Protests In Hong Kong

[rmgill]

2 hours ago, glenn239 said:

Why the US lost China is a very good question indeed.  My impression is that the Americans never cared a whit about China either before, during, or after the war except as a stalking horse for war against Japan.  Once Japan was defeated, China was about as relevant to Washington as Sumatra or Ceylon.

It's arguable we did, but not enough to try to fight an insurgency war across a land mass larger than the Continental US. 

[JasonJ]

The Wang Regime officially made its declaration of war against the US and UK on January 9th 1943. At the same time, Japan and the Wang Regime made agreement that all Japanese held territory would be returned to China and territorial rights would be relinquished. The US and UK announced a similar agreement with Chiang's Nationalists Chinese on January 11th.

[R011]

10 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Its a circular argument though, isnt it? The UK wouldnt have to cut their aid, unless they were broke. They were broke because WW2 cost so much. And the US demanded it paid back all those wartime loans. At the same time as we were also trying to cope with the worst winter in recent memory, we were busy selling coal stocks to the US to start making inroads into those loans. Makes you think, doesnt it?

Its the same old story of the US Government persuing two different and contradictory policies at the same time. At the same time as they want to apparently be a bulwark against International Communism, they were busy tearing down Imperialism. Completely overlooking that they were greasing the rails for Communist insurgents they were supposedly set against, and it was those silly old misguided Empires that were the best bulwark against them. Look at Malaya and you will see my point.

Its even more apparent in Indochina, where they were prefering to bulldoze kit the French would have found useful to fight the Communists off a cliff in Vanuatu in the South Pacific, rather than take anything less than the market price.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/million-dollar-point

 

The US demanded the UK pay back a [b]post war [/b]loan so they could retain some Lend Lease aid at a tenth the price US taxpayers paid for it over a sixty year period at lower than market rates and then gave it more Marshal Aid money than any other country.

[rmgill]

2 hours ago, R011 said:

The US demanded the UK pay back a [b]post war [/b]loan so they could retain some Lend Lease aid at a tenth the price US taxpayers paid for it over a sixty year period at lower than market rates and then gave it more Marshal Aid money than any other country.

You almost make it sound like Stuart would be ungrateful if we gave the UK a discount and put 5 generations of US taxpayers into debt doing so. 
 

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by rmgill

[R011]

The real problem with the post war loan was that the British decided to pay it off in USD.  They then realized this meant they had no foreign exchange left to pay for for imports.  It didn't help that accepting free stuff to fight the Axis required them the restrict exports during the war.  The American point being that L-L raw materials were intended to be turned into weapons, not r-exported as consumer goods at the cost of American export jobs.

It didn't help the economy that at the same time they nationalized several industries, established the NHS, and were still trying to maintain an imperial defence establishment larger than any other Western nation besides the United States.

Edited June 23, 2021 by R011

[Simon Tan]

Ingrates.

[Stuart Galbraith]

5 hours ago, R011 said:

The US demanded the UK pay back a [b]post war [/b]loan so they could retain some Lend Lease aid at a tenth the price US taxpayers paid for it over a sixty year period at lower than market rates and then gave it more Marshal Aid money than any other country.

Yes, and then we had to blow a very large chunk of said money redeveloping the nuclear weapons we had already helped the US develop as part of the joint effort. Doesnt really seem to make a lot of sense when you stop to think about it, does it?

Here is what a bad state the UK was in  during 1947. Our stockpiles of coal were low. We actually had to have the RN move submarines around coastal cities so we could run their diesel engines 24/7 to offset the shortage of electricity. And the sole help we got off the US during that period was taking over the responsiblity for Greece, which people on this site are still tut tutting about 70 years later.

 

 

[R011]

1 minute ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yes, and then we had to blow a very large chunk of said money redeveloping the nuclear weapons 

No you didn't.  Britain didn't and doesn't need an independent nuclear deterrent, at least not in the same way it needed/needs a navy, an army, or a tactical air force.  It just wants one so it can pretend it's a superpower like the US. 

