The thrust of the article is that the US made a strategic and moral error by dumping these territories.
Left unsaid is that the US collects moral errors like Pokemon cards. If there's a win-win that would mean some non-anglo people would be allowed to win, this US will set itself on fire to prevent it from happening.
To paraphrase a comment I read here recently: the greatest innovation of the republican party was realising that so many people prioritise hurting people who aren't like them. You might think that between "cut off everyone's nose" or "cut off nobody's nose" the latter would win, but a large percentage of people prefer the former, because it means people not like them will have their noses cut off. Now they just have to find a way to protect their wealthy donors' noses, because those people do care.
Left unsaid is that the US collects moral errors like Pokemon cards. If there's a win-win that would mean some non-anglo people would be allowed to win, this US will set itself on fire to prevent it from happening.