Globalism and Decolonization

Since the end of World War II in 1945, the world has experienced unparalleled economic and population growth. The world's population has jumped from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to 7.5 billion people in 2020. The economies of the world have become increasingly integrated into a global economic system, as large corporations such a McDonald's and Walt Disney operate their businesses in multiple countries worldwide. The Consumer Revolution, which began in the United States in the 1920's, has spread around the world, resulting in the creation of a global popular culture based on consumers' demands for various goods (i.e. clothing, music, videos games). The development of this popular global culture has also promoted radical changes in attitudes and beliefs toward religion, gender roles, and sex that have shaken the world since the 1960's. The world since 1945 has also witnessed the birth of many new countries which has resulted from the collapse of European overseas empires due to the impact of the two World Wars. These new countries that have arisen from this Decolonization have often struggled to deal with the painful legacy of Imperialism.

In the decades following World War II in the 1950's and 1960's the world economy recovered rapidly from the war's devastation. The strong United States' economy with its vast financial resources provided the capital investment to rebuild the shattered economies of its allies in the Cold War. Unlike Europe, the United States during World War II had not suffered from the destruction of its cities, factories, roads, and railroads. In fact the United States came out of this war economically stronger since the war had boosted industries and wages due to the demand for war materials. American consumers after the war were eager to spend their rising wages on consumer goods. In the United States and its Cold War allies in this period, Keynesian economic theory shaped policy makers' approach to handling the economy as a result of the Great Depression. In these Welfare States, the state provided a "safety net" for its poorest citizens by providing them with supplementary incomes as well as food, housing, and healthcare. The state also boosted employment and wages through public works projects and support for labor unions. These policies served to ensure that consumers had sufficient incomes to maintain demand in this highly regulated market economy. The United States also promoted international trade through the IMF and World Bank, which served to stabilize currencies and provide funds for capital investments among US allies. In this period the US also opposed trade protectionism to lessen trade barriers between nations. For example the United States Congress in 1962 passed the Trade Expansion Act, which authorized the US president to negotiate tariff agreements between the US and other nations. This act resulted in a series of talks (the Kennedy Round) between 1964 and 1967 among nations in Geneva, Switzerland involved in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiation sessions. These talks resulted in the United States reducing its tariffs by a minimum of 35%. The US however, didn't require "developing" nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to reduce their tariffs. Consequently these talks boosted exports from these countries to the United States and Western Europe, while these countries could protect their own emerging industries from competition from imports from the United States and Western Europe by maintaining high tariffs. The "Eastern Bloc" countries (the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) at this time also experienced rapid economic growth under a command economy. This period witnessed the mass movement of people in these states from rural areas to work in new state owned factories. The apparent success of these countries in spurring rapid economic growth was a reason why many Third World countries embraced Soviet Marxist-Leninism.

In the 1970's both the "Eastern Bloc" and the "Free World" (the US and its allies) both experienced economic crises as economic growth stalled and commodity prices surged resulting in high inflation. In this period oil prices increased since demand for oil exceeded supply. In 1960, a number of nations rich in oil resources formed the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) as a cartel to regulate world oil supplies. Many members of this cartel were Muslim countries (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, Iran), and after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, these counties imposed an oil embargo to protest American support for Israel. Consequently oil prices rose dramatically and resulted in a worldwide recession (economic downturn) in the mid-1970's. In 1979, oil prices spiked again due to the Iranian Revolution since Iran was a member of OPEC and its revolution posed a threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf countries that provided much of the world's oil supply. High oil prices resulted in rampant inflation worldwide since the world's production and transportation of goods through its factories, railroads, trucks, and planes, all largely required oil to create energy. High oil costs therefore increased costs for all goods. Since consumers were thus paying higher prices for basic necessities such as gas and groceries, they were less likely to purchase non-essential consumer goods, and demand for these goods therefore declined. This "energy crisis" thus had the effect of slowing and even decreasing economic growth in countries with a market economy. The Eastern Bloc countries in the 1970's with their command economies also witnessed slowing economic growth in this period in sharp contrast to the rapid industrialization of the previous two decades. By the 1980's the standard of living in the Eastern Bloc countries had become substantially lower than the standards of living in Western Europe, in which countries such as West Germany were flourishing by exporting manufactured goods to consumers , especially in the United States. This disparity between the economies of the Eastern Bloc and Western Europe was a factor in the collapse of the Communist regimes by the end of the 1980's.

