AMERICA IS BRITAIN'S RUBBER STAMP IN IMPERIALISM
Williams, John
The British Empire Is Doing Business At The Same Stand, And ... America Is Britain's Rubber Stamp In Imperialism By JOHN WILLIAMS NOW that the Allied forces of the South-East Asia Command under...
...To carry out His Imperial Majesty's intent, we should not forget to utilize the strength of the Burmese independence movement in our propaganda and pacification work...
...Cynically, it can be said that Ba Maw is an old hand, too, at public oratory...
...East Asiatics will never consider themselves beaten...
...Japan was the only foreign ally we could look to...
...What is happening in East Asia is not a war but a people's revolution...
...A Sobering Point A sobering point was made in London by Sir Htoon Aung Gyaw, a Burmese moderate and adviser to Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, the governor of Burma who fled before the Japanese in 1942...
...If the Japanese treat the Burmese in the same way as the British did, then we will follow in their footsteps...
...The sound of a (British) formula has come to be looked upon as a very British means of avoiding a definite course of action...
...In the political sphere the Burmese should from the first be recognized as potential partners, and in the economic sphere they should be associated as principals in the negotiations for the restarting, staffing and financing of industrial and commercial concerns...
...Ba Maw visited Tokyo at a critical time...
...The real strategic meaning of Burma plainly was shown by Japan in the perilous period of 1942-44...
...It is the strategic keystone of South-East Asia, a buffer between India, the backbone of the British Empire, and the impending resurgence of elephantine China which England actually fears more than she does the likelihood of defeated Japan regaining her feet...
...Now that England is holding the political bag, what do the Imperialists plan for Burma...
...THE Office of War Information, operating under directives of the Department of State, has spent tens of millions of dollars in telling Asiatics that America is opposed to the oppression and exploitation of subject peoples, which means Imperialism*, but on the other hand American taxpayers have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of Lend-Lease and the armed forces, thus assuring England's reconquest of Burma...
...As the New York Times reported, "It is to be expected that South-East Asia, an area of British colonies and strategic concern, will become increasingly British and that American combat participation in this theater will become minor and eventually disappear...
...Its population of 16,000,000 is spread comfortably at only 57 persons to the square mile, whereas the proportion is 175 to the square mile in China and 250 in India...
...Purred Radio Tokyo, Hirohito's mouthpiece which blankets all Asia: "His Imperial Majesty not only received Dr...
...They earned the opposition of the Burmese thereby and finally arrived at their present unfortunate state...
...Burma's great neighbors—Asiatic nationalists too— have taken sides...
...We, as realists, believed that without the help of a foreign power in those days we could not successfully struggle against the British and achieve independence...
...Hsin Su Pao, a Chinese daily, has said : "We hope the British will make a change in their Far Eastern policy...
...As a result of America's intervention in Burma, we stand revealed before all Asia as a rubber stamp...
...If the feelings of the Burmese people are alienated from Japan in the future, the present day results would become nothing...
...But realistic people like Imperialists and the Asiatics are not blinded by an immediate military fact...
...The British Government took a policy of encouraging friction between the various races and political parties...
...Much has been made of the fact that the Burmese National Army, obviously when it saw the jig was up, turned on the Japanese and expedited the Allied invasion...
...Moreover, many Burmese have learned the use of arms, and what have they cached for the future...
...The Japanese aren't amateurs, as we have learned the hard way since Pearl Harbor...
...The Times of London, steeped and wise in the political aspects of reconstruction, expressed a similar opinion: "The cooperation England will receive will be largely influenced by the local estimate of British intentions...
...We jointly authored the high promises of the Atlantic Charter which emphasize freedom and justice for all people regardless of race and color, yet our military power has helped to re-enthrone Imperialistic rule in Burma...
...Asia's 'Happiest Land' Burma is a fertile and underpopulated land in Asiatic terms...
...Ultimate defeat "in this war" was being soberly discussed by Radio Tokyo's spokesmen who, however, boasted that Japan would win the next war...
...Cabled Ba Maw to London: "The Empire's joy this day is Burma's joy and similarly the Empire's loyalty to the Throne is Burma's...
...After having made possible England's military re-occupation of Burma, Washington has withdrawn American forces from Burma...
...The quick-witted Japanese in August, 1943, granted Burma "independence" and won over to their cause enough Burmese to impress Japan's Greater East Asia adherents from North China to the Philippines and the East Indies...
...What happened—at least militarily—when the American-equipped Allied tornado swept into Burma now is history...
...The first is that the Burmese have indelible impressions of white men fleeing ignobly before the Japanese horde in 1942, and they have had their nationalism sharpened by the Japanese occupation...
...Ba Maw, an old hand in Burmese political unrest, was made Prime Minister, and he was flown to Tokyo to be feted handsomely...
...Shrewd Japanese Tactics The astute Japanese recognized these vital political angles during their occupation of Burma...
...Exclaimed the number one Japanese in Rangoon: "The general mobilization of the Burmese nation now has been materialized...
...These actions speak louder to Asiatics than the double-talk of our propaganda transmitters...
...They reversed the "divide and rule" formula of the English imperialists...
...Said the handbook: "The British developed the mistake of looking down upon the Burmese because of their feeling of racial superiority...
...An important point to bear in mind, in the light of today's situation, is the imprint that the Japanese, through men like Ba Maw, may have made on Burmese nationalism...
...they established the Mahabama Asiayone (Greater Burma Association) which was an attempt to unify the various political groups in Burma...
