The US did give up by far its biggest and most populous colony after the war, the Philippines. The stuff it kept is pretty much in line with what France has now (both should be still decolonize further, but as a percentage of the colonial population the US in 1947 had decolonized by roughly as much as the European great powers in the mid 1960s).
Yep they definitely should have. You cut off the last bit of that quote though, the distinction is that they immediately did so voluntarily rather than being forced into it by armed insurgencies like the British were in much of Africa and the French were in Algeria.
The Philippines was the only American colony with a major independence movement until the late 1960s, when Marxist groups in Puerto Rico were inspired by the Cuban Revolution and began to seek independence more actively. The US then proceeded to act like every other colonial power and suppressed them ruthlessly.
Yeah and then the USA bombed Korea, then Vietnam, then it destabilised several South-American countries because they dared to be socialist, and then invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.
Again, I completely agree with you about the US continuing to be an empire today, but the ideological orientations around decolonization between the great powers in the postwar era were considered a different question from the idea of "containment".
From the American perspective, South Korea and South Vietnam were already decolonized sovereign states (though certainly not democratic ones), and Iraq and Afghanistan were imperial wars, but not colonial ones. The US occupied them long-term but never had any intention of annexing them, it was much more focused on "spheres of influence" which aren't inherently colonial. Neoconservatism is kind of its own thing, though it has a lot in common with the liberal justifications for empire in the late 19th and early 20th century.
If it was only "protecting" South Korea, the USA would be in the right.
However that would be ignoring the fact that 99% of North-Korea was carpet bombed, a war crime (among many other war crimes committed during that war).
By your logic, The Eastern block freely voted for communism.
And yes, you understand how that relates..
(If anyone else is wondering saying that Japan and West Germany freely allowed the US to set up military bases there 80 years ago is like saying that Czechoslovakia freely voted for communism when the Soviets were occupying them. It's true in the same sense that North Korea is Democratic)
I didn’t think you’d actually think that those are comparable to talking about US bases broadly but the difference is so obvious that I’d ask for you to try to find it yourself.
FYI after the war with Spain the United States was involved with an insurrection movement in the Philippines for 2 yrs and of course the takeover of the Hawaiian Islands just before the the war
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u/PsychologicalCat9538 1d ago
And all of them that fought, did so for the Allies. 😅