In the 1980's the United States under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan and the United Kingdom under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rejected Keynesian economic theory and instead embraced the economic theories of the Chicago School of Economics, also known as Neoliberalism. According to this economic theory, "unnecessary" government regulations and high tax rates hindered capital investment, which was the key to economic growth, not consumer demand, as Keynes had maintained. Critics of this economic theory viewed it as a return to the failed Laissez-faire policy of the past. Reagan and Thatcher's administrations maintained, however, that this approach to the economy would reinvigorate their countries' stagnant economies. In the 1980's the governments of both the United States and the United Kingdom both reduced taxes and eliminated government regulations. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative (Tory) government privatized industries that had been previously nationalized by the government under the Socialist Labour Party. The vibrant economic growth of the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1980's convinced even formally Socialist parties such as the Labour Party and Germany's Social Democratic Party to embrace some Neoliberal policies in the 1990's such as free trade and the reduction of government regulations.

The world's economic growth in the 1980's and 1990's was also a result of the dramatic transformation of "Communist" China as the country after 1979 embraced a market economy. The new leader of the Communist Party, Deng Xiaoping began a program of privatizing state run enterprises and allowed American and European companies to build factories in China and employ Chinese labor in exchange for China's access to their technology. Deng Xiaoping maintained that this new policy would modernize the Chinese economy and improve the standard of living for the Chinese people. In the decades that followed, millions of Chinese citizens migrated to the cities to work in these new factories to produce goods to export primarily to the United States and Europe. Incomes in China for workers did steadily increase along with the emergence of a prosperous Chinese middle class. American and European companies with factories in China generated huge profits since the cost of labor was so much lower in China than in the United States and Europe. By the second decade of the 21st century, China had emerged as the second largest economy in the world, after the United States.

The adoption of Neoliberal policies by countries around the world has been quite controversial. Countries adopting these policies have often reduced taxes without necessarily reducing government spending, resulting in large amounts of government debt. Consequently in the 1990's many countries in Latin America (i.e. Mexico) and Asia (i.e Indonesia) declared bankruptcy and relied on loans from the IMF to stay afloat. The US supported IMF has imposed "austerity measures" as the price of receiving these loans, that required these countries to slash government spending as a way to balance their governments' budgets. Critics of these austerity programs have pointed out that millions of people have lost their government jobs as well as food, housing and healthcare as a result of the budget measures that governments have taken as a result of accepting IMF loans. Ironically, the United States' government debt has also skyrocketed since the 1980's, but investors in the United States and around the world have continued to finance this tremendous debt by purchasing US government bonds. The United States has therefore avoided the austerity measures imposed on other nations. The elimination of government regulations based on Neoliberal economic theory has also reportedly played a role in a series of spectacular, world wide stock market collapses in and around 1990, 2000, and 2008. Critics of Neoliberalism have pointed out that the absence of proper government regulation of stock markets fueled risky speculation that resulted in these financial disasters. These critics have also pointed out that Neoliberal policies have resulted in rising inequality. Since the 1980's across the world incomes have risen substantially, but so has the percentage of wealth owned by a very small percentage of the world's population (the so-called "one percent"). Lower tax rates on high income earners have enabled the very wealthy to accumulate more of the world's total wealth.

