Could you plese explain this statement to my simple American mind? I was unaware that the US "in several instances continuing the plunder of resources and bloody suppression of local democratic movements".
Please give me some examples. thank you.
Let me share some Chinese views with you. What I'm gonna say is my summerization from the Chinese materials I read, from my point of view of course. But I hope this is an objective summerization of those materials.
The US's general policy towards south eastern asia (SEA) was decolonization. What US wanted was to peacefully transfer the power to the local elite group that close to western world. I call this group as capitalism group. There were also two other groups, populism and communism. Every country eventually became nationalism but there was a tough and long way to get to it.
What US desired was a global market based on sovereign states with free trading and coorperation to some extent, and US in the top superior position of course. So the best way was to let the capitalism get the power and maintain the country in a predictable and favarable manner, to guaranttee the efficiency of economic flow and political stability, in US's standard of course. Because capitalism group was easy to be influenced by US.
None of the groups was democratic in nature. Every group claims it want democracy, this means, given me a chance or a better chance to get the power. If you deny me with this chance, you are supressing democracy. But one a group got the power, then it's a different story.
Every group only consists of a certain amount of elites, while the majority of the people being neutral or change stance from time to time.
The top priority of US is communism must be eliminated. Unfortunately at the beginning of postwar era, communism groups often gain most of the support. This is why universal suffrages were denied in Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia. This made the populism group join the communism group and the conflict became quite severe and led to serious suppression of democracy by any standard.
US supported Britain and France to suppress communism and populism in Malaysia and Vietnam. French lost, then US took control of south Vietnam. British won, after 12 years of armed conflicts in Malaysia. Then the power was transfered to Malaysian capitalism-indigenous Malaysian populism group. They had this cityzenship sensorship to suppress the right of other ethnic groups, so here came Singapore.
Indonisa had a different history, Sukarno came to the power very early and basically nobody messed up with him.
One may ask what have these to do with the United States? I have to say one need to look deep inside the events and can see there're a lot to do with the United States.
Another word about democracy. Democracy based on people sharing same interest and same value. It's all about how to divide a cake and how much people willing to coorperate with each other. To be coorperative there must be a united market, usually a result from industrialization. And it's better to have a way to make the cake bigger so that people are motivated to coorperate. This is why Europe and America became democratic. There were really attractive ways to make the cake bigger: exploit the world or the new world. Just like what Samuel P. Huntington said:
The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.
