any anti-imperial or anti-colonial rhetoric during the early days of World
War II, the US state pushed the European empires to open their doors to North American
interests and in exchange offered to help keep those empires intact by providing financial
aid. Such aid was sorely needed due to the devastation of the war. Without funds,
Europe’s empires would collapse. And the American state decided to provide them.17
Undoubtedly, the Marshall Plan was aimed at helping Europe recover from the
devastation of the war. But parts of that Plan, carried out the Economic Cooperation
Administration (ECA), were also aimed at helping the European empires reassert
themselves. In fact, a large chunk of the ECA’s work was directed towards supporting
Europe’s colonies. In the 1950s, the ECA sent approximately 7.5 billion dollars to
European empires, with the French and British colonial empires receiving approximately
16
17
The Times, London 2 November 1953, p. 6
FRUS 1950: V, 1527, 1535; Louis and Robinson, "The Imperialism of Decolonization.".
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6.5 billion and the Portugese, Belgian, and Netherlands empires receiving the rest.18 In
this way, Europe’s postwar economies could be restored through continued colonialism.
John Orchard, chairman of the ECA Advisory Committee on Underdeveloped Areas,
explained that the program would help to reduce the “dollar gap” while also providing
Europe with “increased supplies of essential commodities” and “wider markets for
European factories.”19 In other words, the program would help restore the imperial
economic relations between Europe and its colonies that had been disrupted by the war.
At the same time, the United States would benefit. The United States would gain access
to the colonies, which would “supply additional raw materials for our factories and
foodstuffs to supplement our agricultural production” and provide markets in the colonial
world. It would further increase Europe’s own purchasing power, enabling an economic
recovery that would be open to new products from across the Atlantic.20 For these
reasons and others, the State Department conceded in 1950: “the colonial relationship
[between Europe and its dependencies]…is still in many places useful and necessary.”21
Postwar economics was only one string entangling the United States and the
European empires together in mutual support. The other was security and defense, which
became increasingly critical after 1947 when the Cold War intensified. One goal here was
funding Europe’s empires so that they could be used as defensive bulwarks against rival
powers. As a State Department memo in 1952 explained: the United States must “…rely
upon the colonial powers of Western Europe to make an addition to American strength
sufficient to deter and to hold in check the tremendous military power of the Soviet
18
Orchard, "ECA and the Dependent Territories.", pp. 67-72.
Ibid., p. 67
20
Ibid., p. 67.
21
FRUS 1950, V, p. 1527.
19
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armies.”22 The US therefore supported and gave aid to the French military in Indochina
and the Dutch in Indonesia.23 And America’s support of the French military effort in
Indochina in the late 1940s, which covered eighty percent of the French military costs by
the 1950s, was not only aimed at stopping Vietnamese communists from taking over the
country but also at strengthening Britain’s position in Malaysia against the spread of
communism.24 Likewise, the mid-1950s, the US relied upon the long-established British
presence in key areas like the Middle East as a bulwark not against Soviet expansion, not
least against expansion over the region’s vital oil.25 To stop dominos from falling, the
American state simply propped up the European empires against them. George Kennan of
the State Department’s Policy-Planning Staff later declared: “The dissolution of the
[British] empire was not in our interest as there were many things the Commonwealth
could do which we could not do and which we wished them to continue doing.”26 Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. told the Senate Hearings on the North Atlantic Treaty: “we
need…these countries to be strong, and they cannot be strong without their colonies.”27
Supporting Europe’s empires was also important for America’s own military base
system. Prior to World War II, the US had only a small network of military bases, with
overseas bases only its own colonies (e.g. the Philippines, Hawaii, Puerto Rico).28 By the
end of war, however, military strategists planned for an extensive world-wide network of
22
FRUS 1952-4, III, 1105
: in 1950 Truman administration begins supporting financially: allocated $10 million in military aid for the Frenchsponsored governments of Indochina and approved ‘in principle’ a programme of economic assistance to them (Rotter
“Trinagular Route”, p. 333)
24
Andrew J. Rotter, "The Triangular Route to Vietnam: The United States, Great Britain, and Southeast Asia, 19451950," International History Review 6 (1984).
25
(FRUS 1947: V, 495, 524; Kolko 1988: 20)
26
Louis and Robinson, "The Imperialism of Decolonization.", p. 499, fn. 42; orig. Top Secret Meetings of the 7th
Meeting of the Policy Planning Staff, 24 Jan. 1950, FRUS 1950, III, p. 620
27
Quoted in Ibid., p. 468
28
Robert E. Harkavy, Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy (New York,
1982).