Since the end of the World War II, advances in technology have also spurred economic growth. In the 1950's and 1960's the television was the technology device that most impacted the world economy. An American inventor, Philo Farnsworth fashioned together the first experimental TV in 1927, and the commercial manufacture of televisions began in the 1940's. By 1960, over 60 million TVs were sold in the United States alone. Radio networks such CBS and NBC established television stations, which featured variety shows, sporting events, as well as dramas and comedies. These networks financed these productions by selling commercial slots to companies who wanted to advertise their products to television audiences. Television thus enabled companies to promote and sell their products to a larger national and even international market. Television shows and advertising also inspired consumers to purchase goods and spurred a consumer driven economy. For example, the appearance of the musician, Elvis Presley on the television variety show, The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 prompted millions of love-struck teenage girls to purchase the "records" of this musician and increased the profits of the recording industry.

The development of a network of satellites in space allowed events to be broadcast on television worldwide. The Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik into space in 1957. In the 1950's and 1960's during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States engaged in a "space race", a competition to explore outer space. Both countries invested heavily in improving rocket technology, as they were both constructing better and more accurate nuclear missiles. During this competition to explore outer space, the United States became the first nation to land a man on the moon in 1969. One of the results of this Cold War competition was the development of the commercial use of space satellites to broadcast events around the world. Ironically the first live television broadcast using satellites was a performance of the song All You Need is Love by the musical group, the Beatles in 1967. Beginning in the 1980's consumers could access numerous television channels through electronic cables as well as through satellites.

The computer is another electronic device that has impacted the world economy especially since the 1980's. Computers had their origins in efforts to create electronic counting devices (i.e. cash registers) to expedite mathematical calculations. International Business Machines (IBM) in the 1920's emerged as a leader in this industry in the United States. John Maunchly and J. Presper Eckert invented the first computer in 1951 at the University of Pennsylvania. In the 1960's IBM emerged as the world's leading manufacturer of computers, which were large and bulky and owned by large businesses and governments. In 1977 Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak unveiled the first Apple personal computer in the United States. Over the next several decades, personal computers (PC's) steadily increased their ability to store information and their speed in transmitting this information. PC's also became less bulky and expensive. In 2007 Steve Jobs introduced the first "smartphone", the Apple iPhone, that combined the functions of a PC and a phone and could fit into a person's pocket or purse. By 2007 consumers could transmit and receive information through a PC via the World Wide Web (the "internet"), which was invented by the English computer scientist, Timothy John Berners-Lee in 1989. The development of PC's and the World Wide Web has created a whole new industry, which is centered at "Silicon Valley" in San Francisco in the United States, resulting in the creation of a host of new businesses and jobs. Computers have also improved efficiency and productivity in the world economy since they facilitate the transmission of information. Some historians have maintained that computers have inaugurated a new "Information Age", which will transform the world economy. Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) could impact society and the economy to the same extent as the introduction of the steam engine and the factory system in 18th century Europe. Since the advent of the PC, much of the world has experienced unparalleled, extended periods of uninterrupted economic growth (1983-1990, 1991-2000, 2001-2007, 2009-?). Since the development of computers is a relatively new development in human history, its historical impact is still unclear and to be determined over time.

The rapid population growth and economic expansion since 1945 has raised fears regarding the negative impact of human activity on the world's environment. In 1962 the book Silent Spring by the American scientist, Rachel Carson first raised public concerns in the US regarding access to clean water and clean air. In 1970 the United States government created the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate industries whose activity could possibly pollute the air and bodies of water. In Europe, numerous Green Parties emerged as political parties in the 1970's, which were committed to creating laws to protect the environment. In 2001 the German Green Party in conjunction with other German political parties succeeded in moving Germany away from the use of nuclear power plants to supply energy since the radioactive waste produced from these power plants posed a threat to the environment. In recent decades, scientists have warned that the burning of fossil fuels (oil, coal) could result in catastrophic global climate change through the release of carbon gases into the world's atmosphere. In 2015 world leaders agreed to the Paris Climate Agreement, which required countries to cut their emissions of these carbon gases. In 2019 the United States, the world's largest economy, withdrew from this agreement on the grounds that such emission cuts would be detrimental to the country's economy.

