Hyperimperialism: US-NATO’s Dangerous and Decadent New Stage, w/ Vijay Prashad

when a ruling class loses track of its Destiny when it has no project anymore when it simply uh understands itself to have the habit of rule that we must remain in power but with no reason to be in power that ruling class becomes increasingly decadent take a look at the North Atlantic governments you know Mr Biden Trump what's their vision for the for for the United States let alone for the world all schz of Germany No narrative Rishi sunak of the UK no narrative Kia starmer labor party head in the UK no Narrative of the Future No Destiny you know for the people who govern Emanuel macro I mean to even consider the word destiny in the same sentence as the name pretty ridiculous you know hello everyone I'm Ria cic and this is dispatches we're living in a dangerous time of hyper imperialism an imperialism on steroids an imperialism that seeks to destroy and punish anyone who refuses to submit to the current crumbling order and the imperialists have shown that in the case of Gaza they're willing to carry out genocide to get their way what is this new era of hyper imperialism actually mean where do Gaza NATO and the Cold War on China fit in how is the decline of global North hegemony In This Moment Shifting the geopolitical landscape are there new possibilities for emergent organ organizations of the global South how do we even maintain hope as we watch an extermination campaign unfold in Gaza to discuss this and more I'm joined by author historian and journalist VJ Pasad the executive director of The tricontinental Institute for social research Chief correspondent for globe Trotter and chief editor of left word books but before we jump into it this is just part of this episode the full interview is available to breakr new members only you can become a member at patreon.com breakthrough newws and as always be sure to hit the Subscribe button and the Bell so you get a notification whenever we post new content and if you appreciate this show you can also donate Below on YouTube BJ welcome back to dispatches great to be with you um yeah I heard there was thunder outside your window so God knows what it is yeah we play this game in Beirut and actually all in Lebanon called uh it thunderstorm or Israeli air strike it's actually it's a game that goes loud noises or Israeli air strike which I'm being a little bit funny here but you got to have some dark humor and dark times and we're gonna talk a bit about the dark times that we're in right now VJ I want to talk to you about about Gaza about a lot of other issues around the world too and I think a good place to start is you know you TR your um Outlet The tricontinental Institute just published a very very important document called hyper imperialism a dangerous decadent news stage um and it's an excellent document I will link to it in the description I encourage everybody to go check it out uh and so for our listeners and viewers VJ can you explain what is hyper imperialism and why does it matter it's a really interesting um issue uh looking at at the situation in the world today uh and trying to figure out what concepts do we use you know um there was a time during the conflict in Syria when the Russians intervened in 2015 to block a US regime change and there was a lot of talk about imperialism you know competing imperialism Russian imperialism and US imperialism well that you know provoked some thought is there really something called Russian imperialism or Chinese imperialism and how does one go about doing an assessment of it well one place to begin was military spending and this was interesting because the conventional military spending Outlet the Stockholm Institute um you know accepts what governments tell them about their particular military spending so they in fact deflate US military spending quite dramatically because the United States Department of Defense is only one place where it's um you know government spends towards armed you know armed armed struggle you know the international armed struggle well you know you got to look for instance at the department of energy to learn about nuclear weapon spending and so on put everything together and then looked at all the country's military spending adjusted in a reasonable way and we discovered that the United States is of course overwhelmingly the largest spender but that's not enough when you add in the NATO plus countries you discover that 75% of global military spending the share of global military spending 75% is spent by the NATO plus countries that that is an extraordinary number um China accounts for 12% of global military spending you know if you don't start with these material realities get a grip of how power works real power um you don't really understand what a term like imperialism means so this was a good place to begin because you really get to see that it's the United States and its block um that has the capacity of blowing up Bridges all over the world um and in fact you know the Russians and the Chinese are mostly defensive Powers they don't have the capacity to go and blow up a bridge anywhere in the world you know they just don't have the military capacity they don't have the aircraft carriers they you don't have um the the the bases United States has about 900 military bases around the world it's just a mindblowing number so merely in terms of the hardware of power the United States and its block um is got no comparison well then we work backwards R and looked at you know what has imperialism meant over time and just quickly I'll periodize the history of imperialism very quickly when Lenin who wrote his pamphlet in um 1915 and 1916 Lenin published imperialism around 1916 he made a pretty astute observation he was interested how come the major Powers have gone to war this was the Great War of 1914 what Lenin argued is that corporations within countries within the territory of a country had a tendency to develop into