U.S. War Against Asia by William Meyers Now Available
April 14, 2025
by William P. Meyers

Site Search

Popular pages:

Two Centuries of American attacks on Asians

U.S. War Against Asia is now available as a Kindle book. Publication of the hard copy version will be delayed, waiting for financing.

Many Americans know the United States fought Japan during World War II, fought Korea and China during the Korean War, and also fought the War in Vietnam. But few know the full story of American aggression in Asia dating back to near the beginning of our republic. While each incident and war can be treated as isolated, the book shows that from an early era some leading Americans sought to prey on Asian nations. Combining commerce, military force, and diplomacy, over the course of the 1800s the United States became a major player in Asia, sometimes working with, and sometimes against, other imperialist powers including the British Empire, French Empire, Russian Empire, Dutch Empire, and Spanish Empire.

U.S. War Against Asia covers America's role in the Opium Wars with China, its first attack on Japan in the 1850s, its grabbing of Hawaii and other Pacific Ocean islands, and its conquest of Philippines. Entering the 20th century, it documents American interference in the internal affairs of China and other nations, then the path to World War II, including the events leading up to the Battle of Pearl Harbor. After that war came American interference in the Chinese civil war and the Korean War. In the 1960s the Vietnam War followed the now-familiar pattern.

Although battle strategies and some specific battles are discussed, the focus of the book is on the causes of the war. Readers will not be surprised that the main cause is greed. Enabling the greed is the belief in the superiority of European peoples and the inferiority of Asian peoples. Yet often these wars were propelled by relatively small gangs of people, like the Delano-Roosevelt family axis. Benefits from the wars to ordinary working Americans were minimal.

U.S. War Against Asia corrects many lies that have been told to the American people about our past interactions with Asia. For instance, it tells how the people of the Philippines had won their independence battle with the Spanish Empire, only to be subdued (at times with genocide) by the new American Empire. It gives a more balanced view of American relations with Japan leading up to the second war between nations. It also goes deeper into history, for instance relating the Sumatra raid that appears to be the first conflict. Since the U.S. was so far from Asia, most of the early bullying was done by the U.S. Navy,

Yet the book is terse: for the length of history it covers, it is short. This is mainly by not documenting every battle in detail, nor does it quote every diplomatic cable sent over the centuries. At the back of the book is a bibliography of books covering the various wars with the War in much more detail.

Hopefully U.S. War Against Asia will help Americans understand the truth about their past. That should help them understand the attitudes of Asian peoples and governments to America.

[Disclaimer: I am the author of U.S. War Against Asia.