>>31817410Not to turn this into /pol/ as I find /tg/ to be a better bunch than that, but coming from an indigenous group that was legitimately "conquered" by the US in the 40s, in this case the Chamorro of Saipan, the United States has been a great boon.
That's not to say that it doesn't have tremendous downsides, but I can make a direct comparison to the Federated States of Micronesia and how they were given a choice to stay with the USA or leave of their own accord, they chose to leave.
For all intents and purposes both places, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia are huge shitholes with no geopolitical power.
However...
In almost every respect the CNMI has been better off statistically. Not to mention the Chamorro have a very integrated respect for the US.
We've been nearly wiped out as a people by the Spanish (90% of the population wiped out from disease), the religion exterminated. The Germans controlled the Islands for a while and unfortunately the Japanese did during the first half of the 20th century.
There was one of the largest mass suicides in history on the island because of Japanese imperialism.
While I'm not one to side with the lesser of two evils. The US was an incredible boon in the 20th century. They could've used atomic weapons to conquer nations and enslave populations. They did not and not necessarily because of cold war politics, but because they were forward thinking people at the time. But that's another rant for another day.
