23 The U.S. and Post-Bandung Imperial Dominance
Alam Payind and Melissa McClimans
Key Event: Bandung Conference of 1955
By 1955 most colonies had gained independence. The Conference of Bandung in 1955 was a major turning point, which lead to the non-Aligned movement of newly independent countries who wished to resist Soviet and U.S. pressure to align. It was organized by newly independent countries to discuss how to move forward. Its purpose was to discuss two main issues:
- With formal colonial structures gone, internal results of the colonial dynamic sometimes became the worst enemy.
- Economic relations between rich nations and poor nations, and trade agreements continued to privilege powerful countries and maintain this dynamic, regardless of the official changes in government.
This was the beginning of the non-aligned movement, or the agreement between formerly colonized countries not to join alliances with either superpower.
Pioneers of the non-Alignment movement were Gamal ‘Abdul Nasser of Egypt (see p. 56), Tito of Yugoslavia, Sukarno of Indonesia, and Dawood Khan of Afghanistan. During the Cold War, especially in the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was one of the most significant global movements and the major political weapon for resisting alliance with the superpowers of the time. Nasser was a major proponent of nonalignment, implementing it according to his “positive neutrality” policy in Egypt.
Bandung transformed the history of imperialism dramatically at the same time the U.S. and Soviet Union began vying for global power. Independence and sovereignty became acknowledged rights for every nation state, and an international system was born outside of the imperial system of the past. At the Containment Policy the U.S. implemented to ward of Soviet power during the Cold War created a situation in which newly independent states needed to assert their sovereignty. At the same time groups worldwide continued to bear the effects of colonization, whether former colonies attempting to maintain independence, or minoritized groups and stateless nations continuing their struggle for sovereignty. This section takes an example from Egypt to illustrate these shifting power dynamics. Eisenhower’s policies reflected both a global strategy to gain power, via Soviet Containment, and a respect for sovereignty with regard to the Suez Canal in Egypt.
An example of the colonial dynamics which continued after Bandung, and the assertion of sovereignty by a Middle Eastern country is the conflict over the Suez canal. In 1956 Egypt’s president Nasser nationalized the Suez canal, which had been built in cooperation with France and Britain. As the canal had been a major investment on the part of the French and the British, and it formed a border with Israel, this was seen as an act of aggression by those countries. Israel quickly invaded, receiving the support of France and Britain. Eisenhower, however, sided with Nasser on the grounds that the international community had