VII. Thoughts (of the day) on imperialism

A friend from Africa was recently explaining to me the non-aligned (or developing/third) world’s perspective on the war in Ukraine. He was saying that the West outrage over the Russian invasion is total hypocrisy. His argument is that America and European countries have been doing (and continue doing) the same type of agression to many other countries without creating any outrage so why should it be different with Russia ? I totally agree that no agression from any country against another should be tolerated. No country should be allowed to steal ressources or territory from another. On that aspect, the United Nations is a total failure. 

The problem is that Western (and Chinese) agressions are generally more subtle and perverse as they try to exercise political influence or economic domination without actually putting boots on the ground and killing people. It is more difficult to identify and to criticize. America has done it all over the world (but more notably in South America) and France has done it mostly in the Maghreb and West Africa (but also in the West Indies, Indochina and South Pacific). China is doing it in the Indo-Pacific (notably with its slow demographic invasion of Tibet) and in Africa through their “Belt and Road Initiative”. However, this imperialism is mostly economic and cultural, but bloodless — with rare exceptions like France in Algeria or the USA in Vietnam,  Irak or Afghanistan). What the Russians are doing is the first large-scale invasion of a country since Nazi’s Germany invaded Europe. When his attempt at political and economical influences failed, Putin tried to take control with a quick military operation that also failed, so now he is punishing the Ukrainian with a campaign of total destruction of their territory and, ultimately, genocide. From my point of view, it is so much worse than standard economic imperialism. There is simply no equivalence here.

Some are also of the opinion that Putin was simply responding to the western agression against his sphere of influence. Like Hitler was trying to create a thousand-year Reich dominating all Europe, Putin want to recreate -not the former Soviet Union– but Catherine the Great’s Russian Empire. For that he needs the agricultural ressources of Ukraine and a better access to the Black Sea for his fleet. The “pressure“ of the West is just a pretext for him to invade. The West cannot be blamed here since it is not a case where NATO is trying to steal Ukraine from the Russian influence, but it’s rather the Ukrainians who want to join NATO and the European Union to escape the corrupt and criminal politics of Putin’s mafia-like oligarchic regime. Would it be nice if no country ever bothered to interfere in another country’s affairs ?