Transcription
For five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding. Its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.
But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. The great western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings. Against that backdrop, then as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an end.
We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West's managed decline. Armies fight for a way of life. And that is what we are defending. A great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history. And this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you, to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.
Today in the 21st century, it's taken for granted that we live at a time when formal colonialism has ended. There are still forms of indirect colonialism and neocolonialism, but we're told we live in a post-colonial era. Over hundreds of years, the European empires colonized the vast majority of the planet. And even as recently as the end of World War II in 1945, much of Africa and Asia was still colonized by the European powers.
However, in World War II, the colonial empires of Europe and Japan destroyed themselves. And from the late 1940s until the 1970s, there were national liberation struggles and anti-colonial movements took power all across Africa and Asia. This was the era of revolutionary decolonization, and it was successful in most of the world. There were some exceptions.
So, the US Empire today still maintains a dozen colonies, including Puerto Rico, which is the world's oldest continued colony, as well as many colonial so-called territories in the Pacific Ocean. Likewise, the French Empire still maintains many colonies in the Pacific and the Caribbean, and even the UK, which lost the vast majority of its empire in the anti-colonial struggles. Despite that, the UK does still maintain many small colonial territories, including, for instance, islands in the Caribbean, which are tax shelters, and also the Malvvenas Islands off of the coast of Argentina.
However, the vast majority of these colonies are tiny island nations with very small populations. And the western empires have lost the massive colonies that they still had at the end of World War II in places like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, and all across Africa. So the reason I'm getting into these details here is what I'm emphasizing is that even though decolonization was not 100% complete and there still are some colonies, the vast majority of the world was able to free itself from Western colonialism and Japanese colonialism.
Decolonization from the late 1940s throughout until the 1970s, this was one of the most important periods in modern history. However, what we're seeing today in the 2020s is an attempt by the US Empire to reverse that period of decolonization. The US Empire has made it clear that it wants to recolonize many parts of the world. And here I'm not just talking about Donald Trump, although Trump is of course a good example of this. Trump has openly pledged to colonize Greenland, Canada, Venezuela, Panama, and other foreign countries. But this problem goes much deeper than just Trump.
Today I'm going to be looking at an absolutely insane speech that was given by the head of US foreign policy, Marco Rubio, who is the US Secretary of State and the second most powerful person in the US government after Trump. And Rubio delivered a speech surrounded by European officials at the Munich Security Conference this February. And it was one of the most explicitly pro-colonialist speeches I have ever seen in the 21st century. The head of US foreign policy was saying very clearly to the entire world that the US empire wants to reverse the anti-colonial struggles. It wants to undo the decolonization we saw after World War II. And the US empire wants to work together with the European empires to recolonize other parts of the world to restore their empires. Marco Rubio did not hide it. He was very proud of that fact.
Listen to how in this clip from his speech, Rubio praises the European empires for colonizing the global south, especially the Americas. He speaks positively of the vast empires that extended across the globe. And Rubio complains that decolonization led to the decline of Western global dominance. And as I'll show later in his speech, he wants to revive that imperial dominance. Listen to this crazy clip.
"For five centuries before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding. its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe. But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting. Europe was in ruins. Half of it lived behind an iron curtain, and the rest looked like it would soon follow. The great western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swats of the map in the years to come."
Note how the US Secretary of State portrayed decolonization as something evil led by godless communist revolutions, he said. And he demonized anti-colonial uprisings. And he also claimed that they were draping the red hammer and sickle. >> And draped the red hammer and sickle. >> By the way, the hammer and sickle are not red. The hammer and sickle are yellow and they're on a red flag. The flag is red, not the hammer and sickle. But of course, Marco Rubio doesn't know many basic facts about history. The point is is that he's portraying the anti-colonial struggles of the global south as an evil communist plot.
And then continuing in his speech, Rubio says that the Western imperial powers must unite. They must strengthen the transatlantic alliance between the US and Europe in order to recolonize the world to bring back those empires.
