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

[Steve Blair]

You mean the guy who made sure Imperial Japan was cut off from oil imports?

Quite. Ol' FDR was certainly into Containment of a sort. It depended on what his needs were at the time. I think it's more instructive to look at his behavior prior to the outbreak of the war than it is to look at decisions he made prior to Yalta and after. He was fading then, and certainly under sway of his own infallibility.

And I'd caution a couple folks in this thread to please debate issues and not personalities.

David, I tend to think Truman (who was a product of the St. Louis political "machine" if I remember correctly) was more concerned with domestic issues and didn't know much about foreign policy (a fairly common thing for many Democratic presidents). He tended to react in the foreign policy area, and was perhaps too dependent on his advisers (who were often FDR appointees). He was also concerned with appearing "weak," and thus would react to Republican accusations of weakness with perhaps more force than was necessary.

[Dayuhan]

I understood that imperial allies such as the British Empire, the Dutch and French after VE Day and VJ Day relied upon American shipping, not only for national survival (food), but also to fight Japan and restore imperial rule. If true and to my knowledge neither France nor the Dutch had large serviceable merchant fleets, maybe not the British, then French and Dutch troops reached Indochina and what is now Indonesia on US ships.

All from memory, don't have the references in front of me, but my recollection is that the Chinese were assigned to accept the Japanese surrender, disarm and repatriate Japanese troops, release POWs, and maintain order in northern Indochina. The British were to do the same in the south. Gen. Douglas Gracey was the British commander in the south, with Indian troops, and he made it immediately clear that he interpreted "maintaining order" as restoration of French rule. Japanese forces were deployed against the Viet Minh, and released French POWs were not repatriated, but armed and assisted in efforts to reassert French control. When French military units arrived they were transported by British ships. You'd think the British might have had other priorities, but apparently the though of a precedent for colonies breaking away was a matter of some concern.

Douglas MacArthur was quoted at the time as follows:

"If there is anything that makes my blood boil it is to see our allies in Indo-China ...deploying Japanese troops to conquer the little people we promised to liberate. It is the most ignoble kind of betrayal."

Of course MacArthur at the time was doing all in his power to assure that the pre-war elite, many of whom had collaborated with the Japanese, were re-established in power in the Philippines, including armed suppression of active anti-Japanese guerrillas who opposed that old feudal order... but I digress.

The charge that the British were responsible for the re-establishment of French rule in Indochina - and thus arguably for the Vietnam War - is supported by a fair bit of history.

Legitimacy, in my view, doesn't come from the takers of power being able to speak the same language as the people they gain power over. It comes from how they treat those people. Mass murder justified by that most pure and legitimate of votes, revolutionary victory, is still mass murder and vitiates any claim to legitimacy.

In actual practice, you get legitimacy by winning.

In most of the post-colonial world, legitimacy was achieved by whoever threw out the hated colonists. That's one place where the US didn't get it... for us it was all about communists vs capitalists, on site is was all about us vs them. In any event your opinion or mine on what's legitimate for China or Vietnam is about as relevant as the opinion of a Vietnamese or Chinese on what's legitimate for the US.

I know you were there and I wasn't and I say this at my peril, but there was just too much hard fighting and too many South Vietnamese casualties for me to not too see some determined, though ultimately futile, resistance to the communists. A lot of it may have been people doing what circumstances forced them to do, but that can be said about most people caught up in war. In my view, it is plain that South Vietnam fought long and hard, though not too well, to keep the communists at bay.

People in many parts of the (including Vietnam) world fought hard and long, many under the banner of communism, against antediluvian dictatorships installed and/or supported by the US in the name of fighting communism. Does that mean neither side was "legitimate"?

It is true that communist regimes will eventually fail. But I think they fail faster if opposed. That increment of time covered by "faster" means a lot of people not suffering as much as they otherwise would have. And of course, if those regimes are never installed at all, it normally means even less suffering.

If "opposed" means fighting a war on someone else's territory, that's going to create a lot of suffering too... and in many cases a government that has to fight for an extended period will be much more brutal about ruling than a government that takes power without extended conflict, because extended conflict tends to bring the harshest elements and those least amenable to compromise into positions of power. The idea that the US should try to determine who is or is not "installed" on the basis of our assumptions about who will or will not be brutal seems fairly flawed to me.

How do you propose that the US "oppose" the few Communist regimes remaining today? We can't afford an arms race and it would likely do us as much harm (or more) as it would to those we propose to oppose. Militarist posturing and rhetoric isn't going to intimidate them and provides abundant propaganda fodder to help them keep their domestic audience in line. What do you propose that the US actually do, particularly as related to RCJ's proposition that a smaller US military is desirable?

[davidbfpo]

Dayuhan added and edited down:

When French military units arrived they were transported by British ships. You'd think the British might have had other priorities, but apparently the though of a precedent for colonies breaking away was a matter of some concern.

Thank you. Leaving the French aside now. I was stunned to read that the Dutch massively mobilised to enable a large expeditionary force being sent to what is now Indonesia; something like 250k and again I expect US shipping was used.

Now for Douglas MacArthur who was quoted at the time as follows:

If there is anything that makes my blood boil it is to see our allies in Indo-China ...deploying Japanese troops to conquer the little people we promised to liberate. It is the most ignoble kind of betrayal

I am quite an admirer of MacArthur, albeit based on reading one biography. That aside the quote is a classic, no, not as I am an apologist for British decisions in 1945. Rather that in Manchuria the US intervention, with a US Marine Corps, used Japanese troops to secure the railways notably and IIRC fought off Chinese raids.

In Indonesia IIRC the Japanese Army played a very different role, partly as a large number had defected to the local nationalist cause and the bulk had been disarmed. Ironically the British Indian division that was in Saigon went onto Indonesia, where it was involved in some of the heaviest fighting it had seen in the war against the nationalists.

[davidbfpo]

Posts 119-123 first appeared on the current discussion 'What we support and defend' and have been copied here - where they sit better. I'd overlooked the issue had appeared here and my initial question over how the French had been shipped to Saigon was answered by JMM.

[Dayuhan]

I was stunned to read that the Dutch massively mobilised to enable a large expeditionary force being sent to what is now Indonesia; something like 250k and again I expect US shipping was used.

Any reference to suggest reliance on US shipping? I can't find one, though I have read that in 1949 the US threatened to shut off Marshall Plan aid to the Netherlands in protest over the conduct of the Dutch reoccupation. If the US had indeed provided logistic support to that reoccupation, that would have marked a quite abrupt reversal of position.

I am quite an admirer of MacArthur, albeit based on reading one biography. That aside the quote is a classic, no, not as I am an apologist for British decisions in 1945. Rather that in Manchuria the US intervention, with a US Marine Corps, used Japanese troops to secure the railways notably and IIRC fought off Chinese raids.

One might see some hypocrisy there, yes. I confess that I am not a huge admirer of MacArthur, though that may be to some extent be biased by my primarily Philippine orientation. He's not altogether well thought of here, largely because of his role in the postwar restoration of the prewar feudal elite... admittedly a small part of the whole story, but a small part that seems big in these parts.

The issue of collaboration with the Japanese by the Philippine elite, and the anger it evoked among many Americans, always seemed ironic to me. On the surface of it there seems little surprise in collaboration with the Japanese invading conquerors by the same elite that had collaborated so willingly with American invading conquerors, and whose ancestors had collaborated so willingly with Spanish invading conquerors. Bit of evidence of how easy it is to convince ourselves that we are different...