Of course, but the article writes as though the US just left these places to their own devices, even though they constantly meddled in these countries after the

Of course, but the article writes as though the US just left these places to their own devices, even though they constantly meddled in these countries after the fact, and meddled in many more countries across the world. It's not like these countries were fully sovereign after the fact. The US backed dictators in every single one of the countries discussed: Marcos, Noriega, Batista, the Duvaliers (and of courses many others in different countries). The author fails to understand that decolonization can be a pretext for continuing exploitation of foreign territories while abandoning the nominal moral obligation to develop them. In the counterfactual where the US maintained control of these countries, they would not have been developed to first-world standards, they would have just been exploited overtly.