The Decolonization of the United States, 1945–52

It is well known that the United States emerged from the Second World War as an economic superpower, possessing the economic and industrial capacity to dominate much of the world for the succeeding decades. What is less fully acknowledged is the extent of the United States’ geopolitical power at the war’s end. By the time of the Japanese surrender, the United States had a worldwide system of military bases, a number of well-positioned colonies, armed forces stationed in over a hundred countries, and jurisdiction over a population in occupied zones and overseas territories that amounted to nearly the entire population in the 48 states. And yet, as the United States emerged as a global hegemon, it largely relinquished that territorial power: it granted independence to its largest colony, established a new measure of self-government in its second-largest colony, ended its military occupations, demobilized the bulk of its military, and returned over a thousand bases to sovereignty. This paper seeks to understand the postwar global reorientation of the United States within the context of decolonization. But once the matter is seen in that light, a new question arises. Why did the United States shed the bulk of its territorial power at precisely the moment when it became a global superpower? Rather than arguing, as others have done that U.S. policymakers had a strong allergy to empire, this paper will interpret the U.S. turn toward non-territorial forms of power in relation to changes within the international system.