Of course, if the British hadn't included Soviet spies in your contribution, HMG might have been able to make a better case.  Nor did the UK get no benefit from the program.  Having the Bomb before the Nazis and not having to continue the war against Japan were very much good things for the UK and its servicemen.

Quote

Here is what a bad state the UK was in  during 1947. Our stockpiles of coal were low.

Mostly because you had to export it to earn foreign exchange because Keyes was an idiot to propose paying the Americans back in USD.

Quote

 And the sole help we got off the US during that period was taking over the responsiblity for Greece, which people on this site are still tut tutting about 70 years later.

That and billions of dollars in Marshall Plan aid money - about as much as the Anglo-American loan.

[Stuart Galbraith]

16 hours ago, seahawk said:

You mean 6 cents to the dollar was market price?

Well that narrative is the US was strong on communism in this period, would bear and burden, etc etc. And then they are so pedantic as to destroy millions of dollars worth of kit that could have been used against communists in Indo China, and they prefer to stick to a set price.

The US clearly had not shifted the mental gears to look at Communism in the same light they had fascism. If they had, they woudl ahve been doing precisely what they did with the allies during the war, donating it.  They were not going to do anything else with it, so why not?

[R011]

In spite of ditching or scrapping much surplus, and mostly obsolescent, kit in 1945-50, the US still had enough left to equip most of Europe and its allies in Asia.  The US was also willing to pay for British built Centurions to equip several NATO allies as well as give hundreds of Canadair Sabre F4 to the RAF.

[Stuart Galbraith]

3 minutes ago, R011 said:

No you didn't.  Britain didn't and doesn't need an independent nuclear deterrent, at least not in the same way it needed/needs a navy, an army, or a tactical air force.  It just wants one so it can pretend it's a superpower like the US. 

Why did we build the bomb. Well there are 2 reasons.

1 We had to be sure that we had a resort if the US left. Which considering they would not share the bomb, was a perfectly reasonable reason to not entirely trust them. Less reasonable post signing NATO, but as far as the start, entirely understandable

2 National prestige. Which sounds ridiculous, but its the same reason why North Korea, Iran, even France, wanted a bomb. It was the belief in the 1940's that only countries with a nuclear stockpile are listened to. Which as the UK found, and Russia subsequently found, turned out to be completely untrue. Bear in mind, we wanted to be a senior member of NATO, we wanted to be a lead senior of the UN. All these are political aspirations that were unachievable if we just relied on the US bomb. Again, as the French subsequently found.

3 minutes ago, R011 said:

Of course, if the British hadn't included Soviet spies in your contribution,HMG might have been able to make a better case. 

Its not as if Los Alamos was not wholly riddled with spies before Fuchs even turned up. In fact, I was listening to a recent podcast by a Los Alamos historian on Spycast, and he recently discovered 2 likely spies that were in L A employ that were never even  discovered.  Im sure Fuchs did help, but its wholly illusory to believe the Soviets didnt have enough penetration of the site to succeed with a bomb without him. Security there was a complete joke.

Nor did the UK get no benefit from the program.  Having the Bomb before the Nazis and not having to continue the war against Japan were very much good things for the UK and its servicemen.

Absolutely. The problem is the US believe it could maintain the sole monopoly postwar, and was swiftly disabused of it by the USSR. The logical thing was to have a program in the UK to help build as many bombs as possible. You know how stalled the US production was postwar. They shot themselves in the foot by pretending they could maintain an impossible nuclear monopoly. That is after having it been demonstrated quite how useful cooperation was in SIGINT. Still is.

Mostly because you had to export it to earn foreign exchange because Keyes was an idiot to propose paying the Americans back in USD.

Cant speak for the circumstances. I know we had a plan around 1946/47 to convert all our locomotives to oil burning so we could export the coal, but that was abandoned when the price of oil went up in the same period.

That and billions of dollars in Marshall Plan aid money - about as much as the Anglo-American loan.

And again, if we were not broke because of said loan, and the winter of 1947, why were we asking the Americans to carry our water for us in Greece? You really think we would have done that if we were not backs to the wall? Again, prestige. We simply wouldnt have asked because we did not want to display how on the ropes we were.