>> "Against that backdrop, then as now, many came to believe that the West's age of dominance had come to an end, and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past. But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make. This is what we did together once before. And this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you. And this is why we do not want our allies to be weak, because that makes us weaker."
As if it weren't already obvious enough that Rubio is praising Western colonialism, in the next part of his speech, he tells the Western leaders that are sitting around him at the Munich Security Conference that they need to stop apologizing for the colonialist crimes against humanity that they committed in the global south.
>> "This is why we do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who together with us are willing and able to defend it. For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West's managed decline. We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history."
Instead of feeling guilt and shame about the horrific crimes they committed against the global south, Rubio insists that the Western imperial powers should be proud of their colonial heritage and their noble civilization and they need to renew the greatest civilization in human history through strength. I mean this is not just a dog whistle. This is a car horn where the head of US foreign policy is saying we should be proud of our colonial history and we should revive those colonial empires.
Now defenders of Rubio might argue that I'm misrepresenting his comments. But later on in the same speech, Rubio referred to what he called the purported sins of past generations. And the only fear we have is the fear of the shame of not leaving our nations prouder, stronger, and wealthier for our children, not one that exists to operate a global welfare state and atone for the purported sins of past generations. By using the term purported, Rubio is calling into question whether or not they actually are sins. What he's saying is that the Western colonial empires did not actually commit crimes. He is totally whitewashing the horrific history of colonialism in which the western imperial powers colonized the vast majority of the world. They killed hundreds of millions of people, not just tens of millions. Hundreds of millions of people were killed. They enslaved many millions more. They carried out the most atrocious crimes against humanity. And yet the head of US foreign policy is calling these purported sins, implying very heavily that there actually were not sins.
And then Marco Rubio argued that Western armies must fight for so-called Western civilization and they should be proud of their history. Once again, this is not just a dog whistle. He's blatantly saying we are remilitarizing to recolonize.
>> "Armies fight for a way of life and that is what we are defending. A great civilization that has every reason to be proud of its history."
And while the US Secretary of State was rewriting history, condemning the anti-colonial struggles as evil godless communists who were erasing Western civilization as Rubio was calling for restoring Western imperialism. You know what European leaders were doing? They were applauding him. The European politicians who constantly bloate about democracy and human rights and all of that propaganda. They gave a standing ovation to this far-right extremist Marco Rubio as he called for recolonizing the global south and called for Western imperial unity to revive Western imperialism.
>> "And our destiny together awaits. Thank you."
And if you read the Western media's coverage of Rubio's speech, they completely erased all of the pro-colonialist elements in his speech and made it all about the US and Europe staying together. They belong together. These Western media outlets said that Europe can be relieved. It doesn't need to fear that the US is going to break up with Europe and abandon Europe because Rubio reaffirmed that these transatlantic ties will always remain. But again, they did not mention the explicitly pro-colonialist messaging.
And after Marco Rubio finished the speech, the moderator of the Munich Security Conference thanked him and he said European leaders all had a sigh of relief, reassuring them that this partnership will continue. Once again, ignoring the huge elephant in the room that this transatlantic alliance is explicitly predicated on recolonizing the global south. That's the whole point.
>> "Mr. Secretary, I'm not sure you heard the sigh of relief through this hall when we were just listening to what I would interpret as a message of reassurance, of partnership. You spoke of uh intertwined uh uh relations between the United States and and Europe. Thank you for offering this message of reassurance about our partnership."
What this illustrates is how the European powers never voluntarily gave up their colonial empires. They were forced to grant independence to the peoples of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. After those peoples led antic-colonial struggles, they took up arms against the foreign colonizers and they fought for and achieved their independence. But ever since, the European empires have been desperate to retake their colonial possessions to reimpose their hegemony on the rest of the world in order to exploit the natural resources and labor of the people of the global south.
