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INDONESIA. In 1949, after The Netherlands, in defiance of continual admonitions from the Truman Administration, persisted in its efforts to reconquer Indonesia, the U.S. Senate laid the cards on the table with a bill calling for suspension of economic aid to any nation whose conduct was "inconsistent ... with the charter of the U.N." Between such threats and the on-the-spot diplomacy of Merle Cochran, later first U.S. Ambassador in
Djakarta, the Dutch were goaded into the negotiations that ended in a free Indonesia. Though few Indonesians realize it—and fewer still feel any appreciation—Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was speaking the simple truth when he declared that the Indonesian Republic "came into being in large part as a result of the interest of the United States that a republic should be founded."
MIDDLE EAST. When the Egyptians in 1951 launched a campaign of terrorism to drive British forces out of the Suez Canal Zone, the U.S. made clear that its sympathies lay with Egypt. Long after the British finally gave way in 1954 to Egypt's demands, Sir Anthony Eden grumbled that the negotiations had been vastly complicated by the fact each time a settlement seemed near, U.S. Ambassador Jefferson Caffery had urged Egypt's Nasser to demand better terms. Two years later, when Britain and France set out to reoccupy the Canal Zone by force, the U.S. publicly repudiated its two oldest and closest allies, in a demonstration of devotion to principle perhaps unique in diplomatic annals.
A QUESTION OF CREDIT
Despite such a record, the U.S. earned small thanks in Afro-Asian countries. Why does it find itself portrayed, by such disparate men as Nasser and Nehru, as a covert aider and abettor of imperialism? Diehard Colonel Blimps—British, French and American—retort that such "ingratitude" simply proves the folly of "appeasing" the Afro-Asian world. The real answers are more complicated.
¶ Nations newly emerged from colonial status are irritated by U.S. unwillingness to support their every aspiration, however unrealistic. Many somehow expected that independence would bring with it the material blessings they had always lacked, and blamed the U.S. when it proved unable to provide them.
¶ The U.S. has made mistakes. In Indonesia, judging from the chaos that now reigns there, the U.S. may well have thrown its weight on the side of independence too soon; in Algeria it is arguable that out of deference to France the U.S. has held its hand too long. By refusal even to discuss eventual re-establishment of Japanese civil government in strategic Okinawa, the Pentagon has needlessly fed Asian distrust of the U.S.
¶ The U.S. has suffered from a propaganda failure. Despite a national obsession with "good public relations," no U.S. Administration has ever found a means of capitalizing on its anti-colonialism in Asia and Africa without bitterly antagonizing the colonial powers of Europe.
THE LOST WAND