American anti-imperialism and the institutions left by decolonization

American objections to a Commonwealth trading arrangement were tied less to free trade itself than to suspicion that Britain was trying to prolong its empire. The anti-imperial logic did not resolve the institutional problem: imperial administrations often strengthened police, courts, and armies without building equally strong democratic counterweights. Rapid withdrawal could therefore leave coercive institutions stronger than representative ones. Cold War policy, decolonization, and constitutional capacity cannot be reduced to a simple empire-versus-freedom binary.