The act of imposing democracy on a nation that wants to be communist is a colonialist act.
Please post for me what you are using as a definition for colonialism, because we may be using different definitions. I get mine from sociology and international affairs textbooks. I can post them if anyone likes.
I suspect that when people think of colonies they think of garrisons and exploitation of the natives. That's part of the picture. But colonialism has its roots in a Social Darwinian paradigm.
That is, it stems from the belief of an objective notion of progress. Industrialization and democracy form the backbone of this progress to Western society. The imposition of this ideology on various cultures was understood to be the White Man's Burden. Have you read that poem by Rudyard Kipling?
Quote:
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke (1) your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, (2)
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
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Imposing our belief of what constitutes progress in the form of warring with a native population over the form of government they desired is colonialism.
This shouldn't even be a discussion. The notion that democracy is superior to communism, and that we have an obligation to eradicate it from the world, is the purest expression of colonialism I can point to in modern history.
Taking the oil [replace oil with whatever resource]? That's bonus. A consequence (or repayment) for the gift we gave the native population. The gift of democracy, which sometimes isn't even wanted. Do you see the irony in that? Establishing democracy in a region that doesn't want it?