Europe likes to believe it has turned the page. But it keeps rereading the same chapter – only with better lighting, writes Raïs Neza Boneza.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, on Jan. 20. (World Economic Forum /Ciaran McCrickard/CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
By Raïs Neza Boneza
Peoples Dispatch
There are moments in global politics when the mask slips – not because power suddenly discovers morality, but because maintaining the performance becomes too expensive.
Recently in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did something unusual. He admitted (almost casually) that the so-called rules-based international order has never quite been what it claimed to be.
That the rules were unevenly applied. That the strongest routinely exempted themselves. That integration, once sold as mutual benefit, has increasingly become a tool of coercion.
For a brief second, one could almost feel relief. Not because the truth was new – but because it was finally spoken aloud. We have lived under this system for generations. Born into it. Disciplined by it. Told it was neutral, benevolent, inevitable.
We were instructed to respect “rules” written elsewhere, interpreted elsewhere, enforced elsewhere – usually against us. The outcome was never order, but obedience; never justice, but management.
And yet, the system endured – not because it was true, but because everyone agreed to behave as if it were. This is the real source of its power.
And also its fatal weakness.
When even one actor stops performing – when the sign is removed from the shop window – the illusion begins to crack.
It is in this context that Emmanuel Macron’s sermon at Davos must be read. His denunciation of the “law of the strongest” on the international stage sounded almost … progressive.
A French president speaking the language of anti-colonial restraint. One might even be tempted to applaud.
But almost.
French President Emmanuel on screen during his speech to the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 2018. (World Economic Forum/Flickr/ Valeriano Di Domenico/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Because it is hard to take lectures on power seriously when they come from countries that never truly relinquished it – only rebranded it.
France, after all, insists it has moved beyond colonialism. What remains are not colonies, but territories. Not domination, but administration. Not occupation, but overseas collectivities.
The vocabulary is elegant; the structure is not. From the Caribbean to the Pacific, the pattern repeats.
In Martinique, protests against an unbearable cost of living are met not with structural reform, but with police batons and arrests. In New Caledonia, decades-long demands for self-determination collide with electoral engineering and the familiar choreography of “restoring order.”
In the Indian Ocean, the contradiction is even starker. Mayotte remains under French control despite repeated U.N. resolutions recognizing it as part of the Comoros. International law, it seems, is binding – except when it isn’t.
Curiously, when the U.N. proposed establishing an international day against colonialism in all its forms, France, much of Western Europe, and the United States declined to support it. Colonialism is apparently unacceptable – provided the definition stops just short of home.
Protest against high costs of living in Martinique, October 2024. (RCI Martinique/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0)
But modern colonialism rarely announces itself with flags and governors anymore. It prefers balance sheets.
The CFA franc (African Financial Community franc) remains one of the most enduring instruments of European influence in Africa.
Fourteen countries still use a currency whose value is fixed in Paris, whose reserves are partially held abroad, and over which local populations exercise no meaningful control.
Political independence was granted. Monetary sovereignty was not.
The Netherlands offers its own version of this quiet continuity. From the Caribbean islands still tethered to The Hague, to Indonesia’s long economic afterlife of extraction, to corporate structures that funnel wealth through post-colonial asymmetries, Dutch colonialism did not disappear – it professionalized.
It outsourced violence to contracts, and domination to accounting.
Across Europe, the pattern is recognizable. Colonial power did not die. It diversified. And when financial leverage is insufficient, other tools emerge.
In the Sahel, armed groups terrorize civilians amid a fog of external interference. Former colonial powers present themselves as security guarantors, even as questions multiply about arms flows, training networks, and destabilization strategies.
When African governments point fingers, the Western media responds with disbelief – or silence. Which brings us to another enduring instrument of control: “narrative.”
Colonel Assimi Goïta, head of Mali’s transitional government, signing the Alliance of Sahel States on Sept. 16, 2023. (X, Président de la Transition, Chef de l´État)
French or Western media corporations still dominate larger parts of the African information space, shaping perceptions of legitimacy, resistance and “terrorism.” Armed groups become “rebels” when convenient.
Governments asserting sovereignty become “juntas.” When countries suspend or expel foreign outlets accused of manipulation, the outrage in Europe is immediate. When African voices are silenced, the outrage is optional.
Militarily, the message from Africa has grown unmistakable. Mali. Niger. Burkina Faso. Senegal. Chad. French forces have been asked to leave.
