COLD WAR RIMLANDS: THE UNITED STATES, NATO, AND THE POLITICS OF COLONIALISM, 1945-1949

This study is designed to present an overview of the development of United States policy toward colonial areas between the end of World War II and the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty (NAT) in 1949. The focus is on certain flashpoints in the colonial world where nationalist movements were strong opponents of imperial restoration (as in Indonesia and Indochina) or where nationalists were potentially disruptive in strategic regions (as in French North Africa).;American policymakers sought postwar reconstruction, restoration, and stabilization, based on a Europe-first strategy, structured by a belief in the open door as the vehicle for universal economic well-being and orderliness. Colonial empires were viewed by the U.S. government as likely sources of instability, and American policymakers thus encouraged the Western European metropolitan powers to implement a liberal program of decolonization in order to retain the dependencies within the Western sphere in the cold war struggle. However, there was no U.S. program of unconditional support for the self-determination of colonial peoples, and significant strains within the Euro-American system over colonial issues would not be risked. The formation of the NAT in 1949 institutionalized the cold war ethos and policy decisions of the two previous years; the pact dramatically affirmed the European priority, as evidenced by the inclusion of the Algerian departments of France under the terms of article 6.;Major sources consulted for this study included the State Department Decimal Files, 1945-1949, Record Group 59, at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.; the pertinent volumes of the Foreign Relations series of State Department documents; and congressional hearings, notably the historical series compilations of executive session meetings of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee during 1947-50. Also helpful were manuscript collections in the Library of Congress and various personal memoirs and edited papers.