Hi CobaltBlue; Re: "It seems to me that anti-Western sentiment is against the United States, not because of anti-colonialism, but because we are adamantly capitalistic, and the global elite, of both former colonies and former colonizers, is socialistic. How does that get transformed into anti-colonialism?"
A good question, and an excuse for a history lesson. When this country obtained its independence, it was a revolutionary force for human freedom. We were even snotty about it. This country generated a constant stream of deliberate diplomatic insults at the countries still run by Kings and Queens. We were the "bad boy" of international politics in the sense of useless insistence on the kind of BS that the Communists most recently achieved by refusing to negotiate using tables of other than certain shapes.
Naturally, during that time, we had few friends, as there were few other revolutionary countries. We briefly befriended the left wing revolutionaries in France, and again when they came to power later in the 19th century. We were much admired by the Mexicans before we beat the bejesus out of them in the war that obtained the American Southwest. From the point of view of abstract diplomatic relations between supposedly allied minor powers, this war is somewhat reminiscent of the conflicts between the modern revolutionary Communist states like China, Vietnam and the USSR.
So for the whole 19th century, we were damned near friendless. Being friendless, we were able to sit out most European wars, though we managed to get involved with Britain again in 1812. Other than that, we were quite diplomatically isolated, a bad boy, but too big to beat, peopled by a population too mean to conquer, but with little ability to win friends and influence people. In short, we were isolationist.
Despite the dustup with the Mexicans, (which can partly be blamed on the fact that the Mexicans weren't democratic at the time that we fought them), we had a perfect reputation as non colonialists for most of the 19th century. We were, in fact, a former colony. Then we took the Philippines from Spain and stupidly decided to democratize the place. The resulting guerilla war was called the Philippine American War:
historyguy.com
By the end of WW2, the Philippine American war was forgotten, and we once again had a pretty good reputation as a power aligned against colonialism. That reputation remained until we took over from the French colonialists in Vietnam.
Even though we didn't have colonial aspirations in Vietnam, the stench stuck and we've been largely thought of as a colonial power since then.
My vision of the US is a return to the policy that accompanied most of our growth, which was that of a country that was good to trade with, but wasn't inclined to get sucked into foreign adventures, except in cases like the Barbary pirates of the early 19th century, and the Afghan Taliban of the early 21st century.
By "isolationist", I do not reject our involvement in WW1, WW2, or the Cold War. Once a war gets started, there is little we can do but fight it to some sort of conclusion. Hey, if, after we exit Iraq, the new Iraqis come after us, I will support going back there. But without an Iraqi attack against us, our fighting in Iraq, like our fighting in Vietnam, is only at our option. Since our troops are on their soil, the war is not optional for them, but for us, it is an optional war. Optional wars should only be started by the United States if they are good for the United States, and wars where our continuing the fight is optional, should only be continued if the continuation is good for the United States.
-- Carl |
