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Vol.6 No.
’ 3 January 26, 1968
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U T L O O K and Larisa Danie/ Appeal
Vol.6 No.
NO? January 26, 1968
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WITH HE
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WHAT BRITAIN'S RETREAT FROM ASIA MEANS FOR WASHINGTON
The cutbacks in military expenditures announced by Prime Minister Harold Wilson in his January 16 speech to the House of Commons will, it is generally recognized, finish off Britain's traditional role as the principal imperialist policeman in Asia. After the budget retrenchments, which include closing the bases in Singapore and the Persian Gulf by 1971, the only British forces beyond the Mediterranean will be the garrisons in Hong Kong plus a few small and scattered colonial possessions.
This definitive withdrawal from east of Suez is the final act in a historic shift of world power, beginning with World War I, whereby the declining imperialist countries of Europe have had to cede supremacy in that area to the Yankee colossus. Since World War II, under the combined pressures of the colonial revolution and their own weaknesses, the French, Dutch and Portuguese have in turn pulled out, or been driven out, of the Asian continent. Meanwhile, the United States has sought to move in. Now Britain's impending departure concludes Europe's share in the military patrol of the Far East.
Wilson's decision has a logical consequence for Washington. The prize of Japan's defeat in World War II was the definitive conversion of the Pacific into an "American lake." Since then the State Department and the global strategists in the Pentagon have made far-flung arrangements to insure the dominance of U.S. military might all the way from the Indian subcontinent to Japan. The construction of a ring of costly army, naval and air bases, the CENTO and SEATO alliances, treaties with Japan, the Korean and Vietnam interventions are all parts of this pattern.
Washington is now called upon to fill the "vacuum" left by the accelerated British withdrawal; and there is no reason to suppose that it will not take whatever measures are required to reinforce its positions in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. In addition, those bourgeois
governments in the East which rely upon
U.S. military power for their protection
and even survival will be urging Ameri-
can officials to step up its commitments.
Although Washington will be re-
sponsive to such requests, the enlarge-
ment of its role as the imperialist
superpower from Suez to Japan creates
certain difficulties. There are limits
to the burdens even the richest and
mightiest country can take on.
The United States is already feel-
ing the pinch of its operations in South-
east Asia in various ways. In order to
put 525,000 men into Vietnam, it has had
to strain its available trained forces.
The increased expenditures for the inter-
vention there has so seriously unsettled
its international accounts that President
Johnson has just had to propose unpopular
moves to ease the balance-of-payments
problen.
Most important of all, the escala-
tion of the war and the stubborn deter-
mination to hang on in Vietnam at all
costs has generated an unprecedented and
continually growing domestic opposition
to the administration and its foreign
policy which bodes ill for both the Demo-
cratic party and the capitalist rulers.
The expansion of its commitments
in Asia flowing from Britain's cutbacks
will therefore impose extra burdens on
Washington which it cannot so easily
afford. The risk of becoming overtaxed
and overextended keeps growing.
This long-term impact of Britain's
retrenchment on the imperialist titan
gives greater relevance and urgency to
the audacious strategy advised by Che
Guevara in his last message. "The cre-
ation of a second or third Vietnam,"
which can serve to disperse, divide and
weaken the striking power of the Ameri-
can military machine, can both facili-
tate victory for the freedom struggles
of the colonial peoples and provoke
further anti-imperialist repercussions
inside the United States.