Workers League - Behind the US invasion of Somalia - Mehring Books

the establishment of a US intercept station there to monitor Axis
telecommunications. For Britain, the potential military advantage of
the proposal was outweighed by the danger posed to her interests in
the area from what was by now the strongest of the imperialist
powers. For as long as possible, Churchill opposed the US plan
outright, finally giving permission only reluctantly.
Similar questions were involved in the US decision to extend
Lend-Lease benefits to Ethiopia, which was establishing a commercial
airline. 11
The US hoped in this way to undermine Britain's
control of commercial civil aviation, which threatened the US plans
for the expansion of Pan American Airways' rights in the Middle East.
In 1943, the US even responded favorably to an appeal from Ethiopia
for military assistance to put an end to the British military occupation.
The British vetoed an initial request for 5,000 rifles as a possible
threat to British security in northeastern Africa.
At the end of the war, the conflicts among the victorious imperialists
intensified, as the colonies of the defeated powers were divided
up. Britain, France and, to a lesser extent, Italy had been the principal
beneficiaries of the sharing out of the German colonies in Africa at
the end of World War I. This time, Italy's possessions, including
Italian Somaliland and Eritrea, were among those whose fate was to
be decided by the victors.
Transfer to another colonial power was hampered, however, by
the deep-going crisis of the entire system of colonial rule. Britain had
emerged from the war bankrupt and unable to maintain control of a
far-flung empire, much of which had been conquered by Japan. The
Dutch faced the same problem in Indonesia, the French, in Indo-
China. In China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa,
mass movements were emerging to challenge colonial domination.
The imperialists feared that an uncontrollable revolutionary upsurge
in the colonies would come together with the movement of the
working class in Western Europe, threatening the entire fabric of
capitalist rule.
The victorious imperialist powers, and above all the United States,
which in 1945 exercised virtually unchallenged economic, military
and political hegemony over the affairs of world capitalism, decided
on a change in tactics towards the colonial countries. Self-government
was to replace direct colonial rule for the former colonies. This
policy was written into the charter of the United Nations, the
organization founded in 1945 by the victorious Allies and which, in
the final analysis, gave an international cover to the dictates of US
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