And across francophone Africa, protests against French colonial aspirations continue to swell – not out of fashion, but out of memory.
Memory of forced labor in Central Africa. Memory of nuclear tests in Algeria, poisoning land and bodies for generations. Memory of the Senegalese Tirailleurs – sent to die for France, then shot when they demanded their pay.
The numbers remain “unclear.” The violence is not.
Algerian tirailleurs in France in 1914. (Agence Rol – Mundo Gráfico/ Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
Europe likes to believe it has turned the page.
But it keeps rereading the same chapter – only with better lighting.
This is why the recent Western admissions about the collapse of the rules-based order matter – but only if taken seriously. Because this system was never sustained by fairness, but by ritual. By participation. By silence.
That bargain is now breaking. Integration has become a vulnerability. Trade has become leverage. Finance has become a weapon. Institutions once presented as neutral (W.T.O., U.N. frameworks, multilateral fora) are increasingly exposed as arenas of selective enforcement.
When the rules stop protecting you, you do not reform them politely. You protect yourself.
So yes – credit where it is due. When Western leaders admit the fiction, it is a step. But vigilance is necessary.
Because history teaches a simple lesson: Nothing truly good has ever come from empires discovering humility at the microphone. Especially when they still refuse to practice it at home.
Raïs Neza Boneza is the author of fiction as well as non-fiction, poetry books and articles. Born in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaïre), Raïs is a member of the Transcend Media Service Editorial Committee and a convener of the Transcend Network for Peace Development Environment for Central and African Great Lakes.
This article is from Peoples Dispatch.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Thank you for this well written article. The mask is off the colonialist empire. The only people still clinging to the idea we are the good guys are those who still believe the official narrative spewed through our TV screens. The world in general is well over the marketing strategy. The sunsetting of the Euro/US project is close at hand. Not a moment too soon for life on Earth.
Excellent article and right on! It’s a rebrand. Has PM Carney made any indication he is willing to move Canada in a different, non-imperial/colonial direction? maybe start to distance Canada from US foreign policy? Nope. Canada still has the Indian Act, so even at home he doesn’t get it. Love from Canada.
Truly brilliant article, thank you for posting it.
Just when I was feeling desperate for sane voices, I read your essay and all of the comments it elicited. Thank you each and every one!
If you have not yet read, I highly recommend: “Against Our Better Judgment – The hidden story of how the U.S. was used to create Israel” by Alison Weir – 93 pp of text – 111 pp of End Notes – 25 pp Works Cited – Further Reading (reluctantly reduced) 3 pp. Corruption and dishonesty in our government is nothing new.
The ongoing outrageous, inhumane maiming, murder and destruction of what was left of Palestine, the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine destroying the country and decimating the population, the list is long.
Members of the UN Security Counsel, led and threatened by the US are shameful. The SC should be dissolved along with the Veto.
U.S Federal and State taxes come due on April 15th. Could we set up state run funds – conduits to which we send our Federal Taxes? Used to fund education, infrastructure, a guaranteed annual income initiative, programs to serve those most in need?
BRAVO! Excellent truthful article
Now please apply this to what is going on in Ukraine. Russia may not be a perfect state and authoritarian, but so is Ukraine and the facade of the European Union which has learned how to tightrope the line between Establishment control under the banner of Collective Globalism that is “benevolent”. They still use the same hard authoritarian tactics to implement their benevolence.
Russia at least banned neo-Nazis, while we armed and trained them, paid their salaries and had them embedded into Ukraine’s military and intelligence agencies. The Donetsk and Luhansk militias formed the resistance to our “benevolence” until Russia joined the fight.
Bloc politics disguised as multilateralism.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s January 20, 2026, Davos speech – and his reading of the emerging new world order – are bloc politics disguised as multilateralism.
He accuses China and Russia of hegemonic ambitions, of which both have explicitly avowed none and neither of whose behaviour evidences any.
That the U.S. is and always has been a murderous tyranny – against which (and its vassals, including Canada) both Russia and China are defending themselves – he treats as evidence that they do.
“On Ukraine,” he says, “we’re a core member of the coalition of the willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security.”
His speech makes 11 references to Canadian “values,” which according to a new Oxfam report, just out, amount to: “The richest one percent in Canada, which is those with a net-worth of $7M and above, hold nearly $1.25 trillion in wealth – almost as much as the bottom 80 per cent combined”; and zero mention of SCO or of BRICS, which Canada can and should join.
