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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31872 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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(continued from OP)

The Dutch Empire

The Netherlands is the strongest example of America forcing an empire into actually decolonizing. Why? Because the Netherlands is our greatest foe and must be destroyed at all costs we were fighting a prestige battle in southeast, first against Japan and then later against both the Soviet Union and the PRC, and support for decolonization was the currency that purchased regional alliances. Public opinion on Dutch repression had soured everywhere as well, within the American public and even within the other major colonial empires, and after the Indonesian nationalists crushed a communist rebellion they cemented their reputation as a potential anti-communist bulwark within the region. The Netherlands having outlived its usefulness and dragging down public opinion everywhere, America threatened to cut off Marshall Plan funds unless the Netherlands agreed to decolonization. America allowed the Dutch to keep West New Guinea for another little while and eventually encouraged them to pull out of there as well. Don’t worry though, we coup’d Indonesia’s anti-colonial leader shortly after and helped them genocide all the leftists.

Suriname negotiated directly with the Dutch for their independence; America was not involved.

The Belgium Empire

Rwanda, Burundi, and the DRC all achieved independence without American intervention. See below comment for more detail on the DRC.

The Portuguese Empire

In 1944 the US agreed to respect Portugal’s sovereignty over its colonial possessions in Africa and even restore its control over East Timor in exchange for gaining a military base on the Azores. Following the war Harry “I have always been an anti-colonialist” Truman, focused on Soviet containment, greenlit Portugal into the Marshall Plan and NATO and “never regarded the existence of the Portuguese colonial empire as an obstacle to the establishment and maintenance of good relations with Lisbon”. When India tried to kick Portugal out of its remaining enclaves, the Eisenhower Admin formally recognized those territories as Portuguese “provinces”.

As Soviet expansion in Africa spread, and the Portuguese repression of the Angolan rebellion grew to be an international embarrassment, the Kennedy Administration stopped selling them weapons, started voting in favor of unsuccessful UN Resolutions for Portugal to “consider” reforms in Angola, and started offering support to the UPA (later the FLNA) (notably, in their fight not against Portugal, but against the Communist Soviet backed MPLA).

This was short lived, however, during the Cuban Missile Crisis America tracked Soviet submarine movements using the Azores base, which further cemented its importance. Shortly Kennedy reversed course, allowed weapons shipments to be sold to Salazar in 62 and 63, barred American officials from communicating with Angolan rebels, and even sent Portugal aid packages. The US moving forward abstained in UN resolutions or voted in Portugal’s favor. Little changed with LBJ; under Nixon’s “Tar Baby Option” of not opposing the white minority governments in Southern Africa, a treaty was concluded in 1971 reestablishing American support for Portugal and supplying generous grants, loans, free military advisory officials and new weapons sales (against the will of Congress).

The Empire eventually ended in 74 not because of the US but the Carnation Revolution, in no small part driven by a population sick of being taxed and conscripted for colonial wars. The US was not involved in the coup and rather looked upon it warily as the possible beginnings of a Communist state. In the wake of the revolution “the United States, unlike the UN and the majority of Western European governments, did not exert significant pressure for rapid decolonization,” and even encouraged a two year transition period rather than the immediate independence demanded.

The Spanish Empire

The Americas won their independence from Spain with no intervention on the part of the US (who promptly took a bunch of Mexico’s newly independent territory). America fought against Spain in the 1898 war to “liberate” its colonies, and then just colonized them ourselves and ruled over them from afar for decades to come, often brutally suppressing their attempts at independence. We also later separately conquered and occupied for decades the former Spanish colonies of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and otherwise coup’d any anti-colonial leader we didn’t like and frequently supported brutal dictators that would be our own puppets. In my opinion all this is near fatal to the idea that America opposed colonialism because we ideologically identified with the victims; we literally just were a colonial power ourselves.

Conclusion

Tl;dr There are two things America can’t stand in this world: anti-colonial leaders trying to deny our hegemony, and the Dutch.

