Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "The Cold War u0026 Decolonization — History Summarized" video.

Throughout the 30's and 40's, Imperial Japan showed what it was like when it got to behave as it preferred to do. It's not unreasonable for the United States to ignore some of Japan's preferences, at that point.
9
The coal and steel community wasn't just to "aid in rebuilding", it was to try to prevent another war. The iron- and coal-rich territories on the Franco-German border were a source of conflict since at least Louis the XIV. The theory was that if people with money could buy iron / coal / steel tariff-free from these places no matter what language they spoke, they wouldn't be motivated to go to war over them anymore.
3
It's worth noting that the "Common Coal and Steel Community" started on the resource theory of war -- Germany and France were mostly fighting over the coal and iron rich regions right along their border. Giving everyone (who could pay for it) access to those resources was one of the major innovations of decolonization. Empires were founded to assure access to resources, and if those resources were available on a free market, well, empire (and war) just wasn't as necessary. Capitalism leads to peace, sometimes.
1
@alexemy2463 "Already wealthy"? Europe was anything but that, at the beginning of the colonial era. More technologically advanced, sure, more capable of organizing effective people across the globe, sure, but not wealthy. The whole reason India and China (and parts of Africa and the Americas) were attractive to European adventurers is specifically because those regions were wealthier than Europe. Of course, that changed quickly because of that technological edge. It's worth noting that the countries that got the richest (notably Spain) were actually hamstrung in the long-term great power competition by a lack of attention to capitalism and technology. When other parts of the world (Japan in the mid-19th century, China in the late 20th-early 21st) changed their entire societies to follow the Western model -- science / technology, plus market capitalism, if a very authoritarian form -- that those parts of the world started to be able to deliver a Western standard of living to their people. The rising authoritarian / militaristic power of Japan had to be stopped by force, which (along with their subsequent integration into a constructive global system that benefits them as well as everyone else) are more lessons we need to keep in mind.
1
@alexemy2463 ? The already-wealthy classes within English society (and many others) were the landowning class, whose property declined in value as competition from colonial agricultural goods. If anything, colonial expansion provided a means of social mobility for an up and coming business class. The production "Hamilton" does a pretty good job of getting across how this happened for the settlers, and novels like Vanity Fair give a good idea of how this happened on the European side of the Atlantic.
1
@alexemy2463 As far a the Spanish story goes, the conquistadors were typically of a knightly class, but completely impoverished, which is why they tried their luck in the New World.
1
Communism's authoritarianism has never been avoided. Stalin wasn't an outlier.
1
@lexingtonbrython1897 You know what happened to the POUM at the hands of the Stalinists, don't you? Didn't end well for Zapata either, iirc.
1
You didn't include the pre-WW2 map of Germany when you talked about how it was partitioned.
1
If you want to get madly, truly, deeply cynical about "proxy wars", just look at them as live-fire USA and USSR weapon system testing between willing participants who hated each other anyway.
1
The Red "Scare" was a response to real, legitimate infiltration of our government and institutions by paid foreign agents dedicated to the overthrow of America. Call it an imperfect reaction if you like, but the problem it was reacting to was real. (Probably real today, too.)
1
@merrittanimation7721 Nonsense. Evidence has since come out of KGB archives confirming most of the famous cases, along with a whole slew of others.
1
Considering what the Bolsheviks did in Russia (bloody totalitarian revolution), and what they were doing in countries throughout the globe (same thing), the Red Scare is not all that unreasonable a reaction. Honestly, we probably need another one, considering what China has been up to recently.
1
When Revolutionary Communism is literally trying to take over the world by force, it's not all that academic. Blue, are you deliberately being deceptive, or are you the one deceived?
1
I'm sorry, but the actual armed invasions of Eastern European countries involving Soviet tanks and troops are NOT "just the same" as American influence operations in South America. Your bias is showing. Please correct it.
1