|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
The Imaginary Third World and the Real United States
| Article
# : |
12924 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1987 |
1,852 Words |
| Author
: |
Roger Kaplan
Roger Kaplan is associate editor at Reader's Digest. |
It should surprise no one that Alain de Benoist should take potshots at the relationship between the United States and the so-called Third World. It is a fashionable political game, and has been for quite some time on both sides of the Atlantic on both the Right and Left. Benoist is considered an extreme rightwinger in France, but as he acknowledges, he is quite happy to borrow ideas from the Left. The reason it is widely fashionable to attack the United States as an imperialist power is that anti-American critics will seize any chance to vent their spleen, even on subjects - the "Third World" being a case in point - which exist only in the imagination.
Until the 1960s, the European Right attacked the United States for being anticolonialist. True enough. The United States was "the first new nation," as we used to say before "Third World" was invented by feverish ideologues. The United States had fought the first war of independence in modern times. It was considered a model and an inspiration for all nationalist movements in the colonial world that were not controlled by communists. And one could argue without too much difficulty that the United States is the only "new nation" that has been truly successful in developing durable political institutions and a viable economic base.
Haiti, for instance, won a colonial war (against France) a few years after the United States and descended into an inferno from which it may emerge now that the cruel Duvalier family is gone. The nations of Spanish America fought their way out of colonialism beginning in the 1820s, but it is noteworthy that Simon Bolivar, a leader of several of Hispanoamerica's independence movements and himself a great admirer of the American revolution, despaired at the
... (1998 of 10994 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
