It’s hard to look at a war where America took over the international system and smashed the two most immediate threats to it and say ‘America was tricked.’

And therefore struggle to see the value in taking this more speculative path – which isn’t to say there isn’t any.

It doesn’t follow from the fact socialism existed outside of Moscow (and as a central tenet of the Labour Party), and a bankrupt UK embarked on a policy of nationalisation after the war that the UK’s war effort was shaped in any way by, or to further, Communism. It’s not the same thing. You’d be as well to argue that Germany was subject to “communist influence” when he signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – it was in Russia’s interests after all, and look – Hitler led a national socialist party! Those sneaky commies…

In practice, the only difference between communism and national socialism is that the latter limits the beneficiaries of progressive policy to a carefully defined group. From Wikipedia: In the poor country that was the Weimar Republic of the early 1930s, the Nazi Party realised their socialist policies with food and shelter for the unemployed and the homeless—later recruited to the Brownshirt Sturmabteilung (SA – Storm Detachment).[108]

And I think we’re arguing at cross-purposes here. I’m just suggesting (as I think are others) that it’s not far-fetched to believe there was communist (little-c) influence among the allied powers. Were there Communists (aka, members of the Russian party) among the allies? No, and I think that’s what you’re arguing against. But why do you find it so hard to believe—especially in light of the progressive policies of the U.S. and U.K.—that among top brass, there were people highly sympathetic to communism (little-c)?

You can’t have it both ways. The Atlantic Charter was drafted by Churchill and the Brits and the US and agreed to by various empires. If you’re going to assert that this was a “clear American war aim”, you’ll have to assert that this was also a “clear war aim” of the British, the USSR, the French, the Netherlands, etc.

The fact that Roosevelt and Churchill and the Allies talked and behaved as if the third point of the charter didn’t mean what it appears to mean today means that it was far from a “clear war aim”.

The propaganda was directed at the entire world. It was a “world” war after all. The Germans were claiming to liberate and defend Europe from Soviet domination, and the Japanese were claiming to liberate Asians from European colonialism. While the Allies were claiming that Germany and Japan were actually bad guys after “world domination” and intended to colonize and enslave the entire planet, and that they, the Allies, were good guys who were defending against them. If you’re trying to convince a person that someone else is bad because he’s trying to colonize that person, you can’t exactly turn around and say to that person that you’re in favor of colonizing him.

It’s good you bring up the postwar colonial situation since historical context is critical here. You can’t just narrowly focus on words or statements completely divorced from historical context. After the war, the French fought an 8 year war, the First Indochina War, to try to keep French Indochina, which was considered the jewel of the French Empire. The US and the Brits backed the French. Towards the end of the war, the US was financing something like 80% of the French war effort. Towards the end of the war when it looked like French Indochina would fall, the US seriously considered direct military intervention to aid the French, and urged the Brits and others to intervene. They were hesitant, however, since they believed intervention might provoke direct Chinese intervention and wider Soviet and Chinese support. This was in 1954, after the Korean War which had just ended in 1953 in a stalemate after Chinese intervention. They also feared that intervention would just trigger greater indigenous support for the nationalists and communists. In these circumstances, the US reasonably believed that intervening would result in wider conflict and a stalemate at best, like it just had during the Korean War, which had cost 40,000 American lives and 100,000 American wounded. The Korean War had also depended on indigenous support, as most of the dead and wounded on the anti-communist side were South Korean. The US had intervened on behalf of Korean independence and anti-communism. Intervening for the French would have meant there’d be less indigenous support hence less indigenous cannon fodder. It would have meant more US casualties after just ending a 3 year war that ended where it started and resulted in over 100,000 US casualties. In these circumstances, the US figured it’d be better to try to just put some local nationalists in power and offer them at least nominal independence so it wouldn’t go communist. Like I said, this was the result of postwar geopolitics.

Not at all. It was a clear war aim of the Americans, and a nice development to the Soviets. The Britsh, the French, the Dutch, etc. were in no position to say anything. “No, we refuse! We prefer German occupation to the possibility of a future independent Guinea!”. Yeah, right.

It’s clear that there was nothing particularly “clear” about it

Your example proves my point. Roosevelt and Churchill may have “agreed that the third point of charter was not going to apply to africa and asia” – but that’s not what the Charter says. Commenter “John” below quotes some of the explaining Churchill had to do. But why did he have any explaining to do? Only because the Charter said what is said. The question becomes: why did the Charter include that paragraph? Did the British put it and refuse to accept its excision? No. That leaves us with the Americans as the culprit. And why did they want the Charter to include those words? The question answers itself.

Like I said, it had propaganda value and the US more or less stumbled into it out of postwar geopolitical circumstance.

Of course it had “propaganda value”. It was not a gun. But propaganda value directed to whom? To the colonial empires or to the colonized? Who was being courted by it? If you were a French colonist in Mali or a British one in Kenya, would you read it and think, “excellent, the future perspectives of the empire are ever more assured and I’m even more secure where I am”? If you were a Malian or Kenyan colonized, would you read it and think, “damn, my liberation is ever more distant”?

Nor was it a “stumble”. It led directly to this (UN Charter, article 73):

Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:

b. to develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and their varying stages of advancement; .

Of course this left enough wiggle room not to topple any governments in 1945. But the arrow of change has a very clear and irrevocable direction. Countries which tried to keep part of their empires had to argue, like the French in Algeria and the Portuguese in Angola and Portugal, that these were not colonies but integral parts of the motherland, so the Charter did not apply. An argument which was not believed even by those who made it. And who put this arrow in place? The Americans.