monopolies and then when they wanted to exceed the boundaries of their territory they clashed with large corporations from other territories and that led to what Lenin argued was a inter imperialist conflict leading to war well that was correct for his time then you move to the post post World War II era because really there's one long war from 1914 to 1945 if you go to the Post World War I era the world is divided quite um evenly into two blocks into the capitalist Le block with the United States at the lead and then the Socialist block with the Soviet Union and for a while China and so on and there was the third world as the third entity um these two major blocks the so the Socialists and the Communists confronted each other directly this was not an inter imperialist conflict this was a conflict between the capitalist States and the social states with the collapse of the USSR you move into a new period of unipolarity where the United States tries to extend its power across the whole world finding no challenge to it and subordinating Europe as a consequence subordination had started in the previous phase well since the third gr depression in 2006 to 2008 onward when the financial Market collaps in the in the Western countries and so on from the third Great Depression onward the Western countries have had a hard time the global North hard time managing the um their role as the unipolar agent in the world and they have to deal with the rise of a number of countries not just Russia and China but India Indonesia other countries and this is the phase we're in we call it hyper imperialist because the West unable to actually confront these countries economically has resorted to the use of hard power which includes both military power bombing and so on coups but also sanctions um this is the era of hyper imp a dangerous phace because the West being so militarily powerful so much advantage over the others can exercise its power almost without Challenge and it's decadent because they don't have a project for the for the planet they are just trying to hold on to their P so that in a sense R that's hyper imperialism so that's a really really important explanation in brief and I really do encourage people to go check out the re report because it's incredibly detailed and it goes through the historical phases that you're talking about it has some really nice charts uh I showed uh one of them on screen for those who are watching just of the military spending that you're discussing but to go back to okay the era we're in it's hyper imperialism can you contextualize this in the context of Gaza NATO and Ukraine and the cold war with China um I think it's really important to understand those three things that might to a lot of people seem completely disconnected as being very much a part of this era of hyper imperialism that you're talking about well you know let's just take the two main categories of our times Global North and Global South when the Russian troops entered Ukraine there was a great deal of frustration in Western countries they wanted very much to see countries like IND India many African States and so on break ties with Russia these countries refused they said we are not going to do that um India which has a farite government also refused quite forthrightly foreign minister J Shanker said no look we're not going to do this in fact later he said we don't accept the NATO mindset well this provoked a lot of thinking in capitals in the global North what is this thing called the global South and why are they all being so disobedient well they tried to understand what is the concept Global South I was quite interested in a press conference given by the Japanese foreign Ministry where the spokesperson she was asked what is this thing called the global South and she had a hard time answering and then Japan which produces an annual Blue Book their kind of report on they how they see the world spent some time in the Blue Book trying to explain the global South but it was largely incoherent they kept saying we think it's basically the developing countries that's not really enough of a of a concept you know it's not enough analysis anyway um so we decided to look at these terms Global North and Global South and you'll understand why it's important to talk about Ukraine through this um this these Concepts and Gaza through these Concepts well the global South is for sure not a military Alliance it's not really a political Unity there is no intelligence sharing it's a group of countries with various different little groupings that they are attempting certainly most of them belong to the N the non- Align movement set up in 1961 but it doesn't really carry the kind of weight that it used to about 60 years ago you know the N is a much much weakened body um there are other newer groupings the bricks the bricks plus and so on but they've yet to actually meet their potential they are still pretty open-ended groups of countries you know Saudi Arabia and and for instance Brazil you know what do these countries share at this moment not much yet and we could get into that if you'd like the global North on the other hand is actually a block it's a political block where the anchor of it is the G7 it's a military block the anchor of that is NATO and then NATO plus with these NATO um you know allies and so on South Korea Japan and then there's an intelligence block the 14 eyes intelligence block Israel is deeply ensconced in the um in the global North Block it's part of the 14 eyes Network very much part of the kind of NATO worldview and so on um so it has to be understood as part of the global North now the west or or the United States in particular has been almost desperate to find a way to deal with Russia and and China in particular the ch Chinese economy has just exploded since um the same time as the collapse or the third grade depression has struck the North Atlantic states and much of the former Third World um you know the Great