Mr. Carney’s speech pumps up instead some vague post-rules-based world order – (the rules-based order was Euro-Canadian-U.S -U.K. neocolonialism) – in which “our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering. So we’re working with our NATO allies – including the Nordic-Baltic Eight – to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks.”
He boasts concerning the financialization of Canada’s economy: “Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors.” This reading of “investment” is not to marshal the resources of an economy to improve the lives of the population it serves but elevates instead rent-extraction to the pinnacle of human achievement.
This should come as no surprise as during his 13-year career at Goldman Sachs, from 1990 to 2003, his positions included: “co-head of sovereign risk, executive director for emerging debt capital markets, and managing director for investment banking.
This work, according to an article on the Goldman Sachs website, consisted of “trade liberalization, deregulation and the privatization of state-owned enterprises, including banks and telecommunication companies”; “advising governments on privatizations and assisting corporations in raising equity and debt capital in public and private markets internationally”; and “liberalizing economic reforms and opening up financial services sectors to foreign investors.”
Individuals with values worth appreciating do not tell you 11 times in one speech what great “values” they have. Nor do they accuse of hegemonic ambitions states defending themselves against U.S. hegemonic aggression.
See hxxps://radiobill.ca/Content/BlocPoliticsDisguisedAsMultilateralism.html for links to all sources.l
It is now obvious that the supposed shift from Monarchy and its Authoritarian Rule to a modern era of democracy was more propaganda than fact. Across the Free World, what really happened was that the Elites maintained power behind the guise of some sort of Constitutional Democracy. But in Europe, like with American Democracy, this was always designed to make sure that democracy and thus the people were kept firmly under control. The Elites always know best, or at least that’s always what their police say.
The Rich have always gotten Richer, and that is something that should actually be challenged in a democracy where all people are equal and have an equal voice in governing their land. Do the Math. This shows that the Rich never really gave up control, only hid their control behind lots of smoke and mirrors. David Copperfield Democracy.
I suppose I’ll believe Mister Lincoln and thus believe that in 1863 a government of the people, by the people and for the people had not yet perished from this earth. But, since this was followed by the Age of the Robber Barons in America, the government of the people apparently didn’t have much longer to live than President Lincoln. I’m not really sure Democracy has really existed in Europe, after Athens that is. Its hard to think of times in Europe where even under “democracy” the Elites were not still firmly in control, behind all the smoke and the funhouse mirrors.
International law is dead because power is yet to discover morality!
Under Capitalism, Power made Morality illegal. Capitalism says that all decisions are made by the bottom line, the numbers of profit and loss. Under Capitalism, all previous notions of morality developed by millennia of human societies are null and void. Ancient and outdated notions such as morality or other bleeding-heart ideas are not to be considered in a Capitalist society where the numbers are crunched to show which path has the greatest Profit.
A society that says that the decision is always made by following the path of highest profit is a society that has abandoned all morality. Morality be Damned is always the corollary to Greed is Good.
Given the global possession and puller of strings (nothing “elite” about these thieves), have been represented in disclosures of the Epstein files, their fancy suits and whitened teeth wither in significance before their dastardly grasping violence one could frame as another form of rape – in this context of the sovereignty of the people. The day will inevitably come when they won’t dare to be so presumptuous. It cannot come too soon. Excellent piece. Thank you for it.
Excellent article.
What would France look like today had Degaulle listened to his Generals (OAS)?
France lost a generation in World War I. Literally. Not sure France has ever recovered from that.
In “It Can’t Happen Here”, Sinclair Lewis has his Vermont newspaper editor wondering what America would have been like had it avoided that mass industrial slaughter of the Civil War? The nation that produced people like Jefferson and Lincoln and other notables before the slaughter, had a string of corrupt nobodies in leadership for at least the rest of the century. How many better people than those died on Civil War battlefields.
Wars have big costs that the Generals never admit to. War is always a Racket, and a deadly one. When reading the above, consider that it is usually the best and the brightest who die. The shirkers and the con-artists always swing a way to stay as far from the fighting as possible, while making profit from the war. The best and the bravest are the first to die. Well, after the Truth. All the blood and gore gets covered up with patriotic blather, but the dead are still gone. And the nation is likely led by the war profiteers who stayed home and got rich. What happens when a nation loses the best of a whole generation in an act of mass slaughter?