Keresés

Ebben igazad van, a "pólus" rossz metafora. Szóval amikor az amcsikon először kitört az imperializmus, a világon volt 5-6 kb. ugyanolyan nagyságrendű imperialista nagyhatalom. A hidegháború végéig volt két szuperhatalom. Most van az USA. Vagy szerinted melyik a másik?

„Ez is egy különbség: az nem volt egypólusú világ.”

 

Pólusból mindig kettő van, ez még akkor is így van ha jól hangzik az egy pólus.

Legalább lefordíthattad vón...

Hogy a francba írok én ide világmegváltó meglátásokat így?

A helyzet az, hogy Mexikóban nem volt megszállás, és mint a szerző is írja önmagával ellentmondásban, nem üdvözölték őket felszabadítókként. A Fülöp-szigeteket imperialista lendületből szállták meg, persze már az elején sem voltak népszerűek, és szó sem volt egy éven belüli hatalomátadásról, mint Irakban. Az ottani hosszú függőség különben is kirí az amerikai imperializmus történetéből: nem nagyon fárasztották magukat a tengerentúli gyarmatosítással, mármint a közigazgatás és rendfenntartás tartós aprómunkájával. Valaki mondta is,  hogy jók a győzelemben, de gyengék a megtartásban. Általában is érdekes, hogy egy-két kivétellel mennyire nem akarják vagy tudják "megosztani" a demokrácia gyümölcseit az egzotikus országokkal, és a cikkírónak igaza van abban, hogy a Fülöp-szigetek erre példa. Nagy valószínűséggel Irak is az lesz.

En nem mondtam soha, hogy a cikk maga a kinyiltakoztatott abszolut igazsag, sot ... :-))) Ezert irtam, hogy majd jol kitargyaljuk. Raadasul abban egyetertek, hogy azok a torkvesek melyeket a cikkiro "imperialistakent" allit be, nem feltetlenul osszehasonlithatoak. Ami szerintem erdekes (es be kell valljam szamomra az ujdonsag erejevel birt, bar egy ujszulottnek minden vicc uj), az a "hasonlo forgatokkonyv" a megszallas nepszerutlenne valasarol (bar, elismerem, hogy ismereteim ezen a teruleten abszolut limitaltak, igy lehet, hogy a cikkiro csak ugyesen megvezetett).

Eléggé ismert sztori. Nagyon erős volt a populáris nyomás, amit a "jingoista" sajtó (az egymással versengő Hearst és Pulitzer) csak szított a spanyol kegyetlenkedésekről szóló eltúlzott rémtörténetekkel. (Híres a Hearst-féle szöveg, amikor a grafikusa elborzasztó jelenetek nélkül jött meg Kubából: "Maga szállítja a képeket, én majd szállítom a háborút.) McKinley az összes történnelemkönyv szerint igyekezett elkerülni a háborút, és megpróbálta rábeszélni a spanyolokat, hogy állapodjanak meg a kubai felkelőkkel, de amikor a Maine felrobbant (máig tisztázatlan okból), már nem volt ellenőrzése a dolgok felett.

Hogyhogy köztudomásúlag nem akarta a háborút? Eddig azt hittem, hogy a Maine igencsak gyanús körülmények között robbant fel Havannában. Az meg már, hogy ennyi elég legyen egy komplett háborúhoz is, több mint gyanu - jóformán bizonyosság. Vagy az egy másik elnök alatt történt?

Kedves dolphin,

a baj az, hogy a cikk elég gyengus. Ha jóindulatú vagyok, azt mondom, hogy nem ismer alapvető történelmi tényeket. Ha gyanakvóbb vagyok, azt mondom, hogy torzít. Az egészből annyi lenne igaz (ha benne lenne), hogy a mai helyzet azértl párhuzamos az 1898-1918 közöttivel, mert az USA akkor a világ legerősebb országa volt gazdaságilag, és megpróbálta utolérni magát mint politikai nagyhatalom. 1989-91 óta az egyetlen szuperhatalom, és megpróbál valamit kezdeni ezzel a helyzettel. Az egyik elnök így, a másik úgy. Különben semmi sem stimmel. A spanyol háborúban a demokrácia egyszerűen nem volt téma. McKinley köztudomásúlag nem akarta a háborút, de ha már megnyerték, igyekezett nem rontani a távol-keleti pozíciójukat azzal, hogy átengedi a Fülöp-szigeteket valamelyik kiéhezett gyarnatosító hatalomnak. (1900 körül volt a gyarmatosító versengáés csúcspontja. Ez is egy különbség: az nem volt egypólusú világ.) Az egyetlen elnök akkoriban, aki (őszintén) a demokrácia érdekében akart beavatkozni, Wilson volt, de a veracruzi partraszállásból végső soron nem lett semmi (nem csoda. hogy a cikk gondosan elejti a mexikói szálat. Ráadásul Mexikóban egészen normális reformisták kerekedtek felül.)