And in this speech, Marco Rubio speaking on behalf of the US Empire is saying a message to the European Empire is he's saying we should unite to recolonize the global south. What the US empire has been doing to Gaza and to Venezuela and to Cuba and now threatening Greenland and beyond. They want to do that to the entire world. This is not just about Palestine. This is not just about President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela. This is not just about overthrowing the Cuban Revolution, which of course Marco Rubio is obsessed with doing, but this goes much deeper. They want to undo the decolonial struggles that we saw in the second half of the 20th century.
And throughout his speech, Marco Rubio emphasized this transatlantic imperialist bond between the United States and Europe. Rubio argued that the United States is a European colonial creation.
>> "For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago. But the roots began here on this continent long before. The men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance. an unbreakable link between the old world and the new. We are part of one civilization, Western civilization."
When Rubio says the US and Europe are part of one civilization, Western civilization, he's not just saying civilization in a cultural sense or a religious sense based on Christianity. He's saying it's also based on an imperialist and a colonialist construct and that the US empire wants to revive that part of Western civilization which is fundamentally predicated on the exploitation and the pillaging of the global south.
>> "This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon. It is the path path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again."
And with all of that said, I should address another major issue here which left a lot of people confused and they said, "Wait a second. Why is a man of Cuban descent openly praising Western colonialism?" Well, if you listen to Marco Rubio's speech, you will see that he does not identify as Cuban in the speech. Instead, Rubio proudly traces his ancestry to Italy and to Spain. He does not mention Cuba once. And this makes it clear that Rubio is part of the European descent colonial elites in Latin America, the colonizers who traveled to Latin America centuries ago and declared themselves the ruling classes and carried out horrific crimes against humanity, against the indigenous populations. Rubio identifies with the colonizers, with the concistadores. He does not identify with the people of Cuba, the indigenous people. He certainly does not identify with the other indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. He identifies with the European colonizers who also founded the United States.
Listen to his remarks here.
>> "Because for us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe. Our story began with an Italian explorer whose adventure into the great unknown to discover a new world brought Christianity to the Americas and became the legend that defined the imagination of our pioneer nation. Our first colonies were built by English settlers. Our great Midwestern heartland was built by German farmers and craftsmen who transformed empty plains into a global agricultural powerhouse. Our expansion into the interior followed the footsteps of French fur traders and explorers. The entire romance of the cowboy archetype that became synonymous with the American West. These were born in Spain. And you know that in the year that my country was founded, Lorenzo and Catalina Geraldi lived in Casau Montarato in the Kingdom of Piedmont, Sardinia, and Jose Manuel Arena lived in Sevilla, Spain. I don't know what if anything they knew about the uh 13 colonies which had gained their independence for the from the British Empire. But here's what I'm certain of. They could have never imagined that 250 years later, one of their direct descendants would be back here today on this continent as the chief diplomat of that infant nation. And yet here I am reminded by my own story that both our histories and our fates will always be linked."
At the same time, Marco Rubio stressed that this idea of western civilization is also predicated on capitalism, both capitalism and imperialism. And he emphasized that during the first cold war against the Soviet Union and against the anti-colonial struggles because during the first cold war, the US empire joined the European empires in opposing most of the anti-colonial struggles. It was the Soviet Union that did support the anti-colonial struggles in the global south.
Now, this doesn't mean that all of the anti-colonial movements were evil plots by godless communists. As Rubio said in his speech,
>> "the great Western empires had entered into terminal decline accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings."
But it is true that the Soviet Union supported the anti-colonial struggles in Africa and Asia and gave them weapons to resist against the European empires whereas the US supported the European colonial empires. And Marco Rubio emphasized in his speech that during the first cold war it was shared anti-communism and capitalism that brought together the imperialist west.