You say Marshall plan money as if that solved all the problems, but you yourself admit quite how much area we had to police postwar, both in Empire and in decolonisation. It would clearly have been a lot cheaper to just have shut up shop and left, but imagine how much that would have cost the US to take up the bulwark?

You cant really blame us for trying to take our responsiblities seriously both to Europe, NATO and international security seriously. In fact I rather believe we were trying to do to much, as events subsequently proved.

[Stuart Galbraith]

4 minutes ago, R011 said:

In spite of ditching or scrapping much surplus, and mostly obsolescent, kit in 1945-50, the US still had enough left to equip most of Europe and its allies in Asia.  The US was also willing to pay for British built Centurions to equip several NATO allies as well as give hundreds of Canadair Sabre F4 to the RAF.

Absolutely, but that was much later. I dont think anyone would disagree it was the immediate postwar years that were fatal for efforts for the French and the Dutch to reestablish control over their colonies. No ultimate harm to western security in Indonesia, at length, but it clearly was as far as Indo China.

Would it have made a difference? Admittedly probably not, although the point is the attempt was not made. This is significant when its remembered that Eisenhower was actually considering using nuclear weapons in defence of Dien Bien Phu much later. Whats it they say about a stitch in time?

The narrative was from Ryan and Glenn that the US was a bulwark against communism early on. Id suggest the evident says it wasnt, it was still set on the Roosevelt policy of decolonisation until  at least 48. There is any amount of evidence that points to this. Ill grant you after that they were complete zealots, but as Churchill says, the Americans will always do the right thing after trying everything else.

[R011]

1 minute ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

. . .

Why ask questions that have already been answered?  The UK simply couldn't sustain nationalization, the NHS, and the post war defence establishment all at once.  Becoming a nuclear power was  just part of the huge post war defence effort.

[R011]

As for Indochina and China, they didn't fall to the Viet Minh and the CCP respectively because the US didn't help enough, even in the immediate post war period.  The people of those places had rather a lot to do with the way things turned out.

 

As for the Empire, much of the British effort was devoted to keeping them British.  Few, if any, of the African and Arab movements were Soviet aligned and keeping Iran safer for BP didn;t turn out so well for the US in the long run anyway.

Edited June 23, 2021 by R011

[BansheeOne]

I'm not sure how we got from criticizing British socialists for depending upon the US for global security to criticizing British socialists for wasting money on an unnecessarily large defense establishment, on the Hong Kong thread, but I guess that's TankNet for you. 😁 

[R011]

It shows you can't have it all and if you try, you have no one to blame but yourself when it causes hardships.  

[JasonJ]

51 minutes ago, R011 said:

As for Indochina and China, they didn't fall to the Viet Minh and the CCP respectively because the US didn't help enough, even in the immediate post war period.  The people of those places had rather a lot to do with the way things turned out.

...

The US was allied with the SU and they made agreement that the SU would invade Manchuria. Soviet forces gave that territory and captured arms to the Chinese communists. That was a big plus to the CCP. US demand for Japan's unconditional surrender resulted in the departure of the IJA and the termination of the Wang Regime. That was another big plus to the CCP.

The whole idea that the US "had to go as far as it did" in the destruction of Imperial Japan is brain washed propaganda. 

If the posture of anti-communism and pro-democracy was the guiding principle, then the entire disarmament of Japan was a major mistake. Instead the mere preservation of just South Korea is upheld as a good result. 

Edited June 23, 2021 by JasonJ

[BansheeOne]

1 hour ago, R011 said:

It shows you can't have it all and if you try, you have no one to blame but yourself when it causes hardships.  

Well, all these debates over which allies do more for others are colored by socialist zero-sum thinking on a global scale anyway. I. e. that there's enough money floating around, it just needs to be distributed correctly to advance the proper causes, rather than the capitalist view of defense expenditures as investments into joint security which will yield something greater than the sum of individual shares. 

[Stuart Galbraith]

2 hours ago, R011 said:

As for Indochina and China, they didn't fall to the Viet Minh and the CCP respectively because the US didn't help enough, even in the immediate post war period.  The people of those places had rather a lot to do with the way things turned out.