Since the mid-20th century, the global economy has impacted society and values as well as the environment. The development of mass media (radio, television, internet) and mass marketing of goods to consumers worldwide has resulted in rapid circulation of radical new ideas about religion, gender, and sexuality. In North America and Europe, the generation that experienced the chaos and disorder of the Great Depression and World War II embraced traditional values and religion. People in this generation largely married young, raised large families, and faithfully attended their churches. In the 1950's women, who had won the right to vote after World War I, still performed their traditional roles as wives and mothers. The postwar generation that came of age in the 1960's, however, largely rejected these traditional values. In this period, the so called "counter-culture" was popular among young people. This youth movement glamorized sexual relations outside of marriage as well as drug use, a lifestyle that ran counter to traditional middle class values. Radio and television broadcast music by "Rock and Roll"musicians such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, which propagated these new counter-cultural values. This movement also denounced war and Capitalism and demanded world peace. During the Vietnam War In 1968 in Paris, New York City, Mexico City, and Berkeley, California, young people staged mass protests. In the decades following the 1960's, this large scale, generational rejection of traditional values has impacted society in Europe and North America. Membership in Protestant and Roman Catholic churches has declined drastically. Moreover, the percentage of married people in society and the size of families have also decreased. The percentage of children born to unmarried partners, however, has steadily climbed. Sexual activity outside of marriage is the norm rather than the exception, and often celebrated in mass media. Homosexuality, which was previously universally condemned along with incest and bestiality as perverse and immoral, is now valorized, as European countries and the United States have moved to equate legally same-sex and traditional marriages. Since the 1960's women have cast aside their traditional roles, entering into the professions (i.e. doctors, lawyers, engineers)and running for elected office in much greater numbers than earlier in the 20th century. In 1960 for example, only 19 women served in the US House of Representatives in Congress out of a total of 435 members. In 2020, the number of women representatives stood at 127.

In the "Global South" (Latin America, Asia, Africa), however, traditional values and religion still hold sway. In Brazil, for example, the Protestant Pentecostal Church, which emerged in the US and the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century, is one of the fastest growing churches in Latin America in the late 20th century, with over 20% of Brazil's population of 200 million as members. In Africa the Roman Catholic and various Protestant churches have experienced rapid growth in the late 20th century. One of the largest Roman Catholic churches in the world, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace was constructed in the Ivory Coast in West Africa between 1985 and 1990. In India, the current, fastest growing political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is committed to preserving traditional Hindu values and beliefs in Indian society. In Muslim countries, many people have rejected western, secular values and have espoused a return to a lifestyle based on the traditional teachings of Islam. Hasan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928 for this purpose. Since the 1980's this organization has greatly expanded its membership beyond Egypt to other Muslim countries. Saudi Arabia has used its vast profits from its oil revenues to fund Islamic schools (madrasas) in countries with large Muslim populations. These schools have propagated Wahhabism, a very strict and conservative interpretation of Islam.

European powers suffered tremendous human and economic losses as a result of the World Wars. Consequently, the 20th century has witnessed the dissolution of European overseas empires since these powers lacked the necessary resources to maintain their control over these territories. In 1916 the Irish rebelled against British rule, and British forces crushed this uprising in Dublin. Following the end of World War I in 1919, Ireland declared its independence from the United Kingdom and became an independent republic. In 1921, the United Kingdom signed a treaty with Ireland, formally recognizing its independence. Under this treaty, the Protestant Scots-Irish majority in Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom. Many Roman Catholic Irish in Northern Ireland, however, desired to be united with their fellow Roman Catholics in the Irish Republic. In the late 1960's violence erupted between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), which was a Communist organization, began to launch terrorist attacks on the British government to pressure it into withdrawing from Northern Ireland. After decades of bloodshed, the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 ended this conflict, when the British government granted greater autonomy to Northern Ireland and the IRA agreed to disarm.

