New colonialism in the Internet era
Salleh Said Keruak
To relate the history of colonialism would require a thesis and can never be given justice in a short Blog posting. I shall try, however, to explain in the shortest possible manner why the world and countries like Malaysia face the danger of being colonised and what form of colonisation we are talking about.
In the past, for more than 2,000 years, colonisation has always been through military intervention or occupation. However, the Emergency in Malaya, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, etc., showed that military might was no longer enough. It takes more than guns to dominate a country.
While the US used the military to fight the Korean and Vietnam Wars without much success, the British successfully used the fight to win the hearts and minds of the people. And that is why Malaysia is not a Communist State today, one of the few countries to win the war against Communism.
Malaya was too important to the British and they could not afford to lose this prized colony. Britain was practically bankrupted by WWII and Malaya contributed to two-thirds of the British economy. Without Malaya Britain would have taken a far longer time to recover.
