P.1
From Hot to Cold War: Asia's WWII
Among several others (except for the
Americans in principle) Churchill, the valiant fighter for the free nations of
Europe, did not believe that that freedom should extend to the colored races.
Privately he had specifically excluded them from the Atlantic Charter of 1941,
that great Anglo-American clarion cry for freedom which had so raised
expectations across the colonial world. Following the end of WWII in Europe,
Churchill mused about the possibility of dividing the Indian empire into '
Pakistan, Hindustan and Princestan', the last an
amalgam of India's princely states. The first and the third of these entities
would remain within the British Empire no matter what happened to the 'Hindoo
priesthood machine' and its commercial backers. (Rajmohan Gandhi, Patel: a
life, Ahmedabad, 1990 p, 433). By the end of WWII the
troops of the British Empire reconstituted the great crescent of land that
Britain had occupied before 1941, and then fanned out beyond it. In 1945 South
East Asia Command was apparently determined to deploy Indian troops not only in
Burma, Malaya and Singapore, but also in Thailand and what had been French Indo-China and Dutch Indonesia. By 1946
however as we have seen, Colonial Asia became a connected arc of protest.
Everywhere local nationalists borrowed the words and emulated the deeds of
neighbors, and the language of the Atlantic Charter and the San Francisco
Declaration became a common tongue for all.
Hot and
Cold War in Asia: The Japanese had "lost"; the British,
Chinese, French, Dutch, and Americans had "won." Yet there were still
four million Japanese, many of them armed, on the mainland of Asia, and the
Europeans remained shut out of most of their former colonies for the time
being. All along the vast arc of countries stretching from Manchuria to Burma
that constituted the ruins of the Japanese Empire, new ideas and ambitions were
stirring, while old feuds were renewed with greater vigor. P.1 The China Theatre.
Hot and
Cold War in Asia: The Cold War brought new violence to the end of empire; as the local struggles in Southeast Asia were now
seen as a part of a global chain of conflicts between the two power blocs.
Reduced in political might and fearing the spread of communism, the waning
colonial powers - Britain, France and the Netherlands - redeployed the weapons
of the Second World War in the guise of counter-insurgency campaigns in those
Asian territories. P.2 The Malay Theatre.
Hot and
Cold War in Asia: The French of Saigon celebrated their victory by going
on a rampage in which they expressed all leir pent-up feelings of fear, anger,
and resentment at the Vietnamese and humiliation at their incarceration by the
Japanese. As one of Mountbatten's staff officers reported, "There were
wild shootings and Annamites were openly dragged
through the streets to be locked in prisons.
Generally speaking there was complete chaos."
(Memo for Adm. Mountbatten, subject: FIC Political and Internal Situation, 3
October 1945, W0203/5562, Public Record Office, London.) P.3 The Vietnam Theatre.
Hot and
Cold War in Asia: In contrast to their frequent squabbling over
Indochina, American and British leaders gave little attention to Korea during the war.The
State Department disavowed any responsibility for leaving the Japanese in
control, explaining to the press that it was a local decision of the theater
commander. In fact, State Department planning documents for Korea had discussed
the desirability of continuing to utilize Japanese technicians and
functionaries in the postwar era to fill positions where no qualified Koreans
were available. However soon Southern Korea could best
be described as a powder keg ready to explode. P.4 The Korean Theatre.
Hot and
Cold War in Asia: On November 10, 1945 the
British attack against Indonesian Nationalists in Surabaya began. The battle
that ensued equaled in intensity many of the battles of World War II. More than
five hundred bombs were dropped on the city during
the first three days of the battle. P.5 Indonesia and China Burning.
Hot and
Cold War in Asia: By October 1946 the Burmese would be sorely aware that
the British had effectively handed power to India.The
goal was to keep Burma within the Commonwealth and out of Soviet clutches.On 23 March 1947, standing beneath a huge
illuminated map of the continent, Nehru opened the Asian Relations Conference
with the words: 'When the history of our present times comes to be written,
this Conference may well stand out as the landmark which divides the past of
Asia from the future.' From the Levant to China was represented: there were
delegations of Jews and Arabs from Palestine; commissars from Soviet central
Asia; courtiers from the Kingdom of Thailand; hardened communist guerrillas
from Malaya, and polished Kuomintang diplomats. P.6 1945-1950.
Hot and
Cold War in Asia: The most deleterious effects of the Allied military
presence developed not through blunders or misjudgments of those charged with
carrying out the occupations, but when the highest levels of government acted
indecisively, had mistaken notions or no notion at all
about what was actually happening on the scene, and
neglected or ignoted reports from the field.
Mountbatten had at least some idea of the formidable nationalist opposition the
British were likely to face in southern Vietnam and Indonesia, but the
government in London, preoccupied with retaining the goodwill of the Dutch and
French, tended to downplay or ignore his warnings and those of his commanders
in the field. P.7 Vietnam War and
World Decolonization.
Thus while the old colonial powers were struggling to hang
on in Asia, they thought in Africa that they had time to play with.
Bureaucratic blueprints for the transfer of power in the indefinite future and
after a series of stages (like a dunce's progress from the first form to the
sixth) flowed from the pens of colonial planners. The real imperative was the
urgent need to make the colonies produce: cocoa, vegetable oil, cotton, sisal,
tobacco, copper, gold, uranium, cobalt, asbestos and aluminum. Dollar shortage
and Cold War tension turned Africa from the derelict of the inter-war years
into Europe's Aladdin's cave. The 'night watchman' state, which let sleeping
dogs lie, had to be made into the 'developmental' state, which interfered
everywhere. White settler communities in East and Central Africa, typically
regarded by pre-war colonial officials as a redundant nuisance, had now to be
petted and their expansion encouraged. In colonial West Africa, where there
were no white settlers, colonial administrators looked for support to the
educated elite of the coastal towns. Coldly regarded before the war, they were
now to help energize the drive for growth. With curious optimism, more romantic
than rational, the makers of policy in London and Paris assumed that the
promise of ultimate self-government would soothe the irritation of a much more
intrusive colonial presence and lay the foundations of 'Eurafrican' partnership
when colonial rule was eventually relinquished.
Postscript: The history of the twentieth century, worldwide, was
marked by the two world wars. The Russian Revolutions of 1917 were a
consequence of the First World War, the Cold War of the Second. And as stated
recently was a product of security concerns, Stalin’s character and mishaps in
diplomacy. But one question still remains: Was the Cold War inevitable?
P.2 From Beginning To End of Cold
War
Today we know that
the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was to a great extent the
consequence of a long lasting conflict between the
Great Russians - the `core nation' of the empire - on the one hand, and the
dominant ethnic groups of the other fourteen national Soviet republics, on the
other hand. We also know that a continuing
tradition which emphasises Russia's orthodox and
traditional past, an intellectual current has been drawing on western European
neo-fascist ideas and adapting them to the Russian situation (increasing
conservatism across Russia as a whole, these ideas during the 1990’s had an
impact right across the political spectrum). The latter we
will investigating in the following part.
Introduction: Gorbachev's
Last Days.
Was the Cold War
Predetermined? Investigating the Beginning of the Cold War P.1.
Was the Cold War
Predetermined? Investigating the Beginning of the Cold War P.2.
Investigating the End of the Cold War P.1.
Investigating the End of the Cold War P.2.
Investigating the End of the Cold War P.3.
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