Book Review: ’Small Wars, Faraway Places’ by Michael Burleigh. Review by Lawrence Freedman, Washington Post.
In the wake of the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the British, French and Dutch sought to pick up where they had left off in their Far Eastern colonies. They failed to appreciate just how much the aura of European supremacy, so carefully cultivated in order to control these distant territories, had been shattered forever by the Japanese onslaught of 1941-42. The attempt to reinstate the old order, and then defend it against popular uprisings, set them up for a series of painful humiliations…
Comments
This book (don't be so literal, I read for bits of information, not blindly believing in memes or themes of any book and I'm not suggesting we shouldn't have fought WWII) does a good job showing how the tables are turned.
At one point, we in the US were disgusted with the idea of fighting for British or other Empire in the aftermath of WWII while now I suppose the tables are turned. The British public is as the American public once was when it comes to fighting for the dominance of another nation over others. It isn't in their interest and they don't want to do it. And we don't much care to be the muscle for European humanitarian adventurism either.
The things our Cold War fight did to us emotionally and its residua on our FP class today....
http://books.google.com/books?id=HcpChZmn9s4C&q=empire#v=snippet&q=empi…
I am seeing this book everywhere. It was reviewed at TAC too:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/empires-aftermath/
This is one of my favorite periods to study because our global governing institutions were set up during that early Cold War/End of Empires period and, weirdly, much of the foreign policy apparatus in DC still clings to the ideology of the period even though time moves on, the academy moves on, information accumulates that should allow a fundamental rethink, etc.
The emotional character of much of what the US does, especially with regard to NATO and our foreign policy class and its Mid-East and Atlanticist fixations, stems from this period obviously.
Only look at Nils Gilman's writing on modernization.
Only look at the literature on how the "NATOist" mindset has affected the US foreign policy class and the military. And vice versa. Look at the vote in the British Parliament to see how it's not always one way, the relationships and how they affect elite decision makers is complicated.
Only look at the fetishization of the Marshall Plan, etc.
Books along these topics were also discussed in the comments section to T.X. Hammes post on "Big COIN":
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-fallacies-of-big-expeditionary…
This is probably the one area where I've collected the most titles for my "antilibrary." If time permits, I will post them here. I'm sure everyone can't wait.
Rethinking all of this matters for our changing environment, for any Asian pivots or Western Hemisphere pivots, the "blank" spot in our foreign policy language (US) lies in unpacking our old notions of communism-as-motivator from nationalism and how we currently view state-building and stability, via our efforts and others.
Romanticized stories that Americans love about colonial empires (what would an earlier generation think of this? They'd be surprised, eh?) won't cut it. I'm sure it's embarrassing to our European and British friends, and others, when we do this.
Although, the US isn't the only one to do this. The mania for "Big Aid" in other Western nations seems to be mixed up with some kind of guilt and a need to play on the international stage while retaining the US as the muscle.
It's not fair to put people under some kind of glass, to create a Downtown-Abbey-In-Amber view of the world when others have their own stories and that story is continually changing.