...The English could have won countless friends in Burma and made it a secure frontier against Japanese designs, but they ruled by the sword and their carpet-baggers avidly exploited Burma's vast natural resources and powerless people...
...no longer as a mediator for the oppressed but as an underwriter of Imperialism...
...The Burmese National Army was created and placed on a real footing...
...He said "Neither our word nor our intentions are trusted in that part of the globe...
...When Mountbat-ten's men re-hoisted the Union Jack in Rangoon in May, Col...
...Commenting on this gesture, the Times of London said Burma should be granted Dominion status (like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) "as speedily and as fully as possible...
...Every Japanese soldier, for example, was given a special handbook which in detail outlined Emperor Hirohito's policy toward his new vassals...
...In summing up the situation, 2 hard facts are plain...
...In addition to winning the war militarily, they should try to win it politically, for it is contradictory to Allied peace aims, as well as to their war aims, that Britain should fail to win the war politically in the East...
...The Japanese, the Times added, have "greatly encouraged 2 tendencies which together will shape the future of Asia and perhaps of the world—the growing national consciousness of Eastern peoples, and their determination to protect their legitimate interests against exploitation by outsiders...
...For the first time," Ba M'aw gloated, "Burma now has its own army, weapons, military academy and a military education system...
...He warned the world bluntly that "the present cooperation of the Burmese with the British should not be taken as love for British rule...
...Geographers call Burma "the happiest land in Asia...
...Secretary of State Edward Stettin-ius, in his recent espousal of American foreign policy, spoke of "the supremacy of justice and of fair dealing for all peoples and States, large and small...
...Here are specific facts: Burma is a great land, larger than France and slightly smaller than Texas...
...Ba Maw and his Japanese overlords upset another Imperial tenet, the basic one which prohibits a native population from being trained to use arms for the defense of their own country...
...America Is Britain's Rubber Stamp In Imperialism By JOHN WILLIAMS NOW that the Allied forces of the South-East Asia Command under Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten have won the upper hand against the Japanese in Burma, enough facts have emerged to indicate that America's political policy in East Asia will turn back the clock to the dangerous status quo of 1941...
...Sir Dorman-Smith, after he fled from Burma, was frank enough...
...In playing ball with Japan, the Burmese nationalists do not consider that they were traitors...
...Ba Maw in audience but granted him the honor of dining with him and exchanging conversation...
...Hand-picked Burmese were sent to Japan for specialized training...
...Put bluntly, it appears that American lives and money are being spent to restore the British and other European imperialisms which, without our overwhelming military and industrial aid, could not recover the territories that Japan seized from them in her Cakewalk of conquest in 1942...
...The opinion of the Hindustan Times of New Delhi, India, regarding London's latest plan, was caustic: "A vague promise of this kind, hedged round with such conditions that they can always serve as an excuse for doing little, is nothing but a cruel piece of casuistry...
...the conqueror of Burma can invade India...
...The second fact is the inconsistency of America's role in Asia...
...At a public mass rally in Tokyo, Ba Maw rose to the occasion and lyrically boasted that "whether it takes a day or a year or a hundred years, victory will certainly be ours...
...But in the Philippines we are showing, perhaps because it suits our material interests, that we are not divorcing our professions from practice...
...Enough Burmese, too, for the first time were enabled to engage in administering their land...
...It starkly challenges America's honesty of purpose, not only in Burma but in all the world...
...The real racial and religious unrest of Asia is reflected today in Syria and in the Arab world...
...A year later, Ba Maw was out of office and he told an interviewer that "there is no chanee of eliminating Burma's root evils, such as imperialistic exploitation, except through complete independence from British rule...
...They developed a potent fifth column under the short-sighted English eyes...
...In commenting on Japan's military defeat in Burma, the Times of London said that the "Western Powers would do well to note the causes of Japanese failure...
...The revolution will not be ended until East Asia becomes our own...
...When King George VI of England was crowned in 1937, Ba Maw was Prime Minister of Burma...
...On May 7 the English proclaimed a military governorship "in the name of the King Emperor" and London issued a White Paper which recommended "independence within the British commonwealth" for Burma, but only after elections which may or may not be held before 1948—¦ a postdated check for freedom...
...It is the old story of crying about poor China but selling Japan oil, scrap iron, and aircraft equipment before Pearl Harbor...
...Burmese nationalism has never regarded British rule as anything but a passing phase...
...The Imperial Japanese Navy had been badly battered and shown its heels in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, and the American aero-naval tide was sweeping into Japan's mandated islands...
...A natural result is that the Burmese are virile nationalists—the Irish of Asia...
...By intervening in behalf of the entrenched Imperialisms, we are neglecting the under dogs—and taking a short cut to the next world war...
...Ne Win, chief of staff of the Japanese-sponsored Burma National (native) Army, said frankly: "We made a secret pact with the Japanese in 1941 to join them in fighting the British...
...Ba Maw and Hirohito's military thugs evidently decided to accomplish what they could while the going was good...
...If the Filipinos can be given immediate independence, why not the Burmese, the East Indians, and other subject Asiatics when Japan's tentacles of empire are crushed...
...The Chinese and Indians are entitled to express their views because, after all, Chinese and Indian troops played a decisive role in driving the Japanese from Burma...
...The Burmese, for example, have fought the English before—and lost...
...Only a reversal of our present policy can reverse the trend...
...This situation was fertile soil for Japanese intrigue...
...We cannot afford, even in the rush of today's military victories, to underestimate the invisible political web of the enemy...
Vol. 9 • July 1945 • No. 27