The British Raj in India was the "Jewel of the British Empire", but the United Kingdom lost this jewel in 1947 after World War II. After World War I, many Indians were seeking independence from the United Kingdom and joined the Indian National Congress. This political party had existed since 1885 to organize opposition to British rule. In the 1920's Mahatma Gandhi emerged as the leader of this party and organized a campaign of civil disobedience against British authorities by encouraging the people of India to disobey British authorities peacefully. Gandhi's non-violent mass movement later inspired Martin Luther King's Civil Rights Movement to end segregation in the United States in the 1950's. In 1947, Gandhi's colleague and fellow leader of the Indian National Congress Party, Jawaharlal Nehru, became the first Prime Minister of an independent India, which became the world's largest democratic nation with a federal system of government, not unlike the United States. Nehru, however, didn't want India to take sides in the Cold War, and India continued to enjoy good relations with the Soviet Union. Nehru himself was a Socialist, who opposed the Capitalist system of the United States. The Indian National Congress Party remained the largest political party in India after independence, but other rival political parties in India took part in local and national elections.

The Indian National Congress under the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru had desired to unite all Indians under British rule, both Hindus and Muslims, under an independent, secular, and democratic government. The Muslim League under the leadership of Mohammed Ali Jinnah in the 1920's, however, desired the northern states of British India, whose population was largely Muslim, to form its own separate independent state. In 1947, these states formed the nation of Pakistan, resulting in the Partition of British India into two separate nations, India and Pakistan. With the formation of two different nations, the Hindu minority in Pakistan was unwelcome in Pakistan, and Muslim minority in India was unwelcome in India. Consequently, conflict arose between Muslims and Hindus in both countries, while millions of people became refugees and migrated to India or Pakistan(Muslims to Pakistan, Hindus to India) to escape this violence. This Partition may have resulted in the killing of as many as two million people and the displacement of 14 million people as refugees. Consequently, the two nations have been hostile to one another ever since. They waged a brief war against each other regarding territorial disputes concerning the province of Kashmir in 1965. This war was a stalemate, and the United States and Soviet Union pressured both sides to agree to a ceasefire. In 1971, the two countries went to war again, when East Pakistan broke away from Pakistan and declared its independence as the country of Bangladesh. India supported the independence of Bangladesh in this conflict. The Soviet Union and the United States again applied diplomatic pressure to end this war. Bangladesh did achieve its independence, but pro- Pakistan militias within Bangladesh during this conflict reportedly raped thousands of women and slaughtered an estimated 3 million people. In the 1990's tensions between India and Pakistan escalated as both sides acquired nuclear weapons.

Since World War II, the Netherlands and France have also lost their extensive overseas empires. During World War II, the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies. The Japanese installed Sukarno, the leader of the Indonesian National Party, as the new local leader of the former Dutch colony. Sukarno had organized this party in the 1920's to oppose Dutch rule. After World War II and the withdrawal of Japanese forces, the Netherlands formally recognized the independence of the Republic of Indonesia in 1949 with Sukarno as its first president. Sukarno, however, as president in 1965 embraced Communism and sought an alliance with the Soviet Union. The Muslim majority in Indonesia (Indonesia today has the largest Muslim population in the world) and the Indonesian army opposed these moves. The Indonesian military under the leadership of Suharto, subsequently removed Sukarno from power. In 1965-1966 the Indonesian army slaughtered an estimated 3 million suspected Communists in Indonesia. Many of these suspected "Communists" were simply non- Muslim, ethnic Chinese, who had immigrated to the Dutch East Indies in large numbers since the 18th century. Suharto remained military dictator of Indonesia until 1998.

France after World War II attempted to maintain its vast overseas empire by military means. In 1954, however, France withdrew from French Indo-China after suffering defeat at the hands of the North Vietnamese Communists. Algeria in North Africa under the leadership of the National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1954 declared its independence from France. French forces were unable to crush this uprising, and in 1958, the French army mutinied, demanding that the French government install the World War II hero, Charles de Gaulle as the new President of France (He had led the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation). De Gaulle did assume the presidency and founded the Fifth French Republic. He negotiated an end to the war in Algeria in 1962, and France recognized the independence of Algeria. As a result of the war the Jewish and Christian population of Algeria of over one million people (the Pieds-noirs) departed Algeria and settled in France. This war also cost the lives of over one million people. The FLN, whose members were Muslim, established a secular one party state in Algeria with the support of the military, that still runs the country.