>> "We gather here today as members of a historic alliance, an alliance that saved and changed the world. You know, when this conference began in 1963, it was in a nation, actually was on a continent that was divided against itself. The line between communism and freedom ran through the heart of Germany. The first barbed fences of the Berlin Wall had gone up just two years prior. We found ourselves staring down the barrel of a new global catastrophe. One with the potential for a new kind of destruction, more apocalyptic and final than anything before in the history of mankind. The time of that first gathering, Soviet communism was on the march. Thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance. At that time, victory was far from certain. But we were driven by a common purpose. We were unified not just by what we were fighting against. We were unified, but we were what we were fighting for. When we found ourselves divided once again by the Iron Curtain, the free West linked arms with the courageous dissident struggling against tyranny in the east to defeat Soviet communism."
In his speech, Rubio strongly insinuated that the West should ally together in the new Cold War, Cold War II, this time against communist China, just as the West allied against the Soviet Union in the first cold war. Now, Rubio did not explicitly name China, but in a section of his speech, he heavily implied that China was trying to destroy the West by de-industrializing Western countries, even though it was Western capitalists on Wall Street who voluntarily moved their factories to China and other countries in the global south in order to exploit low-paid workers. Rubio doesn't mention any of that. He portrays de-industrialization of the western neoliberal capitalist economies as an evil plot by China.
And Rubio says that the US and Europe should work together to re-industrialize and to cut China out of a new global supply chain that is dominated by the West.
>> "creating a western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers."
This is an issue that the US government is absolutely obsessed with. The US Congress has released reports talking about plans for creating new US controlled supply chains for critical minerals because the US recognizes that it's preparing for conflict with China in the medium to the long term. In fact, in February, just two weeks before Rubio gave that speech at the Munich Security Conference, the US State Department organized a conference bringing together representatives of the European Commission and 54 countries to try to create a new supply chain for critical minerals that cuts out China. Of course, China was not invited because this is all about trying to contain and weaken China in cold war.
And in the speech, Rubio insisted that the West should create this new supply chain and then dominate the markets of the global south so US corporations and European corporations can control those markets and can control the supply chain and cut out China from both.
>> "creating a western supply chain for critical minerals not vulnerable to extortion from other powers and a unified effort to compete for market share in the economies of the global south. Together we cannot only take back control of our own industries and supply chains. We can prosper in the areas that will define the 21st century."
So the message is now clear. What is the goal of the US empire? It is to reverse the decolonization that we saw in the second half of the 20th century to drag the world back to the 19th century of colonialism. This was made very explicit by the second most powerful person in the US government, Marco Rubio, who's not only the secretary of state but also the national security adviser for Trump. And Rubio's pro-colonial diet tribe could not have been any more different from the speech delivered by China's foreign minister Wang E. The model of international relations that China is promoting is the polar opposite. China is trying to defend decolonization. And China is promoting a more multi-polar world based on multilateralism and win-win cooperation and respect for the sovereignty of small countries.
Again, I cannot emphasize this point enough. If you compare Rubio's speech and Wang ei speech, they are the exact opposite. The US wants to bring back colonialism and western hegemony. And China wants to oppose imperialism because China has been a victim of imperialism. During the century of humiliation from 1839 until the revolution in 1949, China was partially colonized by numerous Western powers and Japan. China was invaded many times by the Western powers and Japan. And China has done everything it can since the revolution in 1949 to defend its sovereignty and to resist imperialism and western and Japanese hegemony.
And I want to briefly look at the highlights of the speech that China's foreign minister Wong E gave so you can see for yourself what I mean. Wang E initiated the speech warning that we are seeing the law of the jungle and unilateralism have gone rampant, which is a clear reference to the US empire invading Venezuela, bombing Iran, colonizing Palestine. And China emphasized that this is why President Cingping created the global governance initiative in order to reform global governance institutions based on five principles: sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, a people-centered approach, and real tangible action, in order to build a more just and equitable global governance system.
