A problem with this book is that Manela really wants his reader to see this moment as the missed opportunity for a western liberal consensus. This is problematic because it assumes liberalism to be a universal aspiration. Fascism had a great appeal in Asia during the inter-war era among many Asians, not just Japanese. They saw in it an effective strategy to re-take and then re-organize the post-colonial state.

A major problem is that Manela assumes, or willfully chooses to ignore, that many different forms of nationalism existed in the colonial world. The forms that won out in the 1940s-1970s were not preordained. There was a spectrum of nationalisms. Non-radical, reform minded national were still abundant in the 1920s-1950s--and they took place in quite a few colonies. Local elites cooperated with the colonial powers seeking greater representation or incorporation into the metropolitan state on equal terms. Others choose a more radical path and sought immediate control of the state through force. Manela carefully selects a few individual cases (individual nationalist leaders that is) from Egypt, Korea, China, and India to make his argument. He also ignores the contingencies of the later years when these radical forms of nationalism took hold. The problem was that too often the colonial power did not take up the moderate nationalists and truly implement political reforms. Even Ho Chi Minh, who Manela speaks about, was still willing in 1947 to adhere Vietnam to the French Union (the political organization France set up as successor to the French empire). There were opportunities for a more moderate route. France missed this one and many more.

A more modest and accurate assessment of Wilson's legacy on this matter is that it was one important blow, among several others, that began to collapse the colonial consensus. By that I refer to the global elite's acceptance of colonialism as a legitimate structure of governance. Others were the mandate territories stipulated at Versailles. The victors stripped the defeated of their colonies, deeming them unfit to perform the 'uplifting' element of colonization. This importantly introduced an element of 'right and wrong' in colonialism and a precedent for ending colonial rule that did not exist beforehand. The Russian revolution and Lenin's anti-colonial rhetoric were also key blows to the big powers' colonial consensus. Increasing American criticism of European colonialism before and after WWII was also important. By that time these developments had effectively broken the global colonial consensus. This is covered in John Darwin, After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000.