America played the primary role in decolonizing Indonesia (including West New Guinea), may have played an important but uncertain role in Egyptian independence, and advocated half heartedly and unsuccessfully for the decolonization of the Portuguese Empire and British India, but mostly tolerated or supported both Empires. In situations where America supported decolonization, it looked much less driven by ideological dogmatism or anticolonial sentiment than by a desire to maintain a good reputation among other countries that could drift to the USSR and China. More frequently America continued to sustain diplomatic relations and military support for colonial empires and their successor states long after public opinon in Europe and the rest of the world had turned on them. The overwhelming majority of colonies earned their independence without American intervention but due to factors like sustained counterinsurgency, being too costly to maintain, dwindling public support, and dwindling benefit to the metropole. In other areas America literally just colonized countries ourselves.

I really liked this detailed writeup, puts a lot into perspective.

Thanks, much appreciated.

The Belgians were quite upset with the US (c.f. Michel Struelens' book) for supposedly making decolonization in the Congo go badly, especially under the Kennedy administration. The Kennedy administration did a lot to increase the presence of the UN in the Congo, and the UN actions were in turn heavily driven by resentful anti-colonial nations like India and Ghana. Apparently the Johnson administration was not as anti-colonial and reversed many of these policies, but the damage was already done.

I don't think anyone would call our approach to the Congo "anti-colonial" though. We looked the other way when the Belgians tried to create a secessionist state in Katanga, refused to give Lumumba any assistance in fighting the secession, and refused to convince Hammarskjöld that the UN should help either:

The arrival of the United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) was initially welcomed by Lumumba and the central government who believed the UN would help suppress the secessionist states. ONUC's initial mandate, however, only covered the maintenance of law and order. Viewing the secessions as an internal political matter, Hammarskjöld refused to use UN troops to assist the central Congolese government against them; he argued that doing so would represent a loss of impartiality and breach Congolese sovereignty. Lumumba also sought the assistance of the United States government of Dwight D. Eisenhower, which refused to provide unilateral military support. Frustrated, he turned to the Soviet Union, which agreed to provide weapons, logistical and material support.

After refusing to assist Lumumba in holding together his nation's soveirgnty against his former colonizer we drove him in desperation to the last major power around, the USSR. For this mistake we immediately made plans to have him killed, and then when he was eventually assasinated with assistance from the Belgians, rather than condemn this colonial coup we became bosom allies with his successor, the tyrant Mobutu. This was all already complete by the time Kennedy took power, who continued to maintain positive relations with Mobutu:

In the Congo, U.S. policy [under Kennedy] seldom departed from the policy preferences of Belgium and Britain. The Administration initially supported negotiations to foster unity between the Congo's warring factions and, later, reluctantly endorsed the use of military force to achieve this goal. Throughout the administration, it sought a policy acceptable to Belgium and Britain. Once a degree of order was established by early 1963, the U.S. reduced its own involvement while urging Belgium to assume increasing responsibility for the country. A February 1963 government document captures the character of American policy toward the Congo during the Kennedy administration with the observation that the U.S. had conducted its Congo policy "in association with" Belgium's leader and even avoided any irreparable parting with Britain...

Under John Kennedy, U.S. policy did not keep pace with the tide of change sweeping across Africa. Nor did it adequately harness, on behalf of U.S. foreign policy, the spirit of nationalism and radicalism making inroads on the continent. In the congo the administration helped to consolidate the power of Joseph Mobutu, who would only retain power in subsequent years through the assistance of white mercenaries and military involvement by pro-Western states.

Hmm. I've always nursed a small grudge against the US because I was always under the impression it had a greater influence on accelerating decolonization than it seems is the case, at least from reading your effort post.

Why would an Indian be against the end of colonization you might ask? Well, for one, I think that a counterfactual world where India didn't become outright independent in 1947, or had self-rule phased in over decades, with full independence in the 60s or later, would have been a far wealthier and more stable India. Of course, they burnt their credibility by reneging on promises of enabling Home Rule in the 20s as a treat for our WW1 contribution, so who knows how that might have worked. I still think they could have dragged it out a little bit longer if they really wanted to.

Call me a congenital optimist, but that might have mitigated our brush with socialism for an odd 40 or 50 years, which at the very least would have made it likely that we could have liberalized earlier since all the real economic growth happened after that happened in the late 80s or early 90s.

Given the way that Indians run the place, I'd put more faith in distant, slightly bored bureaucrats who at the least aren't corrupt or beholden to identity politics. And I am speaking English here, and moving to the UK, at least for a while, so you can see where my personal loyalties lie.