23
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security. The war had already brought American forces to the far ends of the earth. But
how to keep them there? Military advisors and policy-planners in the executive branch
landed upon an easy answer: use the territorial domains already established by European
colonialism.
The strategy had already begun in 1941 when the US lent England war supplies in
exchange for ninety-nine year leases establishing military bases in the Britain’s
Caribbean colonies. After the war, the process continued: the US gave loans to Britain so
that Britain could reestablish its overseas empire after the war; in exchange the US was
granted the use of any and all of Britain’s overseas colonies for military bases or
transport nodes.29 The US made similar arrangements with the French, especially in
France’s northern African colonies. Rather than attempting to undo French colonial
control, it became US policy to support it financially because, as the Bureau of Near
Eastern, South Asian and African Affairs determined, French control provided “stability,
even though such stability is obtained largely through repression.”30 This stability would
be important for halting future Soviet aggression and also for allowing the US to maintain
its own military presence in the region. An agreement with France in 1950, for instance,
enabled the US to construct five new air bases in Morocco for Strategic Air Command
while letting France maintain its own flag.31 Even though “imperial of the old school is
practiced” in North Africa, concluded the State Department, “there is one favorable
factor, that of US strategic interests, since we are in a position to use this area in time of
29
Louis and Robinson, "The Imperialism of Decolonization." Harkavy, Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases:
The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy, C. T. Sandars, America's overseas garrisons: the leasehold empire (Oxford;
New York, 2000)..
30
FRUS 1950: V, 1528
31
Harkavy, Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy., p. 50. See also
Kolko 1988: 19; FRUS 1950: V, 1573.
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war.”32 Similarly, the US was allowed to set up an air base in Azores by Portugal, but
only if the US supported Portugal’s bid to reassert itself over Timor (that air base, at
Lajes, would later stand as the vital ground for U.S. airlift missions to Israel during the
Yom Kippur War of 1973).
TABLE 1 HERE [SEE APPENDIX]
In the end, the United States was able to create its vast network of global military
power by relying upon rather than dismantling European colonialism. Out of the top
thirty-nine territories in Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific
wherein the US maintained troops from 1950 to 1960 (measured in terms of # of troops),
eight were US colonies (excluding Japan which the US ruled after WWII temporarily)
and twenty were colonies or protectorates of European countries. Therefore, close to
seventy percent of America’s troop outposts in the peripheral world were in colonies (see
Table 1).33 A secret memo in the State Department in 1950 stated: “the security interests
of the US at the present time will best be served by a policy of support for the Western
Colonial Powers.”34
III.
For at least a decade and a half after WWII, the American state did not rise like a phoenix
from the flames of the European empires; it rather rode wing-to-wing with them in
32
FRUS 1950: V, 1573
This counts countries that later received independence but were colonies when the US first established troop bases.
34
FRUS 1950-3: III, 1078-9; see also FRUS 1052-4: III, 1081; Fraser 1992: 115.
33
10
mutual support and interaction. But did not the US eventually take an anti-colonial stand
and drop its support of the European empires? And did not the US eventually construct
its own imperial network of power that took over where Europe’s empires left off? The
answer to both question is “yes.” But the reality of why and how these processes
unfolded betrays any tale of valiant American anti-colonialism and benevolent American
agency.
To begin we must recognize the profound shift in the global political climate in
the mid-twentieth century. That shift has to do the proliferation of anti-colonial
nationalism, and its associated principles of self-determination, around the globe. The
earliest stirrings of anti-colonial nationalism in the non-white world were already seen in
the Indian National Congress (1885), the Islamic revival movements in the Middle East
(beginning in the late nineteenth century), the Philippine Revolution against Spain
(1896), and the Pan-African Congress in 1900. The Japanese victory over Russia (1905)
and the Xinhai Revolution in China (1911) added fuel to the fire, signifying to the
colonial world that non-white peoples could determine their own destinies.35 Seizing
upon this global development, V.I. Lenin joined the chorus, articulating anti-imperial
rhetoric and calling for self-determination of all peoples.36 It was in fact Lenin’s
discourse that compelled Woodrow Wilson to add pronouncements on self-determination
in his Fourteen Points. Rather than the originator of anti-colonial nationalism, Wilson
was just trying to keep up.37
35
Furedi 1994: 27-8; Grimal 1978: 4-36.