In the decades following World War II, European powers recognized the independence of their colonies in Africa. Each of these new African nations often consisted of competing ethnic and tribal groups since different Europeans nations had set the boundaries of these former colonies during the "Scramble for Africa" in the late 19th century. Consequently many African nations have dealt with ethnic conflict and civil war since winning independence. The Union of South Africa, that was created in 1910 after the Boer War, broke away from the United Kingdom in 1948 and became an independent republic. In South Africa the white population, many of whom were Boers, constituted around 20% of the population, yet controlled the government and owned 90% of the land. The African Zulu and Xhosa peoples along with Indian immigrants largely constituted the remaining 80% of the population. In 1948 the white South African government set up a legal system to segregate the different races in the country, known as Apartheid. In South Africa, a political party, the African National Congress (ANC) led efforts to oppose this system of Apartheid. The ANC joined forces with the Communist Party against the anti-Communist and Boer dominated National Party, which was the party most often in power in South Africa.

During the Cold War, the United States supported the South African government due to the efforts of South Africa to fight the spread of Communism in neighboring states during the Cold War. In 1964, the former British colony of Rhodesia, split into two states. Northern Rhodesia became the nation of Zambia and became a Marxist Leninist one party dictatorship. In Southern Rhodesia, the white minority government in 1965 declared their independence from the United Kingdom as the Republic of Rhodesia, and subsequently received military aid from South Africa to fight Communist rebels. In 1980, these Communist rebels under the leadership of Robert Mugabe overthrew the minority white government, and in 1982 renamed the country Zimbabwe. Once in power, Mugabe's Communist government begin a program of land reform and began seizing the land of white farmers and distributing these lands to poor blacks. The South African government also waged war against the Communist regimes in power in Mozambique and Angola after these former Portuguese colonies won their independence. At the end of World War I, South Africa took over administration of German South West Africa. In 1966, Communist rebels began an uprising against the South African government in this territory. These rebels after 1975 received military support from the Communist government of Angola (all the Communist governments in Africa received financial and military aid from the Soviet Union and Cuba).In 1990, under pressure from the United States, South Africa formally recognized the independence of this territory as the new nation of Namibia. By 1990-1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the United States had no reason to support the South African government. The American public was strongly opposed to the racist Apartheid system, especially since the United States had only just recently dismantled its own "Jim Crow" system of racial segregation in the 1960's. Under intense pressure from the United States and the United Nations, the South African government in 1991-1992 agreed to end the Apartheid system and change its constitution to allow its non-white population to fully participate in elections. In 1994, under the new constitution, Nelson Mandela, the leader of the ANC, was elected president of South Africa. The ANC remains the largest political party in South Africa, but has so far resisted calls by some of its members to seize the lands and businesses of whites.

The United Kingdom attempted to hold on to its colony of Kenya in Central Africa since this colony, like Rhodesia, included a large number of white farmers. Between 1952 and 1956 the Kikuyu and Meru peoples in Kenya rose up against British rule in the Mau Mau Uprising. The British government hired South African mercenaries to crush the rebellion and placed over 150,000 rebels and their families in concentration camps. In 1958 the British government changed course and agreed to negotiate with native Kenyans such as Jomo Kenyatta to grant self-government to Kenya. In 1963, Kenya achieved its independence with Kenyatta as its first president. Since winning independence, however, Kenya has faced ethnic strife as the majority Kikuyu people have been in conflict with smaller ethnic groups within the country.

