US anti-colonial rhetoric was selective, serving economic access over genuine liberation
Evidence
McAlister states that, at the policy level, “benevolent supremacy” meant linking “US economic and military strength to a program that was anticommunist, anticolonial, and supportive of free markets.” The policy of anti-colonialism was about supplanting the old colonial powers and was therefore highly selective. While the United States rhetorically supported anti-colonial struggles in cases where its aims coincided with those of the anti-colonialists, it thwarted other struggles (for instance, it came in on the side of France in Algeria and Indochina), and it had a few of its own colonies in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Above all, newly decolonized nations were not to oppose economic imperialism and US access to markets and investment opportunities around the world. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 246
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- CANDY: The irony that the US opposed European colonialism while quietly running its own Caribbean/Pacific colonies and backing France against Algeria makes a sharp one-line observation about hypocrisy.
Related
- US anti-colonialism aimed to supplant old empires for its own economic access (similarity 0.86)
- US anticolonialism selectively served its own market access goals (similarity 0.86)
- US support for decolonization served its own imperial aims (similarity 0.82)
- American postwar empire legitimized itself through ‘benevolent supremacy’ rather than old colonialism. (similarity 0.80)
- US postwar imperialism was framed as benevolent supremacy via free-market capitalism (similarity 0.79)
- US anticolonial identity required a distinct language masking its imperial ambitions. (similarity 0.78)
- The United States privileged French-German agreement over its own decolonization ideals. (similarity 0.78)
- US post-war hegemony repurposed Orientalism and modernization theory to justify empire. (similarity 0.78)