"Small Wars and Faraway places" is a great book written by Michael Burleigh and looks at the various wars Europeans insisted on fighting following World War II. basically the excuse to contain the spread of communism was used to try to retain these lands and exploitation that were pimarily drawing people to the reds. It is amazing the number of battles and campaigns it took for these various people to throw off the Western capitalist yoke. The array of details Burleigh brings up in this astonishing work helps the reader gain a better thought and understanding the Second World War didn't end with Hiroshima.
The beginning of this book declares the the Japanese aroused a hornets nest as other Asian and then African people realized that they too could be a regional power if they controlled their own destiny. The profits from their lands long ago built up the military power of Europeans. The Cold War and rise of the Soviets and China gave more power to these people to fight their masters and these who invaded their lands decades ago.
Westerners did not want to admit it or call these little wars wars. The never wanted to admit the Second World War was unfinished and as it escalated into Korea president Truman called it a police action. Communist insurgencies were wiped out in Malaysia and the Philippines, but other ones would come to haunt the West. Bur;eigh goes through the numerous countries that witnessed conflicts and the West's refusal to see the light and vacat where their rule was no longer tolerated from a population that could now gain access to small arms. The British and French empires were coming to an end and they pretty much declared America a protector of the free market world that mad such huge profits for these three countries. The brave resistance in Vietnam and Algeria saw more deaths in those countries than what occurred in World War II. The partition of India and America's relationship with Pakistan is explored heavy as the US uses its economic power to buy and supply new friends. The blunder of Cuba and troubles with the Soviets show how American arrogance went a long way creating more of a mess in minor countries that offered little trouble side from control of the American mob and some fruit corporations. This book covers every international crisis and war in the two decades following the World War and how the Cold War pretty much shaped all these conflicts.
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