The second reason why the Americans decided to build military satellites in East Asia was an unintended consequence of our concern that in the face of the USSR's efforts the rest of Europe might "go Communist." In order to support Britain, France, and Holland, the US abandoned its World War II promises to help liberate these nations' Asian colonies. Instead, as these colonies fought to free themselves from their defeated overlords, the US replaced the former imperialists. This meant that in East Asia, except for our own colony of the Philippines, we wound up on the wrong side of history. Even in the Philippines, which we granted formal independence on July 4, 1946, we kept our largest military bases until the Filipinos expelled us in 1992. However, the main Cold War conflicts in East and Southeast Asia were not between democracy and totalitarianism, as they were in Europe, but between European colonialism and national independence.
Liberation wars
The reluctance of the main European powers to give up their colonies led to wars of national liberation in Indochina against the French, in Malaya against the British, and in Indonesia against the Dutch, in all of which the US either vacillated or supported the side of imperialism. After the Dutch were driven from Indonesia, the British fought a decade-long war against insurgents in Malaya, finally acquiescing in Malaya becoming Malaysia and Singapore. After the French were defeated militarily in Vietnam, the US fought an incredibly bloody and prolonged conflict before it was also forced to abandon its imperial role there.
We also supported a long counterinsurgency in the Philippines against guerrillas who considered the post-independence Filipino government a creature of the US.
Only after our defeat in Vietnam did we begin to adjust to the idea that East Asia was different from Europe.
Nixon's opening to China was the first sign that some understanding of East Asian history was finally starting to penetrate Washington minds.
Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute and author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. Part two of his article continues tomorrow.
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