THE COLD WAR AND THE IDEA OF FREEDOM ★^917Imperialism and Decolonization
World War II had increased awareness in the United States of the problem of
imperialism and had led many African- Americans to identify their own struggle
for equality with the strivings of non- white colonial peoples overseas. Many
movements for colonial independence borrowed the language of the American
Declaration of Independence in demanding the right to self- government. Lib-
eral Democrats and black leaders urged the Truman administration to take the
lead in promoting worldwide decolonization, insisting that a Free World wor-
thy of the name should not include colonies and empires. In 1946, the United
States granted independence to the Philippines, a move hailed by nationalist
movements in other colonies. But as the Cold War developed, the United States
backed away from pressuring its European allies to move toward granting self-
government to colonies like French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and Brit-
ish possessions like the Gold Coast and Nigeria in Africa and Malaya in Asia.
Even after granting independence to India and Pakistan in 1947, Britain was
determined to retain much of its empire.
In practice, geopolitical and economic interests shaped American foreign
policy as powerfully as the idea of freedom. But American policymakers used
the language of a crusade for freedom to justify actions around the world that
had little to do with freedom by almost any definition. No matter how repres-
sive to its own people, if a nation joined the worldwide anticommunist alliance
led by the United States, it was counted as a member of the Free World. The
Republic of South Africa, for example, was considered a part of the Free World
even though its white minority had deprived the black population of nearly all
their rights. Was there not some way, one critic asked, that the United States
could accept “the aid of tyrants” on practical grounds “without corrupting our
speeches by identifying tyranny with freedom”?
THE COLD WAR AND THE IDEA OF FREEDOM
Among other things, the Cold War was an ideological struggle, a battle, in a
popular phrase of the 1950s, for the “hearts and minds” of people throughout
the world. Like other wars, it required popular mobilization, in which the idea
of freedom played a central role. During the 1950s, freedom became an inescap-
able theme of academic research, popular journalism, mass culture, and official
pronouncements. Henry Luce, who had popularized the idea of an American
Century, explained that “freedom” was the “one word out of the whole human
vocabulary” through which Time magazine could best explain America to the
How did the Cold War reshape ideas of American freedom?