Colonizer? What America Did With Victory in 1945

The misunderstanding: On this account, the United States is just another empire, a colonizer that conquers and extracts like the European powers before it. The best test of a nation's character is what it does when it has overwhelming power and no one can stop it. In 1945 the United States had exactly that. Here is what it did.

It freed its largest colony

The U.S. took the Philippines from Spain in 1898, and the record that followed was not good. The Philippine-American War of 1899–1902 killed more than 4,200 American and more than 20,000 Filipino combatants, and as many as 200,000 Filipino civilians died from violence, famine and disease (Office of the Historian). An honest history says so.

But Congress set a timetable for Philippine independence in 1934, and the United States kept it, even after Japan's occupation and the devastation of World War II. On July 4, 1946, President Truman proclaimed the independence of the Philippines (Truman Library). The date was chosen deliberately to match America's own Independence Day. The Philippines became independent decades before many European colonies in Asia and Africa won theirs, and it did so by agreement rather than through a war of liberation.

It rebuilt the nations it had just defeated

Japan's government had waged a war of aggression across Asia and the Pacific. After its surrender the United States occupied the country, and then, instead of annexing or stripping it, oversaw a new democratic constitution in 1947 (largely drafted by Allied advisers, as State Department historians acknowledge) that reduced the emperor to a figurehead and strengthened parliament. It also carried out land reform for tenant farmers and helped Japan's economy recover. The occupation formally ended in 1952 (Office of the Historian). Japan has been a sovereign democracy and a close American ally ever since.

In Europe, Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a recovery program in a speech at Harvard on June 5, 1947: "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos" (Marshall Foundation). Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in 1948, and funding eventually rose to more than $12 billion for rebuilding Western Europe, including West Germany (Office of the Historian). The State Department's historians are candid that the plan also served U.S. interests, by containing communism and creating markets. But they conclude that it "has been recognized as a great humanitarian effort," and Marshall became the only general ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

It fed a city by air rather than go to war

In June 1948 the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin's road, rail and canal access, trying to force the Western allies out. The United States and Britain did not abandon the city and did not shoot their way in. Instead they flew in food, coal and supplies for nearly a year, until the Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949 (Office of the Historian).

The record, fairly stated

None of this makes America flawless. The 1898 war, the Philippine conflict and other episodes deserve honest study. But "colonizer" describes a nation that keeps what it takes. When the United States stood atop the world in 1945, it gave the Philippines its independence, turned Japan and West Germany into self-governing allies, and spent its own treasure rebuilding a continent. Former enemies became some of the freest and most prosperous countries in the world, by their own choice, and they remain allies today.

That is not how empires have usually behaved. It is closer to what the Declaration of Independence promised: that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed."