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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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The U.S. declaring war on Japan after Pearl Harbor was not imperialism. But after the war, when the U.S. turned Japan into a vassal state and kept a ton of military bases throughout the Pacific (to supplement those from its initial phase of empire building), that is imperialism.
Japan certainly wasn't trying to liberate Hawaii. This is not a good take.
I understand you didn't say that. What I meant was, had Japan been trying to liberate Hawaii and the U.S. reacted by trying to maintain control, I would see that as U.S. imperialism. But that wasn't the case -- it was more like Napoleonic France launching an attack on British India and Britain invading France as a response. Both are imperial powers, sure, but one metropole attacking another in response to its colony being attacked is really stretching the definition of imperialism. And it helps to have somewhat restricted uses of terms like imperialism so they don't just become meaningless (see libs calling everything done by any Bad Country "genocide").
So, pray tell, what would you have done in the US' position?
Lol are you suggesting the U.S. had no choice but to build an empire? That in the wake of WWII, the only industrialized country untouched by the war, and the only country with nukes, was somehow forced to maintain a permanent military presence all over the world? No one was forcing the U.S. to do shit; we chose our path.
If I were Truman on V-J Day, I would have at minimum dismantled the incipient military-industrial complex and the associated national security state. This would not have been a novel idea; countries regularly demobilize after wars. I would have tried to work with the USSR rather than oppose it at every turn (a policy U.S. leaders decided on before the war had even finished). I would have honored the wartime agreements among Allies (e.g., the Atlantic Charter) regarding peoples' right to self-determination instead of backing imperialists' efforts to re-establish control of their colonies. I would have taken de-Nazification and its corresponding programs in other occupied countries seriously. I would have set the precedent of the U.S. obeying international law even when it ran against national interests, and would have at least tried to make international law enforceable.
You apparently do not understand the role of a government.
A government is responsible for itself and its people. It is not responsible for the well being of the world at large. It's not there to be nice. If it has principles (the US does), it is up to the citizens of that country to hold their government accountable to those principles.
US citizens generally approved of their government's actions after the war, so in that sense the government was acting properly.
I cannot emphasize this enough. The US government is not responsible for the rest of the world. How everyone else feels about what the US does only matters insofar as how it affects US interests. It was that way then, and it's that way now, and it's like that for every modern country on the planet.
The US does not need to (or want to) be subject to international law when it can act with near impunity. Law only works when it can be enforced. No other country is powerful enough to hold the US to account, so it would be against the US' interests to submit itself to it.
Don't like it? Tough. That's the way the real world is. One day the US will fall, but until that happens it will continue to consider its own interests above everyone else.
Call it imperialism, call it what you like - but it could be so, so much worse. Just ask Japan - the US could have annexed the entire country and enslaved everyone. Instead, they denazified it and helped them rebuild. Oh, what horrible villains!
(edit: autocorrect keeps "correcting" the possessive form of "it.")
You're missing all the treaties the U.S. has ratified that do impose obligations to the rest of the world on it. But even if you ignore all of that, a state that has no qualms about mass murder outside of its borders is a dangerous, violent state that should be destroyed.
This is also a silly response to "what would you have done?". It's not about what states historically have done, it's about what the U.S. could have done that would have made it worth supporting. In the immediate aftermath of WWII the U.S. had military, political, economic, and social influence unparalleled before or since. It could have actually remade the world order, or at least tried, but it instead chose to continue imperialism with itself in the driver's seat. It was in no way forced to do this, and its decision is worth criticism.
U.S. citizens generally approved of the genocide of indigenous Americans, too. Just like democracy does not extend to voting to kill someone, it does not extend to committing genocide (which the U.S. supported and directly aided throughout the Cold War) and other war crimes, no matter how popular they are.
"I could have killed my wife, but I just broke her arm! She should be thankful."
Ah yes, all that genocide the US supported in Japan. I must have missed that.
Yeah, I'm done here. You've moved on to a completely different subject and I'm tired of arguing with tankies for the evening.
Hirohito remained emperor until his death and the imperial reign continues. Many war criminals were put into positions of power after the war. A couple examples include Yasuhiro Nakasone, the prime minister of Japan from 1982-87, who was directly involved in creating the "comfort women" system of sexual slavery during the war, and Nobusuke Kishi, the prime minister of Japan from 1957-1960. Here's a couple choice paragraphs from his Wikipedia page:
Japan continues to be a far-right haven to this day. Shinzo Abe, the recently assassinated former prime minister, was a direct descendant of Kishi and denied many of the crimes against humanity Japan committed during the war. He posed in a plane with the same numbers as the infamous Unit 731, a torture camp located in occupied China that was once under the control of his great-grandfather.
This only begins to scratch the surface of the far-right in Japan directly enabled by the United States. I hope you can see what a foolish statement you have made here.
Why do you all talk like this
It's a common idiom that indicates skeptical disagreement.
Common among redditors, maybe
I've been using it since before reddit existed. You'd almost think that people from different areas talk differently.
Yeah I can believe that too
How is that hard to believe? I was already an adult when the Internet became open to the public. My basic speech patterns were pretty well set by then.
English is one of the most spoken languages on the planet. How is it you expect everyone to sound the same?
Maybe you should consider traveling.
This is why
This is an incredibly useless question. Any socialist would tell you "let Japan's former territories decide what to do" barring the mainland, which would require occupation for a period to purge the fascists (something the US deliberately neglected to do). There would subsequently be one China, one Korea, and I don't know whether Japan's referendums would result in independence for Okinawa or Hokkaido (I doubt it, but idk), but either way the main body would not be one that pays annual tribute to some of the most heinous war criminals in history.