Depression really is something that these countries can't get out of and yet China has exited this particular predicament this has really frustrated Western countries they've tried to kneecap the Chinese economy can't use Huawei don't let them have semiconductor chips and so on none of this seems to be working on the other side um because of the idy of the US Wars you know the war um against Iran sanctions War but it's really a war by Any Other Name the war against Iraq the war against Libya and so on energy uh transfers into Europe have been really compromised you know you couldn't get uh much of the Middle East energy easy into Iran into Europe so Europe began to rely more and more on Russian energy this frustrated the United States Russia began to have a greater impact um on Europe so what you began to see was this integration of Eurasia and the United States basically understood that to weaken Russia the phrase used by Lloyd tin Ukraine was an excellent instrument and to weaken China Taiwan was a great instrument these were the two principle you know little pokes against both Russia and China now it's interesting what does Gaza have to do with all this well we know that the question of Palestine has a slightly separate uh you know trajectory it's it's about the Israeli supremacist idea that they will one way or the other either expel all the Palestinians kill them or subordinate them into second third class citizens that's a slightly separate Dynamic when this conflict breaks out with this qualitatively new bombardment of Gaza it's not like any war I've seen you know not even like the wars that were there in Afghanistan or Iraq it's really different it dragged itself into this conflict where the global North had to fully defend Israel fully back Israel in this genocidal conflict and the global South countries lined up behind Palestine including China and and Russia had to line up behind Palestine so the conflict where the front lines were Ukraine and Taiwan all Al became Gaza even though this the the the Palestinian question was slightly removed from it it has been dragged into this so that's why you see countries like South Africa you know take a complaint against Israel to the international court of justice not the first time South Africa's done this they did this around the apath wall in 2002 and one but they've come now to directly confront the global North countries so this conflict between the global North and the the rest um you know has now become also part of the Palestine question where Israel has thought you know we'll just wall up the Palestinians as normal and this time qualitatively much more harsh bombardment and we'll get a clean pass from everybody but I think they were also surprised to see this new mood in the South exert itself so in that sense these things are part of the same story now yeah it's quite interesting and then one aspect of the Trion report um that uh goes into some detail is the idea of the decline of the West and I think you know on the surface the West seems stronger than ever right like it's able to you know the US has all these military bases that we showed you you talked about the amount of military spending by these you know us-led NATO block countries which is 75% of the world's military spending they have a presence all around the world they're able to control economies they sanction a third of the world they're able to carry out a genocide quite horrifically live streamed in front of all of us um and uh it feels like at this point and we're I want to talk to you about this a little bit further into this episode and it feel you know I think a lot of people are starting to feel helpless about their ability to even stop that in these supposedly Democratic countries but all that's to say you know how do you Rec Rec concile what I just laid out with the idea that the West is in Decline um can you elaborate on what it means for the West to be in some sort of Decline and I know the report goes specifically into what that has meant for Europe and Japan for example yeah so you know the the subtitle of the report uses two words decadent and dangerous I already alluded to them let's come back to the word decadent because it's important and it was chosen quite precisely what does decadent have to do do with the current stage what is decadence you see when a leadership of any kind but in particular since the French Revolution when the various bazis you know the the middle classes that helped overthrow monarchies when they came uh into the public eye when they came before the people the mass of the people they had a project you know they had something to say like we're going to overthrow the monarchy and we're going to create a civilization of eality Liber fraternity you know the this was the claran call of the French Revolution it resounded and it had it had a material basis to it that we're going to create a state structure where you don't have to walk around bowing to people because they're monarchs um that means that Merchants don't have to pay an enormous tax to keep Versa going and so on um we're going to have business flourish we're going to have ordinary people have dignity and so on that was a project you know a real project it was the project of the buasi and it lasted for a long period of time I mean you know let let's not underestimate the power of that project it it succeeded in overthrowing a number of monarchs around the world not just in in Europe um you know part of this was the revolution in the United States against uh the British you know it had a certain charge the people who were there you know racists and slavers that they were nonetheless they had a project we're going to do this for the people only whites in the United States but that was still a project they had some idea of how the future was going to look um when the Russian Revolution took place there was a serious project there you know um you know Lenin and Company said we're going to erase illiteracy