Az meg egyenesen röhejes, hogy Theodore Rooseveltet mint békeangyalt állítja be, pedig köztudomásúlag ő volt az imperialista elnök. (Dominika, Panama, Kuba, furkósbot-politika, miegymás.) Amellett egy zseniális politikus volt, aki látta, hogy a német és az orosz expanzíós hajlamból nagy baj lesz, a japánok viszont "természetes szövetségeseink", az angolokhoz pedig az 1776 óta tartó ellenszenv után ajánlatos lesz közeledni. Úgyhogy csudát volt semleges. A demokráciát meg végképp nem akarta terjeszteni. A boa constrictor-hasonlat arra vonatkozik, hogy rájött: sok ezer kilométerre lévő területet szárazföldi katonai erővel megtartani iszonyúan költséges és kevés rajta a haszon, sokkal olcsóbb Amerika-barát kormányokat beültetni és támogatni, és akkora flottát kiépíteni, hogy annak a puszta ereje is biztosíték legyen a gazdasági befolyás érvényesülésére.

Szegenyek erdetileg csak idezojelek voltak, aztan idovel megvaltoztak (a zuj szoft rejtelmei ;-)), de igy jobb lett mint nehany krix-kraxal csufitva. Marcsak a nagyerdemut kell becsalogatnom .. ;-PPP

Ugyan... nincs mit...

 

Viszont utólagos engedelmeddel belenyúltam a a topicleírásba - kiszedtem a fölösleges HTML-tag-eket.

Koszike :-)

Na igen, meg sozknom kell az uj szoftot :-)). Ha erre jar egy modera:
1. - nevezze at lecci Fulop szg-1898, Mexiko-1913, Irak-2003 -ra a topicot (az uj szoft, ugye nem jelzi ha tul hosszu a cim)
2. - amennyiben lehet a folosleges [/br]-ket tavolitsa el, es a bent felejtett kepalairast szedje ki (bar gyanitom, hogy ez utobbi ketto nem lehetseges :-((( )

Foreign Policy[/br]
Imperial Amnesia
By John B. Judis
July/August 2004

The United States invaded a distant country to share the blessings of democracy. But after being welcomed as liberators, U.S. troops encountered a bloody insurrection. Sound familiar? Don’t think Iraq—think the Philippines and Mexico decades ago. U.S. President George W. Bush and his advisors have embarked on a historic mission to change the world. Too bad they ignored the lessons of history.

[/br]
On October 18, 2003, U.S. President George W. Bush landed in Manila as part of a six-nation Asian tour. The presidential airplane, Air Force One, was shepherded into Philippine airspace by F-15 fighter jets due to security concerns over a possible terrorist attack. Bush's speech to the Philippine Congress was delayed by what one reporter described as “undulating throngs of protestors that lined his motorcade route past shantytowns and rows of shacks.” Outside the Philippine House of Representatives, several thousand more demonstrators greeted Bush, and several Philippine legislators staged a walkout during his 20-minute address.

In that speech, Bush credited the United States for transforming the Philippines into a democracy. “America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people,” said Bush. “Together our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule.” He drew an analogy between the United States' attempt to create democracy in the Philippines and its effort to create a democratic Middle East through the invasion and occupation of Iraq. “Democracy always has skeptics,” the president said. “Some say the culture of the Middle East will not sustain the institutions of democracy. The same doubts were once expressed about the culture of Asia. These doubts were proven wrong nearly six decades ago, when the Republic of the Philippines became the first democratic nation in Asia.”

As many Philippine commentators remarked afterward, Bush's rendition of Philippine-American history bore little relation to fact. True, the U.S. Navy ousted Spain from the Philippines in the Spanish-American War of 1898. But instead of creating a Philippine democracy, the McKinley administration, its confidence inflated by victory in that “splendid little war,” annexed the country and installed a colonial administrator. The United States then waged a brutal war against the same Philippine independence movement it encouraged to fight against Spain. The war dragged on for 14 years. Before it ended, about 120,000 U.S. troops were deployed, more than 4,000 were killed, and more than 200,000 Filipino civilians and soldiers were killed. Resentment lingered a century later during Bush's visit.

