In 2009, Edward Snowden was stationed at the Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, spying on China when he began to suspect the worst about the US spy network and the Five Eyes. His presence in Japan was not by accident, nor was it a result of a freely agreed upon alliance between the US and Japanese governments. The end of the Pacific War in 1945 saw the United States, with the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and others abuse their positions as victors in the war to support conservative forces in Japan, and elsewhere, to resist radical decolonization that was occurring in China, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines and elsewhere.
To resurrect capitalism regionally, and assure Anglo-American hegemony, the US reinforced its military presence, provoking wars, coups, and regime changes in a host of countries. Japanese American historian Akira Iriye and others described this military-economic system that arose the “San Francisco system,” named after the city where the peace treaty with Japan was signed in 1951. Except it wasn’t a peace treaty, but a wholesale system of US military intervention in the Asia Pacific that continues to this day. The US is much more than an “informal” empire.
The system included, according to Iriye, “[t]he rearmament of Japan, continued presence of American forces in Japan, their military alliance, and the retention by the United States of Okinawa and the Bonin Islands. In return the United States would remove all restrictions on Japan’s economic affairs and renounce the right to demand reparations and war indemnities. Here was a program for turning Japan from a conquered and occupied country into a military ally, frankly aimed at responding to the rising power of the Soviet Union and China in the Asia-Pacific region.” And there was more.
“In the end the San Francisco agreement was only peripherally a peace treaty—it was a series of bi- and multi-lateral military pacts that ensured the Pacific would become an American lake, an ambition that dates from the early 20th century. The US would retain over 200,000 troops in Japan alone, not to mention thousands more in Okinawa, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and, as the decade continued, in Vietnam as well.” This was my conclusion in a paper published twenty years ago as part of the Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper Series, sponsored by senior American scholar Chalmers Johnson who was as surprised as I was by the findings. The US had used its power to manipulate the peace treaty process to reinforce its economic and military hegemony, marginalizing the people and countries that suffered the most from Japan’s imperial war:
Of note was why the Indian government, with Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister, refused to participate in the San Francisco meetings, and the response this elicited from Harry Truman, the US president at the time. India considered that (1) the provisions giving the US control of Okinawa and the adjacent Bonin Islands (also known as the Ogasawaras) were not justifiable; (2) the military provisions of the treaty (and the security treaty to be signed with it should only be concluded after Japan became fully independent; (3) Formosa (Taiwan) should be returned to China at once; and (4) objected to the fact that the deliberations to be held in San Francisco would not allow for the negotiation of the peace treaty.
India’s position provoked Truman to scribble in the margins of the Indian note: “Evidently the ‘Govt’ of India has consulted Uncle Joe and Mousie Dung of China!” Disparaging India’s government by putting it in quotation marks and referring to Mao Zedong as ‘mouse dung’ while Joseph Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’ revealed Truman’s deeply embedded prejudices towards people of colour. The peace treaty—a project steeped in racist exclusions—reflected the continuing assertion of white supremacy in the region.
Despite admonitions from staff regarding the problematic treaty, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lester Pearson, threw his full support behind the US strategy in Asia as it played out in San Francisco. This support was essential in 1951. With most Asian countries boycotting or abstaining from the talks, the allied “middle powers” of the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were instrumental in providing a veneer of legitimacy to what happened. What I later came to realize was that referring to Canada as one of the “middle powers” that abetted the US in passing the San Francisco peace treaty was a mistake.[5] At work in San Francisco were not “middle powers” but the Anglo alliance of settler colonial states.
The San Francisco system left much of the Pacific under the domination of the US and its allies, into which it also integrated a beholden Japan. Nevertheless, decolonization movements continued, with US intervention resulting in major wars in Korea and Indochina, with the loss of millions of lives. US covert operations prompted coups in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, with terrible consequences. The scale of carnage makes a mockery of the term “Cold War” in Asia.
US officials perceived the Pacific as an “American Lake,” an economic as well as a strategic sphere of influence that came to include South Korea and Taiwan. The system allowed Japan to rise again economically, while its knock-on effects led to the integration of South Korea and Southeast Asian nations into a dynamic region of liberal capital development. The region, however, arose on the foundation of the San Francisco system, an interlocking network of military treaties and agreements that provides the US empire with hundreds of military bases or facilities in the Asia Pacific to this day.
Recent developments in China-US relations must be understood in the context of this San Francisco system. China’s rapid economic has been based on that country’s ongoing support of the World Trade Organization and open sea lanes. In that regard, the US “Pivot to Asia” and its recent meddling in territorial disputes have evoked incredulity on the part of the PRC, and a determination to push back under Xi Jinping. One might disagree with China’s construction of the sea-bases on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, or its military maneuvers near Taiwan, but they contain a logic directly responding to increasing Anglo alliance intervention in the region.