we're going to erase hunger we're going to do all these great things we have a project when a ruling class loses track of its Destiny when it has no project anymore when it's simply uh understands itself to have the habit of rule that we must remain in power but with no reason to be in power that ruling class becomes increasingly decadent and we've seen this over history you know the decadence of ruling classes which just lose the energy uh to do anything but take a look at the North Atlantic governments you know Mr Biden Trump what's their vision for the for for the United States let alone for the world they don't have a vision for the United States you know minor things you know um income earned income tax credits I mean that's not a vision what's a compelling narrative that you have Olaf Schulz of Germany No narrative Rishi sunak of the UK no narrative Kia stama labor party head in the UK no Narrative of the Future No Destiny you know for the people who govern Emanuel macron I mean to even consider the word destiny in the same sentences the name Emanuel Mac it's pretty ridiculous you know they don't have an understanding of their role in the world and what that does is if you don't have a project if you don't have a compelling reason to be um seeking power you are decadent because all that you're concerned about is the exercise of power itself and you see this increasingly in these countries where rather than allow the conversation you know and I mean the conversation rather than allow the conversation you know let's talk about um what the world should look like they want to repress the conversation so you know you started talking about people in the advanced uh States you know in the North Atlantic states they're feeling demoralized around the question of of Israel's genocidal War um you know you began to talk about that well let's think about that for a minute um these are you know an entire new generation of people who feel completely dispirited by the fact that their ruling Elites have no idea why they're even supporting Israel they have no idea they have no way to have the conversation and because they don't want to have the conversation they say oh you are all agents of Russia or you paid by the Chinese um or we're going to send the police in to smash you I mean those pictures from Italy of the police heavily armed police they look like RoboCop smashing high school students who are Marching to end the genocide in Gaza that r that that video itself which you know traveled on Instagram and Tik Tok and so on that video itself isn't is is a is a definition of the decadence of the ruling class it's decadent because it has no project merely the desire to keep ruling and that's not enough yeah I actually want to quote one of your recent pieces in Globe Trotter you write what is so particularly bewildering is that large sections of the population and the countries of the north want an immediate ceasefire and yet their leaders disregard their opinions and you point to this as a evidence of a failure of leadership in the global North which goes along with everything you're saying I think that there's a new generation of people who recognize that their governments are not Democratic especially now you've got this like Tick Tock ban uh coming um but you know I want to I want to I want you to elaborate a bit on what you started to allude to here and that is the the feeling of like helplessness around Gaza you know and I guess maybe here I'm asking you for a bit of a pep talk VJ but I can't think of anybody better position than you to give a good pep talk um for anybody who's watching who has not seen VJ speak live uh you always have a way of riling up a crowd if I'm in it I always get riled up myself so you know I think that it feels right now and I'm not just speaking for myself here because I know I'm speaking to a way that many people feel in this moment it feels like were losing Gaza like Israel might just get away with it all like they might really just carry out their genocide and we can't do anything to stop it um and you know I guess and this is a big question I don't know if you have the answer to it but any words of wisdom help I mean what do we do in A Moment Like This how do we prevent more importantly how do we prevent those who do care from becoming helpless and hopeless and just kind of you know throwing their hands up and saying I there's nothing I can do I give up um because right now it really does it feels like Gaza is being lost and I don't say that to like offend anyone or take away from the fact that there are people every single day resisting and fighting and surviving um it's just a matter of like what we're seeing is so incredibly devastating and soul crushing and and it really makes it difficult to see any sort of light at the end of the tunnel right now well let's start by saying that the Palestinians have faced things like this for very long time I mean after all um we generally start in 1948 at the nakba 750,000 people expelled from their homes but you could even start a decade earlier um in the 1930s when the migration of European Jews began in large numbers into Palestine and was bewildering because the pales inan Christians Palestinian Muslims Palestinian Jews lived side by side and I think people were bewildered you know why are these people coming from Europe uh running from a European problem European anti-Semitism and you know trying to solve a European um racist problem on our backs I mean this has been going for a very long time and bewilderingly because um the Palestinians by themselves and I mean Palestinian Christians Palestinian Muslims and pales Ian Jews were not responsible for this problem it was dumped on them by British imperialism and by Zionism this has been going for a very long time at Great cost great suffering um you know as I said 1948 the suffering was extreme uh and hideous you know and and the memories of that are live vital memories you know the very