[lbo-talk] US Imperialism

[Sean Andrews]

On 2/7/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 2/7/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> > By the way, how'd the Brit ruling class come to understand that the
> > empire was cooked?
>
> The Lend-Lease Act of 1941.  In 1942, Winston Churchill came to stay
> at the White House.  One morning, FDR went into Churchill's room.
> FDR, finding him (coming out of the bathroom) stark naked, tried to
> back out of the room.  Churchill said, "The Prime Minister of Great
> Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United
> States."  Britain tried only one war independent of the American
> opinion after that: the Suez war of 1956 (against Egypt, with France
> and Israel).  But Eisenhower immediately reminded it of who's the
> boss: he threatened to stop supporting the pound.

It doesn't make sense to say that there was one, single moment when
the British Empire was fully cooked--otherwise, why did most of their
colonies still have to fight for independence well into the 1970s?  On
this, I guess the local colonists had the biggest dog in the fight,
but didn't Britain still support them in fighting nationalist
movements in, for instance, Rhodesia and Kenya?  In some cases, I
think the US was working to keep the independence from happening as
well (like in Angola).  But maybe I'm confusing colonialism w/
imperialism in this case.