Koebner and Schmidt 1964: 282-4
37
Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism
(Oxford, 2006)., p. 40-41; cites Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin pp. 329-67; Knock To End All Wars, p. 138
36
11
The period between the World Wars was a critical turning point. Wilson had
received for aid from anti-colonial nationalists around the world, but as he did nothing to
help, disappointment if not ire resulted.38 And imperial boundaries existing before WWI
were reinscribed rather than dismantled in the postwar negotiations, much to the further
disappointment of anti-colonial nationalists. In India, Ghandian populism during the
1920s and, given a new global press and literate colonized elites, Ghandi’s anti-colonial
stance received widespread attention in the colonial world.39 At the Fifth Pan-American
Conference at Santiago Chile in 1923, Latin Americans joined the chorus, in this case
charging the US with imperialism for intervening into the Dominican Republic and
Haiti.40 The 1930s depression then laid the socioeconomic conditions for protests across
Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. World War II helped hasten the trend. It weakened
colonial structures, armed colonized peoples, and raised questions about the strength of
European empires and their future viability.41 After the war, anti-colonial nationalism
continued to spread. In 1951, the General Assembly of the United Nations offered a
palpable marker for the end of the imperial age. It voted to for a review of the UN system
of territorial administration of mandates and for a statement to be inserted into
Convenants that “all peoples shall have the right of self-determination” (the US delegate
voted against this).42
38
Ibid.
Stewart C. Easton, The Rise and Fall of Western Colonialism (New York, 1964).
40
Koebner, Richard, and Helmut Dan Schmidt. Imperialism: The Story and Significance of a Political Word, 18401960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, p. 299
41
On the development of anti-colonial nationalism in the early 20th century through WWII, see R.F. Holland, European
Decolonization, 1918-1981 (New York, 1985). pp. 1-12 andFrank Furedi, Colonial Wars and the Politics of Third
World Nationalism (London, 1994)., pp. 10-27.
42
Julius William Pratt, "Anticolonialism in United States Policy," in The Idea of Colonialism, ed. Robert Strauz-Hupé
and Harry W. Hazard (New York, 1958)., p. 141-2
39
12
The emergence and proliferation of anti-colonialism significantly altered the
global landscape, Foremost, it became a powerful mobilizing device, making possible
new coalitions and political formations. As a symbol, anti-colonial nationalism and its
principle of universal self-determination mobilized disparate groups within and across
imperial space. Tribes or religious sectarians could unite on national grounds whereas
they may not have before. And colonized peoples from different countries could find
common cause. Italy’s attempt to recolonize Ethiopia in 1935, for instance, was met with
protests around the world – from Harlem to British Guiana – prompting one scholar to
call it the “first of instance of a Third World-wide reaction to an instance of Western
intervention.”43
The spread of anti-colonial nationalism is critical for our story. To be sure, it did
not go unnoticed by the imperial powers. In 1952, the British Foreign Office prepared a
memorandum on ‘The Problem of Nationalism” circulated in Winston Churchill’s
cabinet. The memo warned of the “dangers inherent in the present upsurge of
nationalism” around the world and in Britain’s colonies, and was especially concerned
about the “intersections” of “Asian nationalism” and nationalism in “the Near East and
Africa.”44 Such nationalism thus became a potent tool by which to accrue political
support and thereby shifted the cultural terrain of geopolitical competition. The USSR,
for instance, tried to use it as symbolic capital. This had begun during the First World
War with Lenins’ anti-imperial rhetoric, prompting Wilson, as mentioned earlier, to
declare support for self-determination. But as anti-colonialists mobilized further during
43
(Furedi 1994: 23).
“The Problem of Nationalism”, prepared in the foreign office in mid-1952: CO 936/217/1, with covering letter by Sir
William Strang (Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office) dated 21 June 1952, FO 936-217, PRO
44
13
and after WWII, and as the Cold War heightened between 1947 and 1951, officials in
Washington became increasingly worried that the Soviet Union would penetrate anticolonial nationalist movements and use the new powerful discourse for their own ends. A
1950 policy paper from the Bureau of Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs
assessed the situation in Africa:
While Communism has made very little headway in most of Africa, European nations
and the United States have become alert to the danger of militant Communism
penetrating the area. The USSR has sought within the United Nations and outside to
play the role of the champion of the colonial peoples of the world. While the greater
portion of the areas of Africa have as yet no firm nationalist aspirations, there are
certain areas such as French North Africa and British West Africa where the spirit of
nationalism is increasing. The USSR has sought to gain the sympathy of nationalist
elements.45
Due to the proliferation and dominance of anti-colonial nationalism, the American state
reconsidered its initial strategy of imperial outsourcing. When and where nationalism was
perceived as relatively well developed, the US came to dissuade the continuance of
European colonialism. This approach was most clearly articulated in a series of policy
papers in the State Department that reconsidered policy towards dependent areas of the
world. The conclusion was that continued support of European powers would be fruitless,
for strong anti-colonial nationalist movements would effectively overthrow them and
create instability and disorder.46 More worrisome, it would damage America’s
45
(FRUS 1950: V, 1525).
