End of Empires: who and what was responsible? (post WW2)

[Dayuhan]

The Worldview of, say, the British, French and Dutch was quite different. Quite rationally in their perception they saw the US "takeover" as a coup - and the new US role as neo-colonialism and neo-imperialism (or other names, such as Pax Americana, American Hegemony, American Exceptionalism, etc.).

Certainly it's easier to blame the Americans than to admit that the bloody wogs ran you out of town. Saving face is by no means an exclusively Asian pastime.

As far as I can tell the reasoning, using the term loosely, goes like this:

FDR was opposed to imperialism

Empires subsequently fell

Therefore FDRs opposition to imperialism caused the fall of empires.

As egregious a fallacy as one is likely to find, but people will believe what they will. If this was a psychology forum we could delve deeply into what factors enable a mind to believe such things despite inability to produce any coherent evidence of a causative link. As it is I shall remain mystified.

[davidbfpo]

I am not an Imperial history expert nor have read in depth, but there is merit in Dayuhan's last post - blame anyone, especially a dead US President, for our own failures.

In 1945 Great Britain, France and the Netherlands were exhausted. Two had undergone the deep trauma of defeat and occupation.

I suspect part of the answer why people

believe what they will

lies in psychology and politics. A contemporary illustration maybe found in this UK politicians comment:

Business Secretary Vince Cable says it has been a challenge for the government to explain to the public how bad a state the economy is in.

Change a few words and maybe it would fit 1945?

Incidentally I do not agree with his explanation, mainly as it appears to ignore the impact of political decisions for many years on the UK economy.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13480971

[Tukhachevskii]

Pt. 1

by Dayuhan
Japan was a rising industrial power, almost devoid of natural resources. With regional resources largely locked up in closed-loop colonial trade[snip].

My understanding of Japanese decision making may not be as thorough as yours but from the authorities I’ve read America’s role in pushing Japan towards war with the “west” (as opposed to Russia) is generally considered important, which see...

[from The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 6] The Japanese army's war plans, reflecting emphases rather than strict numerical priorities, ascribed first importance to the Russians as the potential enemy from the time of the Russo-Japanese War until the birth of the Soviet Union. With the increase in American influence in the Far East attending a deterioration in U.S.-Japanese relations, the United States replaced Russia after 1918 as the main national enemy. (p. 315)

The Japanese national defence policy was revised further in the mid- 1930s. After the breakdown of the naval accords in 1935, the navy in particular stressed the growing danger of American containment. The giant American naval building program, the major American manoeuvres conducted near Midway Island, and espionage reports on the top-secret Orange War Plan alarmed navy leaders. By 1936, the Japanese navy had drawn up new contingency plans based on "defence in the north, advance to the south." In other words, the naval general staff was looking toward Southeast Asia, a zone of special interest to the colonial powers there, especially Britain and Holland. As a result, the British were added to the list of national enemies in the revision of 1936. However, operational planning against England, involving the neutralization of Hong Kong and Singapore, was not introduced until 1939, and anti-Dutch operations not until 1941.(my italics, p.318)

As for Japan’s post-war prosperity you can’t compare the pre-war international system to the post-war one. Nor should one forget the reasons for Japan’s post-war prosperity...the need for the US to have a strong Asian power whose economy was tied into the US thus buttressing and supporting the American world system and forestalling Communism (the same reasoning behind the Marshall Plan); Japan became part of the US informal empire (completing Commodore Perry’s earlier “venture” in 1853). Japan’s current economic woes are part of that post-war legacy too. In fact...

by Dayuhan
How would "letting the US into those markets and their own" have hurt either to colonies or the home countries, even to the limited extent to which the US penetrated the markets of the remaining colonies? [snip] It should be noted that free trade has not only benefited the US: it's allowed many other nations, both from the old powers and from new ones, to rise and prosper. A huge improvement, it would seem to me.

I take it that the recession- which began in the US and cascaded throughout the economic systems embedded in US capital- is irrelevant? The current global recession is largely to do with American ineptitude in financial matters (deficits, recycling debt, etc.) coupled with the dollar’s position as global trading currency of choice and the manner in which “Western” economies are imbricated (admittedly with the establishment of the EU and the Eurozone things are now a little more complex).

by Dayuhan
An empire requires direct rule, [&c]. Take away a word's meaning and it means nothing at all. Respect the word.