As for the Philippines' democracy, the United States can take little credit for what exists and some blame for what doesn't. The electoral machinery the United States designed in 1946 provided a democratic veneer beneath which a handful of families, allied to U.S. investors—and addicted to kickbacks—controlled the Philippine land, economy, and society. The tenuous system broke down in 1973 when Philippine politician Ferdinand Marcos had himself declared president for life. Marcos was finally overthrown in 1986, but even today Philippine democracy remains more dream than reality. Three months before Bush's visit, a group of soldiers staged a mutiny that raised fears of a military coup. With Islamic radicals and communists roaming the countryside, the Philippines is perhaps the least stable of Asian nations. If the analogy between the United States' “liberation” of the Philippines and of Iraq holds true, it will not be to the credit of the Bush administration, but to the skeptics who charged that the White House undertook the invasion of Baghdad with its eyes wide shut.

Divine Intervensionism
rior to the annexation of the Philippines, the United States stood firmly against countries acquiring overseas colonies, just as American colonists once opposed Britain's attempt to rule them. But by taking over parts of the Spanish empire, the United States became the kind of imperial power it once denounced. It was now vying with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan for what future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt called “the domination of the world.”

Some Americans argued the country needed colonies to bolster its military power or to find markets for its capital. But proponents of imperialism, including Protestant missionaries, also viewed overseas expansion through the prism of the country's evangelical tradition. Through annexation, they insisted, the United States would transform other nations into communities that shared America's political and social values and also its religious beliefs. “Territory sometimes comes to us when we go to war in a holy cause,” U.S. President William McKinley said of the Philippines in October 1900, “and whenever it does the banner of liberty will float over it and bring, I trust, the blessings and benefits to all people.” This conviction was echoed by a prominent historian who would soon become president of Princeton University. In 1901, Woodrow Wilson wrote in defense of the annexation of the Philippines: “The East is to be opened and transformed, whether we will or no; the standards of the West are to be imposed upon it; nations and peoples which have stood still the centuries through are to be quickened and to be made part of the universal world of commerce and of ideas which has so steadily been a-making by the advance of European power from age to age.”









Epilogue: Flag-draped coffins of
U.S. soldiers returning from
Mexico in 1914 (above);
and Iraq in 2004 (below)

Courtesy of the National Archives


The two presidents who discovered that the U.S. experiment with imperialism wasn't working were, ironically, Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had been an enthusiastic supporter of the U.S. takeover of the Spanish empire. “f we do our duty aright in the Philippines,” he declared in 1899, “we will add to that national renown which is the highest and finest part of national life, will greatly benefit the people of the Philippine Islands, and above all, we will play our part well in the great work of uplifting mankind.” Yet, after Roosevelt became president in 1901, his enthusiasm for overseas expansion waned. Urged by imperialists to take over the Dominican Republic, he quipped, “As for annexing the island, I have about the same desire to annex it as a gorged boa constrictor might have to swallow a porcupine wrong-end-to.” Under Roosevelt, U.S. colonial holdings shrunk. And after the Russo-Japanese War in 1904–05, Roosevelt changed the United States' diplomatic posture from competitor with the other imperialist powers to mediator in their growing conflicts.

Upon becoming president, Wilson boasted that he could “teach the South American republics to elect good men.” After Mexican Gen. Victoriano Huerta arranged the assassination of the democratically elected President Francisco Madero and seized power in February 1913, Wilson promised to unseat the unpopular dictator, using a flimsy pretext to dispatch troops across the border. But instead of being greeted as liberators, the U.S. forces encountered stiff resistance and inspired riots and demonstrations, uniting Huerta with his political opponents. In Mexico City, schoolchildren chanted, “Death to the Gringos.” U.S.-owned stores and businesses in Mexico had to close. The Mexico City newspaper El Imparcial declared, in a decidedly partial manner, “The soil of the patria is defiled by foreign invasion! We may die, but let us kill!” Wilson learned the hard way that attempts to instill U.S.-style constitutional democracy and capitalism through force were destined to fail.

