European leaders have lined up to condemn Donald Trump’s “new colonialism” and warn that the continent was facing a crossroads as the US president said there was no going back on his goal of controlling Greenland.
After weeks of aggressive threats by Trump to seize the vast Arctic island, which is a largely autonomous part of Denmark, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said on Tuesday he preferred “respect to bullies” and the “rule of law to brutality”.
Macron told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that now was “not a time for new imperialism or new colonialism”, criticising the “useless aggressivity” of Trump’s pledge to levy tariffs on countries that opposed a US takeover of Greenland.
The US was seeking to “weaken and subordinate Europe” by demanding “maximum concessions” and imposing tariffs that were “fundamentally unacceptable – even more so when they are used as leverage against territorial sovereignty”, he said, wearing sunglasses because of an eye condition.
Institutions carry the impact of colonialism from the past into the present. It’s also important to acknowledge neocolonialism which acts to perpetuate the imbalances that the colonial era produced.
If you’re interested in learning more I’d recommend the works of Nobel laureate in economics Daron Acemoglu and the field of post colonial studies.
If you think colonization is a European exclusive you’re wasting your time with me. Europe is a shadow of its past. China is the new colonizing force.
I’m honestly fed up of that anti-European and simultaneously insanely eurocentric perspective. The struggle for power is nothing new nor racially exclusive. Democracy and rule of law are the relatively rare concepts, of which Europe has been among the best examples for the past decades.
This narrative of guilty peoples, special races is honestly sickening and much closer to the far right views than to the universal values we should seek.
Dead tired of that BS.
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European colonization of Africa failed and it’s over. Arab colonization succeed. History is written by winners, so people forget the Arabs were colonizers before the Europeans… funny ah?
Except for France and Russia, no European country has any relevant role in Africa these days. China has a huge one. China a “Global South” country, so a victim? Effectively colonizing islands left and right in the Asian seas…
I’m not denying history, but currently a bit more worried with the present. This obsession with XIX century colonization when there’s old style colonization happening right now, from Ukraine to Armenia, South Sudan, Philippines… and then new economical colonization all over Africa by China… .
Time to drop the eurocentrism, we’re not the center of the world anymore and since a long time.
I don’t disagree entirely but I also don’t see it as binary (one or the other).
The impact of European colonialism and neocolonialism have present day ramifications via colonial legacy institutions and the so called international ruled based order which was designed to maintain Western hegemony.
Western/European intervention in Africa did not end with the colonial era (see: neocolonialism)
We can criticize that impact while also criticizing imperial actions by China, Russia and the US today.
I don’t think that was the main motivation for the current international rules order, but then you should be happy to know that Putin and Trump are breaking them all and trying to bring good old colonialism back.