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.
For updates
click homepage here