It's such a fascinating counterfactual, I often fantasize how it would have gone had we had one European power that kept a small colony, in Africa or LatAm or the Indian Ocean, so we could see how it went. Bigger than Hong Kong, but smaller than India. Malaysia, or Algeria, or Kenya. I wish the USA had given Cuba and the Phillipines statehood rather than cutting them loose.

It feels like decolonization happened just as European countries were, at the very least, becoming more tolerant of ethnic differences.

The Caribbean has a good mix of former colonies and present overseas territories of various European nations, so it's probably the best bet for a head to head comparison under similar circumstances. My impression is that the independent islands do worse, but I'm not familiar enough with living standards and economics in that region to be sure. France also has some of the most populous remaining colonies in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and they seem like nicer places than most of their neighbors.

Puerto Rico is the richest place in the Caribbean, I believe. French Guiana is richer than its closest neighbors Brazil, Suriname, and Guyana.

I was gonna say Puerto Rico as well but I realized it had less people than Hong Kong. Still maybe the closest example though. Greenland easily the most prominent former colony in size but the population is like a small city or a large town.

Well, with the Philippines you'd have to enfranchise some 110 (and rapidly growing) millions — a voting bloc an entire third of the entire US population. If you're opting for state-hood, and not some sort of Puerto Rico-tupe non-representative colonial rule, anyway.

Granted, it'll probably be lower in a counterfactual where the Philippines is annexed relatively early on, and receives the "benefits" of modernity (the demographic transition, etc.)—but not infinitesmally smaller; likely the population will still be in the high tens of millions.

I don't really see Americans accepting that: tens of millions of icky brown people with voting rights and significant sway over US politics inherent to their population size alone. I'll note the US has often been wary of directly annexing territories full of non-white people (densely populated, anyway): one of the main arguments against taking more of Mexico historically, besides just the Cession, was that other areas had too many Mexicans to drive off.

(That's not even asking whether Filipinos want US statehood to begin with. Actually, they might, especially if the US dumps a lot of money into investing in the place, and making it a model example of how Murica Gets Shit Done TM, but then you circle again to Americans, running into the same generalized xenophobic arguments over tax monies going to not-properly-non-melanated Americans.)

The Philippines, assuming they were one state and maybe throw in some other islands, would have been the most populous state circa 1950, but were more like 15% of the total population.

Of course in my totally crazy counterfactual, the USA encourages white migration into the Philippines, and allows free migration from the Philippines to the mainland, balancing the ethnic questions a little differently. Hawaii made statehood despite a lack of whites.

Imagine the strategic history of Asia with tens of millions of American citizens right there.

Interesting idea...

Was going to mention French Guiana but it only has a few hundred thousand people.

If only, then we'd have a better comparison of the before/after colonization thing

While I'm bringing up a bunch of stuff from the past, a while back I tried to do a deep dive into colonialism's impact on India. My takeaway was that Britain performed worse than either the independent princely states or post-colonial India on pretty much every factor we care about: economic growth, literacy, life expectancy, etc.

I think the idea that Britain would have kept India from socialism is less likely considering that postwar Britain was also diving headlong into mass nationalizations of the economy, expansive welfare, industrial licensing, high taxes on income and capital, etc.

We did have a productive debate in the comments to that post:

My reply is readily visible, but link for the lazy: https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/sgv76g/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_january_31/hvnwsgw/

For the even lazier, the points I brought up were:

  1. No Britain=No unified India, or an India that wasn't unified under another Great Power.

  2. The Brits were doing better at the whole uplifting a subcontinent thing towards the end of their regime.

  3. When people point out that India did a lot better on measures like agricultural productivity and life expectancy in the decades post Independence, that is hopelessly confounded by the fact that most of this was the Green Revolution and the advent of cheap and effective antibiotics. I personally think they did all the heavy lifting.

Yeah, fully agreed the health stats are pretty confounded by general advances in agriculture and medicine - I gave you credit in the original for that point! :) Other stats like growth, literacy, access to roads, hospitals, and schools I think are harder to fudge.

I can easily imagine another colonial empire being worse than Britain (many were), and I even agree in some ways they were improving, or at least planning to improve (like the Dawes Plan for literacy). But I just don't see a good enough record for them pre-war in India, or post-war in Britain, to assume things would really be better.

Your personal experience gives you some insights into this that I don't necessarily have though.

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