fact that Palestinian families continue to carry the keys to their homes from which their ancestors um were expelled is is compelling people refusing to take citizenship in neighboring countries because they have a right to return UN resolution 194 I mean this has been a long struggle in Gaza itself um from roughly 2000 you know or maybe yeah the second in Father for 24 years the people of Gaza have been pummeled by the Israelis and you know people have a misread of Gaza Gaza between Wars reconstructs I mean there's there are MS in Gaza for God's sake you know there were universities in Gaza um there were middle class housing in Gaza apartment buildings in Gaza Gaza isn't a refugee camp when people say you know it's the largest concentration camp or you know open a prison and so on it's not entirely true there were people who built quite rich and productive lives in Gaza you know it wasn't just a string of un tents it's a very great illusion actually what the Israelis keep destroying is what the Palestinians keep building it's not that the Palestinians have been living in bunkers waiting for bombing they built beautiful buildings they built a beautiful Port there were fishing boats and so on routinely the Israelis have come in and destroyed all that infrastructure built with great um you know Sweat and Tears by the Palestinian people so now having said all that R let's get right to it I mean firstly none of the global North Wars since you know I don't know when maybe the Korean War none of the global North Wars have been won the United States for instance and its NATO Pals were defeated by the Taliban in Afghanistan they lost the war in Iraq they were not able to overthrow the government of Bashar Al Assad they in fact lost the war in Libya because they didn't attain any wars they just destroyed the country um they haven't won a war you know I mean Iran Still Standing Yemen still standing which war have you won you know you overthrow governments they overthrow the government of Salvador aende not far from where I'm sitting in Santiago but now you have a great you know admirer of Salvador yende in the presidency now he may not be a big leftist person or anything but the left hasn't vanished the Communist party is the largest political party in Chile uh we're going to keep coming back you can't win face it I think that's important the Israelis went into G I think with very poor um you know understanding of what they were going to do okay phase one of the war destroy the infrastructure check they succeeded they destroyed everything they destroyed bakeries they destroyed fishing boats hence now near famine conditions they in fact it's not just Israelis are not allowing Aid in they've systematically destroyed the ability of the people of Gaza the Palestinians to produce food systematically so that now people are eating grass um in Gaza so phase one destroy infrastructure check phase two enter Gaza with the Israeli Army and start to occupy Gaza wait a minute this wasn't going so well the resistance fought back against the Israeli troops phase three Israel pulls back to the perimeter come in during the day conduct raids and go back to the perimeter that's where the Israeli military is at now they're still at Phase One Contin to bomb and then they're at phase three phase two is gone they're not trying to enter in with massive troop deployments because however depleted that resistance you know some elderly gent with a pop gun is firing at the soldiers you know they just are not going to permit um the Israelis easy access so the fight is still going on inside Gaza Against All Odds you know I mean I I find it remarkable that the forces of Islamic Jihad and Hamas and others are able to regroup and continue to attack Israelis as they enter um so they are not in phase two anymore and I think that's significant you know now what does it mean for the Israelis to win in Gaza for them to win in Gaza and they've said it you know it was part of the South African complaint to the international court of justice that long section of statements made by Israeli they want to remove the Palestinians into Egypt that's what they want to do they're sort of bulldozing from Gaza City South across Wadi Gaza to through can Yunis through Rafa right to Sinai send them to Sinai but the Palestinians are not moving this bombing in Rafa is going to be instructive when they start bombing in Rafa what will happen will the Palestinians cross into Sinai you know I have friends who are sitting in Rafa waiting for what's happening and they all say we're not leaving because if we leave we'll never be allowed to come back in so we'd rather die here than cross cross into Egypt lots of people have that conversation every day you know do we go or do we stay and many are saying we're going to stay because we cannot afford to leave the Israelis don't have a way to win this you know they have a way to kill very many more people but the more people they kill and the longer this takes the more delegitimized Israel becomes in the eyes of the world population and the entire decadent ruling Elite of the Israeli government will no longer be able to travel overseas because wherever they go they will be haunted by these young protesters and by lawyers who will try to arrest them based on the principle of universal jurisdiction you know what applied to austo Pinette the dictator of Chile where he was haunted during his foreign visits particularly to England and then arrested thanks to Bol bomu garon's the judge in Spain Bartholomew garon's warrant he was arrested um that fear will be there among High officials of the Israeli government wherever they go Isaac Herzog if you arrive in bot Gustavo Pro will come to the airport and personally arrest you you know Nal pandor foreign minister of sad Africa said any South African citizen Who has fought in the Israeli army during this war if they return to South Africa they will be arrested she has already gone on the record to say