When you benefit from an unjust system it can be difficult to recognize you’re living in one. It’s our job to continually point that out.
A satirical political cartoon reflecting America’s imperial ambitions following quick and total victory in the Spanish American War of 1898. (Cornell University Library/Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Only someone living in a cave wouldn’t know by now the history of carnage and enslavement left behind by more than five centuries of Western dominance of the world. Unfortunately the West is led today largely by men and women in business, politics and the media who deny this truth.
Since the end of the 15th century, the Western colonial era has been one of genocide in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia, with one ongoing in Palestine. It has been a history of slavery and theft of natural resources that enriched the mother countries while impoverishing the rightful owners of that wealth.
Western rulers have pretended that the colonial period is over, that when the colonial flags were lowered and new national flags raised in the latter half of the 20th century that that was the end of the matter. But that was mostly a ruse as old colonial powers continue to exert undue influence over their former colonies. They become incensed when they are sent packing as the French have been in West Africa in just the past few years.
This neocolonialism was hidden until recently. Led by Donald Trump, the West is unabashedly lauding its colonial heritage, openly encouraging its return. In his January 2025 inaugural address, Trump extolled the American Empire, putting the world on notice that the William McKinley era of U.S. territorial expansion was back. Not that the American imperium had gone anywhere under preceding presidents. But Trump would no longer hide it.
“The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation, one that increases our wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons,” he said, not stopping at planet Earth. “We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars.” He has since attacked Venezuela and Iran and threatens Greenland and Cuba.
At Munich last fall, his secretary of state Marco Rubio, stirred the ghost of Cecil Rhodes, loudly proclaiming the return of Western supremacy.
“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,” Rubio said.
“But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, [the territorial expansion] 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 swaths of the map in the years to come.
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.”
European officials met Rubio’s speech with a standing ovation. They are heavily invested in their war against Russia through their proxy Ukraine, and cling to remnants of colonial influence in Africa and the Middle East. But Westerners portray themselves as the vanguard of human progress, as they have falsely throughout the colonial era.
Techno lords like Alex Karp, chief executive of Palantir, have repeatedly expressed strong support for Western (especially American) cultural, technological, and military superiority. Karp frames the West’s global influence as rooted in hard power — organized violence and technological dominance — rather than purely in ideas or values, while also affirming what he thinks is the superiority of Western ways of life.
The most extreme evidence of a seamless connection between the brutal Western colonialism of the past and today is the ongoing colonial project of Israel, replete with the same racism, ethnic cleansing and genocide of Leopold’s Congo, the Australian bush and the American West.
After their summit in Beijing last week, the Chinese and Russian leaders warned that:
“Negative neocolonial tendencies such as unilateral forceful approaches, hegemonism, and bloc confrontation are on the rise. Fundamental, universally recognized norms of international law and international relations are regularly violated, and it is becoming more difficult for states to coordinate their actions and resolve conflicts within global governance institutions, many of which are losing their effectiveness. The global peace and development agenda is facing new risks and challenges, and there is a danger of fragmentation of the international community and a return to the ‘law of the jungle.'”
But the communiqué judged that this resurgence of Western supremacy would fail. It said:
“Attempts by a number of states to unilaterally manage global affairs, impose their interests on the entire world, and limit the sovereign development of other countries, in the spirit of the colonial era, have failed. The system of international relations in the 21st century is undergoing a profound transformation, evolving toward a long-term state of polycentricity and the emergence of a new type of international relations.”
A reader recently complained to us: “You guys are really heavily invested in the failing West/U.S. angle on current affairs.”
The West’s dominance is founded on colonial plunder and can only continue with it. When you benefit from an unjust system it can be difficult to recognize you are living in one.
It is our job to continually point that out. Thus, reporting from a viewpoint of international neutrality with the goal of global stability through a balance of power and detenté means challenging the survival, indeed the revival, of Western supremacy.
That is a primary goal of Consortium News, something we cannot do without your support. So please consider a generous donation today to the oldest, continuously published, independent online news site in the United States.
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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News.
The root cause/ main drivers and profiteers are rarely the normal people.
