23.1: Introduction

The aftermath of World War II resulted in a shift in the locus of power from Europe to the United States and the Soviet Union. U.S. aid or Soviet power guided the reconstruction of Europe, and both superpowers proved more than capable of making policy decisions for the countries within their respective spheres of influence. The Soviets directly controlled Eastern Europe and had an enormous amount of influence in the other communist countries, while the United States exercised considerable influence on the member nations of NATO.

Thus, with the height of European power still being a living memory, many Europeans struggled to make sense of their own identity. One issue of tremendous importance was the status of their colonies, most of which were still intact in the immediate postwar period. Many Europeans felt that colonies still proved the relevance and importance of the mother countries. For example, the former British prime minister Winston Churchill was dismayed by the prospect of Indian independence from the British commonwealth, even when most Britons accepted it as inevitable. Indeed, France and Britain thought that their colonies could somehow keep them on the same level as the superpowers in terms of global power.

By 1945, there were a host of problems with imperialism. Colonial troops had played vital roles in the war. Statisticians estimate that millions of Africans and Asians served in the allied armies, with over two million troops from India being a part of the British military. These troops fought in the name of defending democracy from fascism and tyranny. Yet, back in their home countries, they did not have access to democratic rights. Many independence movements, such as India’s, refused to aid in the war effort as a result. Once the war was over, troops returned home to societies that were still governed as political dependencies and divided starkly along racial lines. The contrast between the ostensible goals of the war and the obvious injustice in the colonies could not have been more evident.

Simultaneously, the Cold War led to “proxy wars” between U.S.-led or supplied anti-communists group challenging communist insurgents inspired or supported by the Soviet Union or (after 1949) China. A complex matrix of conflicts combined independence struggles within colonies on the one hand and proxy conflicts and wars between factions caught in the web of the Cold War on the other. Sometimes, independence movements avoided being ensnared in the Cold War, such as India and Ghana. Other times, countries became battlegrounds between capitalism and communism, such as Vietnam.

Generally, despite its nominal goal of arbitrating peaceful solutions for international problems, the newly-founded United Nations failed to prevent the outbreak of war. One glaring problem: the two superpowers held permanent seats on the UN Security Council, the body that was charged with authorizing the use of force when necessary. Likewise, the two “camps” of the Cold War generally remained loyal to their respective superpower leaders, ensuring that there could be no unified decision making when it came to Cold War conflicts.

In many cases, European imperial powers reacted violently to their colonial subjects’ demands for independent governance, leading to bloodshed and grotesque violations of human rights. Here, again, the United Nations was generally unable to prevent violence. However, it did, at times, at least provide an ethical framework by which the actions of the imperialist powers might be judged historically.