that these people will not sleep a night in peace from now on we will haunt them every day and wherever they are so I don't think this is a period of demoralization or dispiriting firstly we cannot be more demoralized than the Palestinians who are not demoralized they continue to fight against this occupation they are not letting go they are not blinking you know the bulk of people are saying we're going to stand and we're going to fight and then all those that entire generation that's been radicalized coming on the streets you know of of New York of London whatever you can't underestimate the power of young people who have not been in protest before coming out on something like this you know every day coming for some protest to the other shutting down roads this has an immense radicalizing impact and the ruling class knows this that's why they're trembling at it they want to shut it down um you know this protest movement is significant and when this conflict starts to come to an end directly and then these officials travel these same young people are going to go and surround the hotel they're going to surround the speaking venue they're going to continue to disrupt speeches made by Israeli High officials nobody's going to leave them in peace they will never have peace in their life I mean that's exactly what I needed to hear VJ um because that you know I I don't I don't want to lose hope and I think that you know we also have to look at history I mean there's in the sense that Liberation costs it t it takes a lot of sacrifice and it generally does cost a lot of lives um and before I get to like the next thing I really W to sort of uh segue into here I also think that what you're talking about is so important in terms of the sort of like emerging movements even in the global North I mean when we and of course in the global South because when we think about what's happening right now it's really drawn A Line in the Sand and I think it's shown the absolute relevance of a lot of these like International and even local NGO type organizations or institutions that run around being like we can put Band-Aids on imperialism like we can mediate between these people negotiate between these people or we can set up some you know shelter so that a few kids can get blankets or you know like there's so much of this that's been happening for so long across the region uh in the Middle East across Latin America across Asia where it's like an entire peace industry if you will and it's never been more irrelevant and pathetic to watch than now especially as I see I'm not going to name names but I see even a lot of people here in Lebanon who haven't said a word about the genocide literally happening next door but they're still involved with these weird like like liberal NOS that help women and help lgbtq rights and have nothing to say about South Lebanon getting bombed uh but all that's to say that's just like all that entire industry has been demonstrated to be fake and I use that as a segue to talk about something else that the report delves a little bit into and that is the idea of these emerging sort of global South organizations or the possibilities for them uh in this moment as we see this kind of you know gradual collapse of leadership in the global North and of Institutions the uselessness of this like peace NGO industry that's never actually given us anything meanwhile you see the rise of popular movements across the world you know a lot of them coming around the issue of Palestine and I even want to draw into that popular movements in the region I mean and certain countries when you look at the poorest country in the region like Yemen I mean Yemen has been such a huge player in in terms of actually imposing material consequences on Israel as well as these various armed groups across the region that are part of the you know the quote unquote resistance axis so all that you know is to ask you about you know what do you have to say about the idea or potential in A Moment Like This for Global South organizations and what they could be capable of um as we head into this really dangerous decadent you know world of hyper imperialism yeah firstly I must say you do the NGO accent excellently um I mean that itself is is yeah no that that's that's interesting um viously you know you recognize that there are many kinds of Nos and many kinds of people operating I mean just not that I want to defend them but I do want to um dip my hat to the Norwegian Refugee Council which operating in Gaza has been really you know picked up a lot of the slack um when the UN has been attacked and and that has actually had an impact um even within Norway Norway's attitude as a country uh regarding this conflict I think is shaped by the fact that the NRC has been so active in the front lines um inside Gaza but you're absolutely correct there is a kind of bankruptcy of the NGO which tries to be non-political and believes that war is political well certainly war is political but war is also inhuman and therefore because it's inhuman and it's it's something to do with Humanity um you know a nonprofit organization or non-government organization must be be obliged to have an opinion about inhumanity I think it's impossible to remain silent you see part of the problem we have facing is we are at a time and and this issue in Ukraine and Gaza have accelerated it we are at a time when these Global South blocks or you know not blocks these these countries or these platforms and so on are trying to find their voice and you know for a long time there was a lack of confidence just to use that word there was a lack of confidence like could you really speak out and frontally challenge the the global North could could it be possible and most countries just didn't have the confidence you know they felt that if they would do so and quite rightly they felt this if they would do so they'd get sanction and I don't just mean like the harsh unilateral coercive sanctions but