I don’t quite know what to make of that. Words have many meanings and subtle nuances (see Grice on “implicature”). By your dictionary definition Jefferson’s statement that America is an “empire of liberty” means what, exactly? Or, for that matter, what does empire mean when Hamilton (Fed. Paper 22) says that “The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of the consent of the people”? Very odd. Empires can be territorially contiguous and non-contiguous as well as exhibit formal and informal hierarchical relations (for a start) that’s hardly in contradiction to the dictionary definition. Throwing simplistic dictionary definitions into the fray is hardly conducive to comprehending complex situations. Wittgenstein warned against the very logical positivist fallacy of ascribing a singular meaning to a word when in reality “usage defines meaning”. Cf the following explication from “What’s at Stake in the American Empire Debate”;

ideal-typical empires [...] differ from hegemonic and unipolar orders because they combine two features: rule through intermediaries and heterogeneous contracting between imperial cores and constituent political communities. These characteristics constitute ideal-typical empires as a form of political organization with particular network properties. Ideal-typical empires comprise a “rimless” hub-and-spoke system of authority, in which cores are connected to peripheries but peripheries themselves are disconnected—–or segmented—–from one another. When a particular set of relations takes on an imperial cast, a number of important changes occur in the basic dynamics of international politics:

First, dynamics of divide-and-rule supplant traditional balance-of-power politics. Imperial control works, in part, by preventing resistance in one periphery from spreading to other peripheries. Some of the most important challenges to imperial rule arise, therefore, when imperial policies, exogenous shocks, transnational movements, or other developments trigger uncoordinated or coordinated simultaneous resistance in multiple peripheries.(cont. below...

[Tukhachevskii]

Second, the key axis of political relations shift from interstate to intersocietal. Imperial cores exercise rule through local intermediaries over various actors within the domestic sphere of constituent political communities. This structure creates endemic tradeoffs between, on the one hand, the advantages of indirect rule and, on the other, the principal-agent problems that stem from intermediary autonomy. Imperial control of particular peripheries also involves local processes of divide and- rule. Imperial authorities utilize various strategies that, through accident or design, succeed by preventing various local actors from forming widespread coalitions against the terms of imperial control. These strategies, which we call “pivoting” and “binding,” carry with them specific costs and benefits for imperial authorities.

Third, empires face specific problems of legitimating their control. Imperial rule involves heterogeneous contracts that specify varied rights and privileges to different peripheries; empires function most effectively when they maintain their authority over extremely diverse audiences who, in turn, place differing demands on imperial authorities. Empires often best navigate these cross pressures by engaging in “multivocal” or “polyvalent” signalling: by projecting different identities and commitments to discrete audiences. (p253-4)

The above article also eloquently covers a lot of the ground I’d have to yomp over regarding America and Empire (perhaps Latin America would have been a better subject matter) although for specific examples (which include the USSR among others) cf. Krasner’s excellent “Sovereignty: Organised Hypocrisy” (i.e., Marshall Plan conditionality, America’s role in literally recreating Japan and Germany in an image that suited it, Italy, etc. Don’t get me wrong, it was preferable to the Ruskies).

With respect to this...

by Dayuhan
Why would de-colonization assume a prior political identity? Are you suggesting that people with no prior large-scale political identity can legitimately be occupied and ruled by foreign forces against their will? Whether political identity emerged pre or post colonization seems quite irrelevant to any question of self-determination... [&c].

...I suspect we are in agreement. My original post stressed the “loaded” or “essentially contested” nature of the term “de-colonisation”. Resistance, you are correct in adducing, is very often the catalyst that generates a shared identity. I did not dispute this only that the idea of de-colonisation very often assumes a prior existing identity. What I was objecting to, and my failure in explaining is obvious, was that de-colonisation is very often described as analogous to the collapse of Soviet bloc “overlay” (thus freeing pre-existing states with stable historical consciousnesses) when in fact is was, to use your phrases, sloppier and messier. Nothing in my post precluded or even rebuffed any of the points you raise.

Given your statements here...

Originally Posted by Dayuhan. It's actually very difficult to know what would have happened if WW2 had not occurred, and any such construction is by necessity very speculative indeed.

&

It's easy to speculate that a different approach by someone, somewhere, might have changed the course that the collapse of colonial empires took. Any such speculation is... well, speculative, and we don't know where the road not taken would have led. Likely to an only slightly different form of mess: collapse is by nature a sloppy process.

...I’ve lost the will to argue as I no longer know what we’re arguing about. I don’t particularly disagree with you but I take exception to the idea that somehow the US is an exception to the historical rule or that its position as a (informal) empire is somehow a negative value judgement on the US. However, I suspect that we could argue till the cows come but I don’t really have the stomach for it (especially when I didn’t really want to saying anything in the first place); I shall gracefully bow out. Been nice sparring with you champ.

[JMA]

Certainly it's easier to blame the Americans than to admit that the bloody wogs ran you out of town. Saving face is by no means an exclusively Asian pastime.

As far as I can tell the reasoning, using the term loosely, goes like this:

FDR was opposed to imperialism

Empires subsequently fell

Therefore FDRs opposition to imperialism caused the fall of empires.

As egregious a fallacy as one is likely to find, but people will believe what they will. If this was a psychology forum we could delve deeply into what factors enable a mind to believe such things despite inability to produce any coherent evidence of a causative link. As it is I shall remain mystified.

This is a nonsense argument. Humourous though