Wilson drew even more dramatic conclusions about imperialism from the outbreak of the First World War. Like Roosevelt, and many European leaders, Wilson earnestly believed that the rapid spread of imperialism contributed to a higher, more pacific civilization by bringing not only capitalist industry but also higher standards of morality and education to formerly barbarous regions. Sadly, the opposite occurred: The struggle for colonies helped precipitate a savage war among the imperial powers. The only way to prevent future war, Wilson concluded, was to dismantle the colonial structure itself. His plan included self-determination for former colonies, international arms reduction, an open trading system to discourage economic imperialism, and a commitment to collective security through international organizations, what is now sometimes referred to as multilateralism. Wilson never abandoned the evangelical goal of transforming the world, but he recognized that the United States could not do it alone, and it could not succeed overnight—alone or with others. Creating a democratic world could take decades, even centuries, as countries developed at their own pace and according to their own traditions.

The Cold War also shaped and distorted the United States' reaction to the powerful movements against imperialism emerging after the Second World War. Fearing that anticolonial movements would side with the Soviet Union, the United States abandoned its effort to dismantle European imperialism, most notably in Southeast Asia, and even sought to establish its own neo-imperial reign in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. The United States did not annex countries. Instead, as it did in Cuba in the early 20th century, Washington sought to dominate these countries' economies and keep friendly governments in power—through quiet subversion or, if necessary, outright military intervention.



The United States' support for ongoing imperial rule led to continuous unrest in the Caribbean and Central America and to disaster in the former French Indochina. The failure to dismantle imperialism was also keenly felt in the Middle East. Since the early 20th century, the great powers had sought control of the region's oil fields. They initially attempted colonization in such countries as Iraq, but failing that, they won favorable long-term leases on the oil fields from pliant governments. In the latter half of the 20th century, the United States continued that pattern. In Iran, for instance, the CIA helped overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953 in order to restore and sustain the rule of the shah, whom the British installed in 1941. Throughout the region, the United States was considered Britain's imperial successor—a notion reinforced by U.S. support of Israel, which was perceived as an offshoot of European imperialism. (And, after the Six Day War in 1967, Israel itself became an occupying power.) This view of the United States would persist into the next century and frustrate the current Bush administration's efforts to remake the region.



Caveat Imperator

With the Cold War over, U.S. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton had the chance to resume Wilson's attempt to dismantle the structure of imperialism that sparked two world wars, the Cold War, and wars of national liberation in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As both presidents understood, the challenge concerned how the United States could actively exercise leadership—and further America's goals of a peaceful, democratic world—without reviving the perilous dialectic of imperialism and nationalism.

George H.W. Bush met this challenge when Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. If he had acted unilaterally against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein—or solely with Britain, the other former colonial power in the region—the United States would have been regarded as an imperialist aggressor. But Bush wisely sought the support of the United Nations Security Council and created a genuine coalition that included Iraq's Arab neighbors.

Clinton followed a similar strategy. In the Balkans, where the collapse of the Soviet empire awakened centuries-old ethnic conflicts, Clinton intervened only as part of a NATO force.

These years represented a triumph of Wilsonianism. Yet, during this period, conservative Republicans challenged Wilson's legacy. The most vocal dissenters included the second and third generation of the neoconservatives who had helped shape U.S. President Ronald Reagan's domestic and foreign policy. They declared their admiration for the Theodore Roosevelt of the 1890s and the United States' first experiment with imperialism. Some, including Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal, called on the United States to unambiguously “embrace its imperial role.” Like neo-isolationist and nationalist Republicans, they scorned international institutions and rejected the idea of collective security. But unlike them, neoconservatives strongly advocated using U.S. military and economic power to transform countries and regions in the United States' image.

During the 1990s, these neoconservatives operated like the imperialists of a century before, when Theodore Roosevelt, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, and others agitated against the anti-imperialist policies of Democratic U.S. President Grover Cleveland. When McKinley was elected in 1896, Roosevelt joined the administration as assistant secretary of the navy, but the imperialists primarily made their case through speeches, articles, and books. One hundred years later, a like-minded group of neocons, including Wolfowitz, Boot, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, developed a similar network of influence through access to the media. Although they gained only second-level jobs in the new Bush administration, they made the most of them—most notably, by providing an intellectual framework for understanding the Middle East following the attacks on September 11, 2001.

[...]

As the 21st century dawned, the neoconservatives adopted Wilson's vision of global democracy, but they sought to achieve it through the unilateral means associated with Beveridge. They saw the United States as an imperial power that could transform the world single-handedly. But the neoconservatives and George W. Bush are likely to learn the same lesson in the early 21st century that Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson learned in the early 20th century. Acting on its own, the United States' ability to dominate and transform remains limited, as the ill-fated mission in Iraq and the reemergence of the Taliban in Afghanistan already suggest. When the United States goes out alone in search of monsters to destroy—venturing in terrain upon which imperial powers have already trod—it can itself become the monster.