On the reconsideration of policy see John Kent, "The United States and the Decolonization of Black Africa, 194563," in The United States and Decolonization, ed. David Ryan and Victor Pungong (New York, 2000)., p. 171-4.
46
14
“reputation” and push nationalist forces to the USSR. Of particular concern was Soviet
“propaganda” in the colonial world that played upon anti-colonial sentiment: this would
portray the US as an imperialist and win over nationalists to the Soviets. Strategists in
Washington therefore insisted that the US would have to disavow its alliance with the
European empires.47 This strategy was clearly stated in a famous 1952 State Department
paper identifying the “General Objectives of US Policy Toward Colonial Areas.”48 It
stated that America’s main objective was to “favour the progressive development of all
dependent peoples toward the goal of self-government.”49 The reason was that:
…substantial advocates toward self-government have been made in a number of
territories and more than 500 million people have achieved independence. Nationalist
movements are gaining strength in non-self-governing territories throughout the
world. US policy must be based on the general assumption that nationalism in
colonial areas is a force which cannot be stopped but may, with wisdom, be guided.
[…] It is clearly in the interest of the US to give appropriate encouragement to those
movements which are non-communist and democratic in character. [This would]
contribute toward the building of colonial areas into bulwarks against the spread of
communism. The very fact of a demonstrated US in democratic nationalist
movements will strengthen the hand of these groups against their communist
counterparts.50
US policy, therefore, should “seek the alignment with the democratic world of dependent
peoples and those achieving self-government or independence; in particular to maintain
47
Darby 1975: 175; FRUS 1950-53, III, 1078-9)
FRUS 1952-4: III, 1082-87.
49
FRUS 1952-4: III, 1082.
50
FRUS 1952-4: III, 1084-5.
48
15
and strengthen their friendship and respect for the US. The importance of this objective is
clear in view of the Soviet Union’s obvious bid for the sympathies of colonial peoples.”51
The fear of nationalist outpouring leading to communism was clear in the
Eisenhower administration’s response to the Suez crisis in 1956. The administration
condemned the Anglo-French invasion against General Nasser in Egypt exactly because
it feared that the invasion would summon a nationalist and communist blowback
throughout the region and across the colonial world.52 We see this same concern
throughout the period after World War II. It is first seen in areas where nationalism
developed earliest and was the most potent. For those areas, like India and Malaysia, the
US encouraged European powers to make concrete and well publicized steps towards
self-government. Similarly, the Kennedy administration later pressured Portugal to
decolonize its African colonies in the hopes that this would take some of the fire away
from the communist movement (even though it would reverse its position as the
importance of the American base in the Azores made itself more clear in the wake of the
Berlin crisis).53 The US also stopped supporting French suppression of colonial
nationalists in Vietnam and Dutch rule in Indonesia, but only when anti-colonial forces
had proven far too resistant to repression and when anti-colonial movement waved antiSoviet banners.54 One State Department official summarized the strategy for Vietnam
simply enough. Suggesting that the US stop its support of French rule given the
51
1087.
