(July 6, 2018 at 9:07 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: America may not have been a shining example of racial non-discrimination at home, there is no doubt the plaurity if not majority of American opinion concerning events abroad during WWII and after sympathized more with the non-white subjects of European colonial empires than with their white overlords, particularly in areas over which American sought to expand its own influence.
Predominant opinion of American foreign policy establishment was while maintenance of white European rule in area of predominant non-white population could be helpful in the short run for suppressing native pro-Soviet movements, over the long run undermining white European rule and supporting native but pro-American rule provides the venue for American aggrandizement. Furthermore American interests are believed better served by empowering such local rule rather than treating them as total puppets. America achieved and maintained her own hegemonic status in the pacific in the post war period largely by undermining white European colonial influence in Asia pacific and supporting non-white local governments, knowing the weakened states of European colonial powers as a result of wwii, and the threat of communism and their need for American support on that front, would prevent the European colonial powers from being able to complain.
America has also got along reasonably well with most of the non-white regimes that rose to supplant white influences, and in many cases smoothed and facilitated their rise to the status of powers nearly equal or equal to predominantly white powers, including the US herself.
So America more effectively advanced human rights of non-whites than any other power during WWII and after WWII. None of these things were done solely for high minded ideals. But they were done and their results eventuated nonetheless.
The record is spotty at best. We might have done "good" in Japan & South Korea but Vietnam and the Phillipines were disasters. And we are still pissed at Haiti because they kicked out the French in 1804 so we keep it as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Some of our religious nutjobs think that they made a pact with the devil to stop being slaves. Our troops invaded Haiti several times.