It is the self-proclaimed “elites”, who are to be held accountable.
The “Westerners” is pretty much generalized, and actually allows the truly responsible individuals to hide behind such undifferentiated terminologies.
Behind every system, kingdom, entity, structure, institution, corporation,… are specific individuals pulling the puppet strings or those acting in front of the scenes, usually fooling the audiences.
And for any crime, they committed or commit, they individually are to be held accountable.
A “structure” does not commit mass murder, specific individuals are directly or indirectly doing it.
Did Rubio get his history from the basketball coach? The Imperial powers who ruled the world in 1900, turned on each other and fought like rabid game cocks until 1945. They destroyed themselves.
The present-day USA reminds me of the last century or two of the Roman Republic, destroyed by militarism and the wealth gap between rich and poor. But history does not repeat itself and Trump definitely is not Caesar.
I always ask everyone “what is the solution to the problem of western violent hegemony?” From the outset of America, the wealthy have dominated politics (“the wealthy own the country, and so they should run it”). The only solution I have come up with is a 99% billionaire wealth tax. Confiscate their money and assets, pay down the debt, and bring back Eisenhower era tax rates (and make them permanent). As long as the government allows individuals to accumulate billions of dollars, we won’t have anything like a democracy. Also, bring back all the banking regulations that Clinton and others did away with. Eliminate the wealthy, and the vast majority of problems will go away.
Massachusetts passed a wealth tax and added over 3 billion dollars to its coffers, enabling many social programs. A wealth tax works.
I quote Candide and say “tend your garden, Pangloss.” Weed etc. your garden successfully and you will have more to eat.
At the moment I’d “do everything you can to counter global warming!”
“You guys [ConsortiumNews and its fans] are really heavily invested in the failing West/U.S. angle on current affairs.”
This is laughably off base and belies a confusion that’s often readily discernible.
What’s important to note is that us regular working citizens of the U.S. really get no benefit from a “successful” West/U.S.
What success means in the imperialist sense, which is what the missive above is getting at, is riches, stock options, massive dividends and profits for our parasitic ruling class, a ruling class that would pay you $5 per hour and work you six days per week if they could get away with it.
Of course, us regular working citizens still suffer under absurd inflation, high housing costs, ridiculous student loan debt, and suicidal medical bills. The mandarins in charge of running our successful empire don’t give a rip about the bleeding heartland of our country.
Conversely, if the empire was a failure, it would mean reinvesting the public treasury into the public good, not wasting it on bloody ventures abroad. It would mean saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocents overseas. It would mean humane, in the truest sense of the word.
Thanks for an excellent article.
Drew Hunkins hits the key point. None of this benefits the American people, especially the 70%+ majority who are poor and working people. And we are the only force with the potential to build enough power for a serious challenge to the dominant role of the US in the western imperialist alliance.
“It is difficult for a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair
“…by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.’ Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” Samuel Huntington said that, not alex krap. None of those billionaire oligarch frat boys could ever concoct any sort of clever and original thought. It’s all theft.
This is a great piece Joe! Exactly what we need to keep spelling out.
I agree that the determination of the ruling elites to preserve their colonialism and hegemony is a destructive panic attack as they see that the future wants them gone.
Dr. King, in 1967, during his famous “Beyond Vietnam” address:
” Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments.” hxxps://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKapr67.html
That’s from the same paragraph that concludes with his statement that without putting people above things and property, we will never defeat the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.
America heard the message, and responded with a bullet in the head. America has firmly refused to give up the immense profits of overseas investments. We turned Dr. King into statues, but ignore the change that he tried to tell us needed to occur. We thus now know that this course has not been ‘by accident.’ I suspect Dr. King did as well, but was trying to practice de-escalation and non-confrontation in his language by leaving open the possibility.
Thoughtful Americans from John Quincy Adams to Dr. Martin Luther King have understood that having an Empire meant the loss of Liberty. Empires and “Democracy and Freedom” are contradictory and do not coexist. If America wants to really return to when it was Great, then it needs to give up its Empire, and all those vast profits of overseas investments.
” If America wants to really return to when it was Great”. Genuine question, when was that ? And, how was that defined ?