The ethnic strife in Kenya, however, pales in comparison to civil wars which have raged in other African countries. In the former Belgian colonies of Rwanda and Burundi, ethnic strife between the Tutsi and Hutu peoples have resulted in genocide. In 1994 Hutu militias in Rwanda slaughtered an estimated one million Tutsi. The bloodshed in Rwanda in 1995 spilled over into the neighboring country of Zaire (Congo) after a Tutsi controlled government took power in Rwanda in 1994 after the genocide, and Hutu militias found refuge in Zaire. In 1996 the Tutsi government in Rwanda consequently supported a Tutsi army in Zaire under the command of Laurent-Desire Kabila, a former Marxist Leninist, which set out to overthrow the Mobutu dictatorship in Zaire that had ruled that country since 1965. In 1997, Kabila's forces overthrew Mobutu's government, and Kabila, as the new president, renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kabila afterwards dismissed his Rwandan Tutsi supporters and secured the support of other ethnic groups within the country. Consequently, Uganda and Rwanda, encouraged Tutsi militias in Congo to rebel against Kabila's new government. Both Rwanda and Uganda were supporting these rebellious militias to secure control of the vast mineral wealth of the Congo. In 2002, South Africa mediated a peace agreement between Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda that ended the war. This Congo War was marked by bloody massacres of women and children by ethnic militias as well as mass rapes. Over five million people may have died in this conflict. The former British colony of Sudan has also witnessed ethnic and sectarian conflict. When Sudan won its independence from the United Kingdom and Egypt in 1956, Northern Sudan was Muslim and Arabic was spoken whereas South Sudan was inhabited by different ethnic group, many of whom had converted to Christianity. In addition, the Darfur region in Sudan was inhabited by ethnic groups that were Muslims, but didn't speak Arabic. In 1983, South Sudan rose up against the Muslim government in power in Sudan. In 2003, the Darfur region also rebelled in reaction to attacks by Arab militias (the Janjaweed) who were trying to eliminate the non-Arab population from the territory and secure land for themselves. In 2011 through the mediation of the United Nations, South Sudan secured its independence and became a separate nation.

Latin American countries achieved independence in the early 19th century, but they remained "colonial "societies through the rest of that century. The colonial creole elites prior to independence continued to control the governments and most of the land after independence. These countries' economies also continued to rely on the export of agricultural goods and raw materials such as sugar and coffee (Brazil), beef (Argentina), and copper (Chile). Through the 19th century, the United Kingdom and the the British overseas empire was the primary market for Latin American trade as well as the main source for credit for Latin American nations. By the close of this century, however, the United States was replacing the United Kingdom as the main trading partner and investor in the Latin American economy. In the early 20th century, the US government maintained that it needed to police the Western Hemisphere and maintain peace and stability. US forces even occupied Cuba (1906), Nicaragua (1909), Haiti (1915), and the Dominican Republic (1916). The United States also intervened in the Mexican Revolution (1911 - 1920), when civil war erupted in that country following the 31 year dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz.

In the 20th century Latin American countries attempted to become independent and move away from their colonial past. After the onset of the Great Depression, in 1930's through the 1950's, regimes in Latin America, following the example of Franco's Spain and Mussolini's Italy, sought to unite all social classes under a one party state. Getulio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Peron in Argentina, and Lazaro Cardenas in Mexico were all popular "strong men", who enacted land reform to provide land to peasants, supported labor unions as well as higher wages and better working conditions for the working class, and promoted government programs to expand industrial development.

During the Cold War, however, the threat of Communism resulted in the establishment of unpopular military dictatorships in many Latin American countries. In Argentina between 1976 and 1983, a military junta controlled the government with support of the US government. Over this period this government conducted the "Dirty War" and secretly abducted and murdered perhaps as many as 30,000 suspected Communists and Communist sympathizers. In Chile the military in 1973 overthrew the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende, a Communist. Augusto Pinochet subsequently served as military dictator and president of Chile until 1990. After the Cold War, the United States government has not supported military dictators to crush Communism since the threat of Communism as subsided. Since the 1990's Latin American republics have elected governments that have supported Neoliberal economic policies and welcomed foreign investment as well as Socialist governments. In 1999, for example, a military officer, Hugo Chavez ,was elected President of Venezuela and embraced Socialism and solidarity with the Communist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Following the end of World War II, many of the Muslim countries that achieved independence were former European colonies such as Syria (France), Iraq (United Kingdom) and Libya (Italy). These regions had never existed as independent countries prior to European colonization, and they often consisted of diverse ethnic, tribal, and sectarian groups. In these countries repressive military dictators served to hold these countries together such as Muammar Gaddafi in Libya (1969), Hafaz-al Assad in Syria (1971) and Saddam Hussein in Iraq (1979). To unite their countries, these dictators appealed to Arab nationalism and opposition to Israel and Israel's ally, the United States. During the Cold War, they were all Soviet allies and received military and economic aid from the Soviet Union.