they' face a sanction from the international monetary fund which would come in and say look you know we're not sure about your economic um your your situation you know we may not uh uh give you a report that allows you to get financing uh to cover your balance of payments and so on that that stuff was was really serious for countries and they felt then that Disobedience uh had came at a price and the price was too severe so for a long period of time from the collapse of the Soviet Union onward most of the countries of the emerging Global South held their peace you know you know when you talk privately to the heads of governments they would say things which they could never say in public I mean I don't want to even name names because why should I speak on their behalf but I've visited several people used to be marxists um then became quote unquote liberals became heads of government in countries I'm talking about two in particular on the African continent I knew know them very well they were heads of government one in the 1990s one in the 2000s and when you go see them privately they would fulminate against imperialism even use the word Imperialism you know pretty harsh against Washington the Washington consensus all of that but then they would go out in public and say well you know we are trying our best to get our finances in order um we're trying to be prudent with the way that we spend we're not going to overspend in health and education we want to make sure that our currency is not out of blah blah blah things that I know they didn't believe in because there was no space of maneuver you know people don't understand what it means to have no space of man maneuver you know they literally had no space to maneuver if they went out of that space and challenged the West frontally they would get sanction they'd be gone um you know they'd be out of office in a day they wouldn't last so it was a compromise they compromised and tried to do a few Social Democratic things whatever I'm not justifying them I'm merely saying that was a period in world history but now the the situation is opened up because countries realized like the country of Namibia which has been forth right in its criticism of of Germany forthright in its criticism of um the NATO war in Ukraine the situation Gaza see Namibia used to be completely under the grip of the international monetary fund but now it has choices R and that changes the situation now Namibia can borrow from The People's Bank of China or the new development bank or the bricks Bank it can come to a country like India and seek concessionary financing it can look for investment from Indonesia from the Gulf Arab states and so on they don't really need Washington or they are not under the grip of Washington like they used to be so this has increased the space of maneuver so now the the people in government in these countries can say things including the government of South Africa they can be braver of course the US government tries to slap sanctions they just got a bill in Congress against South Africa it's a ridiculous bill I don't think it'll go anywhere it's not going to advance but it's a it's a gesture to tell the South Africans you know we're going to you know we'll discipline you not going to do it they don't feel disciplined by you they have options of going elsewhere for concessionary financing and so on that has created the possibility for confidence that itself doesn't create confidence now we'll see R if the confidence grows if these countries or these new platforms you know the bricks as one if they'll be able to act on the basis of this confidence we see this with China you know you would not be um a human being today if you were not frustrated with the Chinese why aren't they doing more you know why aren't the Chinese sending um you know big you know huge cargo vessels of food into the Eastern Mediterranean you know why are you waiting for the Yanks to build some sort of temporary Pier just bring a pontoon boat filled with supplies and Supply the people of Gaza well in fact the Chinese are cautious they've made very strong statements against occupation over the last period they've condemned this war and so on but people may not know this the Lebanese know this that the United States has a flotilla of military vessels sitting in the Eastern Mediterranean effectively cordoning out um the Waters of Lebanon protecting Israel and the Waters of Gaza cordoned by the US military so the the there's no way that Chinese are going to confront um the United States by sending ships into that part of the region they don't yet have that confidence even to send large uh Convoy of food and you know electrical equipment to Cuba which could use it you know and and the port is open why why isn't this happening because we have the social basis of confidence is now there even the confidence is there people are saying things but when will they do things and that's the next phase we're not there yet you know we're not at the phase yet where we're going to see um people break through the Cordon of imperialism and exert themselves and say we don't we don't care what can you do you're going to shoot down a ship full of food I don't think so that confidence has not attained that level but the door is opening we're going towards that and I don't know when it's going to happen I hope it accelerates but it's not happening fast enough yeah you know and I also think we shouldn't underestimate the power of the images we're seeing in the that you know yes it's Israel doing it to Gaza but Israel is also setting some very horrifying presidents for what the global North has now demonstrated they find acceptable behavior if you enjoyed this episode and want to hear the rest you can access it by becoming a breakthrough news member at patreon.com breakthrough newws

Channel: BreakThrough News

Views: 100,417

Keywords:

Id: CJDxxkVhlJM

Length: 45min 54sec (2754 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024