Those who demonize China portray it as a global military threat, but this too must be taken with a grain of salt. An appraisal provided by Pulitzer-prize winning historian John Dower a decade ago still holds:
By John Price / January 9, 2022
To resurrect capitalism regionally, and assure Anglo-American hegemony, the US reinforced its military presence, provoking wars, coups, and regime changes in a host of countries. Japanese American historian Akira Iriye and others described this military-economic system that arose the “San Francisco system,” named after the city where the peace treaty with Japan was signed in 1951. Except it wasn’t a peace treaty, but a wholesale system of US military intervention in the Asia Pacific that continues to this day. The US is much more than an “informal” empire.
The system included, according to Iriye, “[t]he rearmament of Japan, continued presence of American forces in Japan, their military alliance, and the retention by the United States of Okinawa and the Bonin Islands. In return the United States would remove all restrictions on Japan’s economic affairs and renounce the right to demand reparations and war indemnities. Here was a program for turning Japan from a conquered and occupied country into a military ally, frankly aimed at responding to the rising power of the Soviet Union and China in the Asia-Pacific region.” And there was more.
“In the end the San Francisco agreement was only peripherally a peace treaty—it was a series of bi- and multi-lateral military pacts that ensured the Pacific would become an American lake, an ambition that dates from the early 20th century. The US would retain over 200,000 troops in Japan alone, not to mention thousands more in Okinawa, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan and, as the decade continued, in Vietnam as well.” This was my conclusion in a paper published twenty years ago as part of the Japan Policy Research Institute Working Paper Series, sponsored by senior American scholar Chalmers Johnson who was as surprised as I was by the findings. The US had used its power to manipulate the peace treaty process to reinforce its economic and military hegemony, marginalizing the people and countries that suffered the most from Japan’s imperial war:
Of note was why the Indian government, with Jawaharlal Nehru as prime minister, refused to participate in the San Francisco meetings, and the response this elicited from Harry Truman, the US president at the time. India considered that (1) the provisions giving the US control of Okinawa and the adjacent Bonin Islands (also known as the Ogasawaras) were not justifiable; (2) the military provisions of the treaty (and the security treaty to be signed with it should only be concluded after Japan became fully independent; (3) Formosa (Taiwan) should be returned to China at once; and (4) objected to the fact that the deliberations to be held in San Francisco would not allow for the negotiation of the peace treaty.
India’s position provoked Truman to scribble in the margins of the Indian note: “Evidently the ‘Govt’ of India has consulted Uncle Joe and Mousie Dung of China!” Disparaging India’s government by putting it in quotation marks and referring to Mao Zedong as ‘mouse dung’ while Joseph Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’ revealed Truman’s deeply embedded prejudices towards people of colour. The peace treaty—a project steeped in racist exclusions—reflected the continuing assertion of white supremacy in the region.
Despite admonitions from staff regarding the problematic treaty, the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lester Pearson, threw his full support behind the US strategy in Asia as it played out in San Francisco. This support was essential in 1951. With most Asian countries boycotting or abstaining from the talks, the allied “middle powers” of the UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia were instrumental in providing a veneer of legitimacy to what happened. What I later came to realize was that referring to Canada as one of the “middle powers” that abetted the US in passing the San Francisco peace treaty was a mistake.[5] At work in San Francisco were not “middle powers” but the Anglo alliance of settler colonial states.
The San Francisco system left much of the Pacific under the domination of the US and its allies, into which it also integrated a beholden Japan. Nevertheless, decolonization movements continued, with US intervention resulting in major wars in Korea and Indochina, with the loss of millions of lives. US covert operations prompted coups in Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, with terrible consequences. The scale of carnage makes a mockery of the term “Cold War” in Asia.
US officials perceived the Pacific as an “American Lake,” an economic as well as a strategic sphere of influence that came to include South Korea and Taiwan. The system allowed Japan to rise again economically, while its knock-on effects led to the integration of South Korea and Southeast Asian nations into a dynamic region of liberal capital development. The region, however, arose on the foundation of the San Francisco system, an interlocking network of military treaties and agreements that provides the US empire with hundreds of military bases or facilities in the Asia Pacific to this day.
Recent developments in China-US relations must be understood in the context of this San Francisco system. China’s rapid economic has been based on that country’s ongoing support of the World Trade Organization and open sea lanes. In that regard, the US “Pivot to Asia” and its recent meddling in territorial disputes have evoked incredulity on the part of the PRC, and a determination to push back under Xi Jinping. One might disagree with China’s construction of the sea-bases on the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, or its military maneuvers near Taiwan, but they contain a logic directly responding to increasing Anglo alliance intervention in the region.
Those who demonize China portray it as a global military threat, but this too must be taken with a grain of salt. An appraisal provided by Pulitzer-prize winning historian John Dower a decade ago still holds:
By John Price / January 9, 2022
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