This situation in the Middle East was thrown into turmoil by the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which overthrew the long time ally of the United States, the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Some Iranians opposed his autocratic government, but other Iranians, especially the Shiite clergy, opposed the Shah's efforts to westernize Iran. After the overthrow of his regime, Shiite Muslims in Iran established a theocratic Islamic republic in Iran under the leadership of the Islamic religious teacher, "Ayatollah" ("religious leader") Ruhollah Khomeini. The revolution in Iran inspired the Shiites in southern Iraq to rise up against the Sunni Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein in 1980, resulting in a war between Iraq and Iran (1980 -1988). The war ended in a stalemate after the death of over 500,000 people. Since the Islamic government of Iran was hostile to the United States, "the Great Satan" (Iranian students in 1979 had seized control of the US embassy in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and held the staff there hostage for over a year), the United States as well as Iraq's traditional ally, the Soviet Union, during this war provided Saddam's government with military aid, which enabled the dictator to amass one of the largest armies in the world. In 1990, Iraq occupied neighboring Kuwait along the Persian Gulf, resulting in the Gulf War (1991).The US and their allies liberated Kuwait, but opted not to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, who therefore remained in power in Iraq and slaughtered Shiite and Kurdish rebels in Iraq.

During the Gulf War, Saudi Arabia invited the US to use their country as a base in the war to liberate Kuwait. This invitation incensed a Saudi millionaire, Osama bin Laden, who had fought along side fellow Jihadists in Afghanistan against Soviet forces in the 1980's. Bin Laden believed that the presence of US troops in the land of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina, was offensive to Allah (God). Consequently, in 1990 he founded Al Qaeda ("the Base") as an organization, whose mission was to destroy the United States and Israel, liberate the Holy Cities from the presence of American infidels (unbelievers), and reestablish the Caliphate (the Caliph is the religious ruler of all Muslims and successor to the Prophet Mohammed). Osama bin Laden found a home for his group in Afghanistan, where in 1992 the government of Pakistan had installed the Taliban (Muslim religious students) in power as a strict, conservative Sunni Muslim government. The terrorist attacks orchestrated by Al Qaeda from Afghanistan on New York City and Washington DC in 2001 resulted in the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).In 2011, the US military assassinated Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan.

The overthrow of the despotic regimes of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and the holding of democratic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq under US occupation apparently inspired a desire for democracy for people across the Middle East and Muslim world. In 2011, mass protests occurred across the Arab world in the so-called "Arab Spring". Military dictatorships in Yemen, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya collapsed. However, in Egypt, the military regained power in a coup after democratic elections resulted in victories for the Muslim Brotherhood. In Yemen, Syria, and Libya, the Arab Spring only resulted in ongoing civil wars. The turmoil in Syria following the Arab Spring resulted in a revival of Al Qaeda in Syria, and in 2014 the creation of "The Islamic State" an offshoot of Al Qaeda, which claimed to have successfully reestablished the Caliphate in Western Syria and Northern Iraq. Iraqi and American forces regained control of this region from the Islamic State in 2017 and ended its reign of terror. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, however, still maintain a presence in Muslim countries not only in the Middle East, but in Africa (Nigeria, Somalia, Niger, Mali) and East Asia (Indonesia, Philippines).