Critical mass in one case and not the other, I would say.
I agree. I also think that the moment it was clear that critical mass had been reached, we should have been over there, not trying to make a buck out of it, but sitting down to work out a phased transition to a market economy and a realistic framework for cooperation on security issues. Not saying that there was any guarantee that it would have worked, but there was altogether too much celebration, way too much assuming that since they weren't commies any more everything would be ok, and far too little clear thinking about what should come next.
I think a good deal of this was "evil empire" thinking: the death star is blown up, the movie can end now. Except that real movies don't end when the last black hat gets perforated. More looking at Soviet Communism in its historical context, and less assuming that it was simply a product of Satanic intervention, would have helped a good deal.
It seems very seldom noted that no Communist revolution has ever prevailed against a democratic government. (Invasion, as in Eastern Europe, excepted.) Communists win only when wholly inept reactionaries try to freeze change by force.
I think a couple more years of control by foreign powers could have ameliorated the resulting state of affairs, in many cases.
If the foreign powers involved had shown any inclination to prepare their colonies for independence, I would agree. They didn't. If they had held on longer, all they would have done was hold on tighter.
it reminds us that the best informed people of the day didn't know **** all about lands and people in their charge.
The fact that the best informed people of 19th century Europe knew **** all about lands they had "owned" for over a century tells us a good deal about their priorities. It is worth reading the work of J.S. Furnivall, a British scholar of the early 20th century, one of the only people ever to undertake any systematic study of colonial administration. (The sun may never have set on the British empire, but do you think Oxbridge ever offered a course on managing colonies?) His actual studies are fairly dry reading, but the accounts of how the British Colonial Office reacted to them - and to the entire idea of colonial administration as a field of inquiry - are fascinating.
The only interest the colonial powers ever took in their possessions was in squeezing money out of them. The British, of course, did it best; the opium trade looted China far more effectively than any invasion could have. Amusing how the Brits were so vehemently against slavery, on moral grounds of course, while simultaneously engineering the most successful drug-running operation in history. |
