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Yet, for all its pride and relief at being able to lay down its own white man's burden, the U.S. today is more mixed up with old-world colonialism than at any other time in its history. Committed to saving the world from Communist imperialism, which has enslaved 800 million while the West was letting 600 million go free, the U.S. has found itself desperately trying to shore up the French in Indo-China, applauding the British in Guiana and Malaya, voting in the U.N. with the so-called "colonial powers."
Filling the Vacuum. What has slowly changed this U.S. attitude (though not U.S. sympathy with the underdog) is 1) world responsibility, and 2) painful experience. Confronting a new and terrible slavery originating from Moscow, the U.S. recognized that a too-quick dismantling of the old empires might mortally weaken its allies (notably Britain and France), and still not bring liberty and strength to their helpless colonial peoples. Wherever the crumbling empires left small, untested states (e.g., Korea) whose weakness invited aggression, the U.S. found itself hurrying to fill the vacuum lest Communism fill it first. For its pains, the U.S. is denounced as "imperialist," not only by the Communists but often by those it is trying to help.
Experience has also taught Americans that not all colonial areas are fitted to stand alone. Some, e.g., Libya and Jordan, are too poor to pay their way without imperial subsidy. Others, like Indonesia, have yet to prove themselves capable of establishing stable governments. The tide of history has set against smaller nations: simply to dot the world with tiny self-governing states, unable to defend themselves, is likely to multiply weakness, dissipate strength.
There is evidence, too, that not all declarations of independence pave the way for democracy. The forms of freedom may be present (as in Argentina), but the spirit often proves weak. Self-government in some ex-colonies, e.g., South Africa, meant only that the illiterate masses exchanged masters, becoming the property of a local white elite that is at least as overbearing as the ousted imperialists, and a good deal less humane.
New U.S. Look. The radical change in official U.S. thinking on colonialism may not yet have penetrated to the speeches of Fourth of July orators, where other and simpler cries prevail. But it is real. Last year the U.S. State Department declared: "It is a hard, inescapable fact that premature independence can be dangerous, retrogressive and destructive. There are areas in which there is no concept of community relationships beyond the family or tribe . . . regions where human beings are unable to cope with disease, famine and other forces of nature. Premature independence for these people would not serve the interests of the U.S. nor the interests of the Free World as a whole. Least of all would it serve the interests of the dependent peoples themselves."
None of this means that the U.S. is now in favor of the old colonialism. It only means an increasing sophistication about the relative merits and demerits of colonialism. There are six old empires left, three large and three small. Together, the six empires govern 172 million people and one-seventh of the world's land surface.
THE BRITISH EMPIRE