 

As for the Empire, much of the British effort was devoted to keeping them British.  Few, if any, of the African and Arab movements were Soviet aligned and keeping Iran safer for BP didn;t turn out so well for the US in the long run anyway.

Yes, but with respect, thats not the narrative. The narrative is that the US was butch on anticommunism right from the start of the end of the war. My narrative is, look at the evidence, if the US was serious about confronting Communism, it would have supported the French in Indochina and the Dutch in Indonesia. it didnt. It didnt help in China. It didnt do much in Czechoslovakia either. All were in its ability.

Yes, absolutely on your second. Completely agree, that was NOT the reason we were were holding onto them. You can call keeping the Communists out a side benefit. Which looking at what subsequently happened in Egypt and Aden, Indochina and even Indonesia for some decades, was perfectly true. 

Just because something was selfish and exploitative, does not mean it was not in the American interest. After all, at how the US acted in South America shortly later, which was ostensibly to act against Communist infiltration, but was in reality to keep US corporations fiscally boyant. Its even more undeniable in Cuba. So what does it mean, its only Imperialism when the Europeans did it?

2 hours ago, R011 said:

It shows you can't have it all and if you try, you have no one to blame but yourself when it causes hardships.  

It shows that when the Europeans do too much, they get blamed for overextending themselves, and when they live within their means, they get slammed by this grate site for not doing enough for Pax Americana. 😁

 

Im not blaming the US for any of this. It was a difficult time to emerge from the Isolation it had enjoyed, the outcome was not certain. lm just trying to suggest what seems to be clear from the evidence, it took a lot longer than 1946 and Churchills Fulton address to realise its necessity to remain in Europe, and indeed globally. And judging by recent arguments on this grate site over the past 4 years, it still struggles with the decision, and still doesnt quite comprehend why it was doing it.

Which brings us right back to Hong Kong...

[JasonJ]

CCP's 100th year anniversary.

 

Edited June 23, 2021 by JasonJ

[Stuart Galbraith]

Its kinda what you would expect if Lenin founded Las Vegas.

[glenn239]

5 hours ago, R011 said:

As for Indochina and China, they didn't fall to the Viet Minh and the CCP respectively because the US didn't help enough, even in the immediate post war period.  The people of those places had rather a lot to do with the way things turned out.

In both cases the direct cause of the US postwar problem was the vacuum created by the removal of the Japanese Army as a condition of surrender.   In the case of Indochina the Americans compounded their error by permitting the French to return rather than forbidding them to do so.

[glenn239]

5 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

The narrative was from Ryan and Glenn that the US was a bulwark against communism early on. 

I said that the United States was not going to abandon its slice of Europe or Asia after World War Two.   The US originally did not see the Soviets as a threat.  But that has nothing to do with the fact that they were not giving up their sphere in Europe or Asia.  Had the Soviets invaded Denmark as RETRAC suggested, this would no doubt have turned into a major US-Soviet confrontation quickly, like the Berlin Blockade but even worse.  

[DB]

6 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

I'm not sure how we got from criticizing British socialists for depending upon the US for global security to criticizing British socialists for wasting money on an unnecessarily large defense establishment, on the Hong Kong thread, but I guess that's TankNet for you. 😁 

You seem to forget that it's a global responsibility to ensure the blame for everything falls on the British, with a tanknet sport being Stuart baiting, which be as ever he is completely unable to resist.

Personally I find it amusing that  the UK is being criticised for not cutting its cloth appropriately post war whilst at the same time being criticised for not holding on to Hong Kong long after the point where we were incapable of defending it. Which should it be?

[glenn239]

24 minutes ago, DB said:

 

Personally I find it amusing that  the UK is being criticised for not cutting its cloth appropriately post war whilst at the same time being criticised for not holding on to Hong Kong long after the point where we were incapable of defending it. Which should it be?

  

Britain did all it could with the withdrawal from Hong Kong.  They had no legal case, no diplomatic support, no military option.  The Americans are withdrawing from A-stan while holding far better cards.