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.
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.