And in order to do this, China emphasizes that we must revitalize the United Nations system, which it noted is rooted in the history of the fight against fascism and imperialism. China refers to World War II as the World Anti-Fascist War, and after it ended in 1945, the UN was created. China acknowledged the UN is not perfect. There are many problems with the UN, especially the fact that it is dominated by the US and the Western powers. However, China emphasized that the UN is important because it remains the most universal intergovernmental organization. In the UN, each country, regardless of its size or wealth, has a voice and a sacred vote, as well as obligations and equal rights. Without the UN, the world would revert to the law of the jungle where the strong prey on the weak.
And this is very important. China emphasized multiple times in this speech that even though China is a massive country with 1.4 billion people and the largest economy in the world measured at purchasing power parity. Despite that, China wants to respect small and medium-sized countries and ensure that the global south also has equal representation in the United Nations. And Wangi emphasized the problem is not the international system itself. The problem is not the United Nations, but rather a certain country. He said, and we all know what that certain country is. It's the United States. He noted, "The United States is destroying the United Nations. The US is seeking to magnify differences and disagreements, putting itself above everyone else, stoking block confrontation and reviving the Cold War mentality."
Now, China uses this phrase often. What they're saying is, "The US is trying to drag the world back into a new cold war." And I would say we already are in a new cold war. But China opposes that. And China says that instead of having unilateralism and imperialism and a new cold war, China proposes win-win cooperation. And China says multilateralism should always be upheld.
Wangi then emphasized that quote, "The monopolization of global power by a small number of countries is unpopular. We live in a multi-polar world and need to practice true multilateralism. There needs to be greater democracy in international relations. Global affairs should be discussed by all and the future of the world should be decided by all. We need to make sure that all countries abide by the same set of rules. the basic norms governing international relations underpinned by the purposes and principles of the UN charter. All countries should be equal." End quote.
And this is very important. China defends the UN charter because the principles of the UN charter are respect for sovereign equality and independence and non-interference. Every country is sovereign over its own territory and controls its own internal affairs and other countries cannot carry out acts of aggression which the US empire is constantly doing. China has not fought a war since 1979, whereas the US is waging war every single day somewhere around the world, usually multiple wars at the same time. So, China is instead proposing another kind of foreign relations based on cooperation, not conflict and confrontation, based on equality, saying countries should not impose their will on others.
And then Wang emphasized that quote, "The global south is rising collectively. The global governance system should also stay up-to-date to give more prominence to their voices and representation. Time will prove that the more democratic international relations are, the more peaceful the world is, the stronger multilateralism gets, the more effective global governance becomes." End quote.
So, China's message is very clear. We should oppose imperialism. We should respect the sovereignty of the global south. We should democratize international institutions. So the world is not a global dictatorship run by the US empire, which is what Washington wants. The US only joins organizations if it has veto power. The US has veto power in the UN Security Council. The US is the only country on earth with veto power in the IMF and the World Bank, which are based in Washington. The US has been basically destroying the World Trade Organization because it can't completely control it. Any organization the US empire can't control, it either withdraws or it tries to destroy that organization.
So it is not in any way an exaggeration to say that the proposals that the US and China are making to the world are absolute opposites. They are the contrary of each other. The US Empire wants to revive Western colonialism and unite the US and Europe by exploiting the rest of the world. The majority of the population that lives in the global south, that is the global majority, 86% of the world population. China, a global south country that was colonized for 100 years by the western powers in Japan. China wants a new global order based on opposition to imperialism, based on multi-polarity, true multilateralism, respect for sovereignty and non-interference.
And this is why it's obvious why so many countries in the global south are supporting China's vision and opposing the US empire's vision. And this is why the US empire has been resorting to extreme violence and wars and regime change and illegal sanctions to try to crush any country that stands up to US hegemony like Venezuela and Cuba and Iran. This is the central contradiction in global politics today. If you understand that, you can understand most of what's happening in geopolitics today.
On that note, I'm going to conclude. I am Ben Norton. I am the editor-in-chief of Geopolitical Economy Report. I want to thank everyone for joining me today. Please like and subscribe. Please share this. I will see you all next time.