See especially Scott Lucas, "The Limits of Ideology: US Foreign Policy and Arab Nationalism in the Early Cold
War," in The United States and Decolonization, ed. David Ryan and Victor Pungong (London: MacMillan Press,
2000)., pp. 147-154 and William Roger Louis, "American anti-colonialism and the dissolution of the British Empire,"
International Affairs 61 (1985)., pp. 413-417
53
Cary Fraser, "Understanding American Policy Towards the Decolonization of European Empires, 1945-64,"
Diplomacy & Statecraft 3 (1992)., p. 119
54
(Fraser 1992: 116-17). Robert J. McMahon, "Toward a post-colonial order: Truman administration policies toward
South and Southeast Asia," in The Truman Presidency, ed. Michael J. Lacey (Cambridge, 1989)., p. 351
52
16
outpouring of anti-colonial sentiment, he asked rhetorically: ”Whether the French like it
or not, independence is coming to Indochina. Why, therefore, do we tie ourselves to the
tail of their battered kite?”55
Because of anti-colonialism nationalisms’ power, not only did the American state
reconsider imperial outsourcing. It likewise shifted its imperial tactics towards informal
modes of influence. A famous National Security Council report stated it boldly. Noting
the staggering development of nationalist consciousness in Southeast Asia, the Council
concluded simply: “19th century imperialism is no longer a practicable system in SEA
[Southeast Asia]…”.56 In other words, to replace colonialism in an age of anti-colonial
urgency and competing Soviet bids for sympathy, the most the American state could do is
turn to hidden tactics of informal empire – propping up clients or covertly manipulating
outcomes – for now nominally independent nations. A memo by the US Consul General
at Leopoldville, Congo, in 1957 is suggestive. First, he wrote that the US should stop
supporting European colonialism lest Africans turn to the Soviets. “Now that the issue of
‘colonialism” is being moved front and center by the Soviets the essential thing it seems
to me is that we free ourselves from the vice…. The US should stand for freedom from all
forms of oppression, for self-government, and for independence based upon selfdetermination.”57 Second, he suggested that the US should maintain influence in the
region not through the colonial powers but through financial aid. In other words, rather
than arouse the indignation of anti-colonial nationalists, the US should
55
Date unknown; quoted from Lloyd C. Gardner, "How We 'Lost' Vietnam, 1940-1954," in The United States and
Decolonization, ed. David Ryan and Victor Pungong (New York, 2000)., p. 133; org. Williams et al. America in
Vietnam p. 91
56
Quoted in Westad 2005: 113; orig. from NSC 51, US policy towards Southeast Asia, 1 July 1949, Declassified
Documents Reference Service, on www.ddrs.psmedia.com)
57
(FRUS 1955-57, XVIII: 27; see also 1951: VI, pt. 1, p. 8-9).
17
“…maneuver….by abolishing the vestiges of the ‘older’ imperialism’” and replacing
them with new forms of influence like direct economic support.58 Only a few years later,
such a “maneuver” was indeed made in the Congo, but it did not only involve economic
support, nor was it a peaceful process. It involved the CIA, bribery, and a coup: in effect,
the US stopped supporting the Belgians but only to replace them with a man named
Joseph Mobutu.
This would be a pattern repeated throughout the disintegrating colonial world: the
US turned away from the colonial empires only to deploy in their place new mechanisms
of power. Since European colonial rule was no longer tenable, and since a new round of
colonization by the US would face the ire of nationalists, the US was constrained to
outsource imperial functions locally, thereby creating a vast new imperial network based
upon clients, bribes, and bases rather than colonies. This was indeed an imperial
transition. It was a succession from colonialism to informal rule, from European
metropoles to Washington, D.C.. But this was not always if ever an easy process brought
about by valiant US agency. Nor was it a reflection of America’s ostensibly essential
democratic national character. It was an often violent process that was unleashed as a
pragmatic American state sought to contain and channel the power of anti-colonial
nationalism around the world.
58
FRUS 1955-7: XVIII, 27.
18
Table 1
US Troop Stations, 1950-1960
Top Thirty-Nine Non-Western Countries according to Number of Troops
COUNTRY
Japan
Republic of Korea
Hawaiian Islands
Alaska
Philippines
Guam
Puerto Rico
Morocco
Taiwan
Libya
Turkey
Bermuda
Marshall Islands
Lebanon
Saudi Arabia
Midway
Hong Kong
Vietnam
Eritrea
Algeria
West Indies Federation
Bahamas
Malta
Iran
Haiti
Johnston Island
Volcano Islands
Thailand
Bahrain
Pakistan
Trinidad
Australia
New Zealand
Jamaica
Malaysia
Egypt
Antigua
Ecuador
India
TOTAL
NO. OF
TROOPS
1,687,509
1,573,585
456,264
442,863
153,324
152,246
142,486
110,811
52,144
47,168
40,700
36,393
25,963
18,105
12,848
12,408
11,343
9,311
8,724
7,043
6,432
5,404
5,122
4,271
4,031
3,749
3,562
2,720
2,341
2,276
1,396
1,374
1,082
1,016
953
828
638
525
499
DEPENDENCY
STATUS OF COUNTRY
(a)
Independent
Independent
US
US
US
US
US
France
China
UK-France
Independent
UK
US
Independent
Independent
US
UK
France
UK
France
UK
UK
UK
Independent
Independent
US
US
Independent
UK
UK
UK
UK
UK
UK
UK
UK
UK
Independent
Independent (1950)
(a) Refers to status at time of US basing agreement or initial station; includes colonies,
protectorates, or (for US) “outlying territories”
Sources: Dependency status, Statesman’s Yearbook; Troops, US Department of Defense,
Statistical Information Analysis Division, “Military Personnel Historical Reports”
(http://www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/military/history/309hist.htm. Accessed Jan. 2006)
19
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