Classic imperialism (the building and maintaining of empires beyond a country’s national borders) fell seriously out of fashion after World War II. The Dutch, British and French all had major colonial holdings in Southeast Asia, including Borneo, Java, Vietnam, India, Burma (now Myanmar), Malaya (now Malaysia), Hong Kong and Singapore. The U.S. possessed the Philippines. When the Japanese were finally defeated in 1945, the former European colonial powers returned and attempted to re-assert their authority. Things did not go well. The native people wanted their independence and had lost their fear of their formerly invincible European masters after watching fellow Asians--the Japanese--humble them decisively in the war. Within ten years following the end of the war all of the above colonies, except Hong Kong, were independent. It has been stated that the United States entered a period of imperialism (of sorts) in the late 1990’s—coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the only power in the world that could have stood in the way of America’s global dominance.
What made that period of imperialism different from the pre-war variety?