Dominant development models perpetuate the subordination of the Global South and the enrichment of the Global North, while true emancipation begins by breaking the hegemony system and building economic sovereignty and social justice.
Afrasianet - Al Mayadeen - This research will cover the following headings:
Introduction
1. Why is "Development" a Dangerous and Colonial Concept?
Some tools of development control
Structural Adjustment Programs
Institutions of Dependency
Conclusion: Development is not merely an economic policy, but an arena of struggle.
2. Colonialism, Savage Capitalism, and Development as Layers of a Structure
The global division of historical accumulation of capital, science, and labor
East Asia is not merely a refuge for the savage capitalist model
The evolution of the development concept alongside stages of colonialism and savage capitalism
The primary mechanisms for impoverishing the South
3. Impoverishing the South as a Prerequisite for Enriching the North
Financial flows: Who is financing whom?
Unequal exchange
Resource plunder and illicit flows
Historical roots: Not a coincidence of the past
The debt trap
4. Is There an Absolute Determinism and a Final Destiny?
Alternatives and foundations
Exit and rupture
The countries known as the "Third World," or poor and colonized nations, encountered the concept of development and its various models during the 20th century—although the problematics of development or impoverishment of colonized countries were raised earlier in various forms. However, the concept of development was introduced as a model to these countries in the 20th century, particularly after World War II.
Proceeding from the premise that old and new colonialism—or the hegemony system—has structured the entire world under its leadership, we consider that the concept of development and its experiences are fundamentally part of the hegemony system. It came to tighten control over the world and manage it, not to develop colonized countries. This is why development models fail in most of these states, and why intermediate experiences appear and vanish to perform roles that cannot be understood without grasping the totality of the global system. Thus, we agree with the view that the West's progress and development did not come as a deterministic logical consequence of history.
Economic/social systems, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism/communism, or developmental systems were not actually "systems" in a natural sense, but rather administrations and frameworks driven by subjective rather than objective motives. A "system," by its primary definition, is everything that regularly succeeds outside our consciousness, which humans can invest in and benefit from through awareness, thought, and experience. Therefore, a difference exists between natural systems on one hand, and economic and social systems on the other. In the latter, no natural cycle imposes itself outside human consciousness; rather, humans and their decisions are the source of its motion and halt, with the reservation that the movement of humans and human groups over the long term may display regular succession.
Neither Adam Smith's "invisible hand" nor Karl Marx's "historical determinism" proved themselves—neither in the white man marching out as a colonizer to subjugate the entire world for his own benefit, nor in global capitalism in both its advanced and backward segments. Consequently, successive economic systems were viewed as holistic, deterministic systems in their pathways, operating outside human consciousness in their genesis, rise, and collapse. In contrast, they are—from an alternative viewpoint—merely specific and limited management patterns operated by humans (or more accurately, a limited group) to achieve private interests.
In our studies, for example, "capitalism" has been organically linked to colonialism and plunder. Its universality or globalization cannot be understood in isolation from the process of colonialism and plunder; it accompanied the savage processes of killing, expropriation, extermination, settlement, and the destruction of everything else so that the colonizer remains the supreme master—a process conducted with complete awareness and consciousness.
Capitalism in its historical contexts did not develop solely in New York, London, Paris, "Tel Aviv," and other advanced centers, but also in Beijing, New Delhi, Cairo, Addis Ababa, Havana, Tehran, and other colonized and poor centers. As long as the world is unified by a single hegemonic system, a link exists between the advanced world and the backward world, or terminologically, the North and the South. The South is part of the system and a necessity to feed the progress and renaissance of the North. The North is the apex and ruler of the system, ultimately controlling the fundamental policies of the South. The concept of development is the model for economies that are essentially subordinate to the global hegemony system, which we will attempt to shed light on in this research.
I. Why Development is a Dangerous and Colonial Concept
Development in its dominant formula is not a concept of liberation; it is a mechanism of dependency. It represents the bait by which we are caught, restrained, and exploited. It transformed into a technique for managing dependency, which was crystallized and officially adopted in the inaugural address for the second presidential term of U.S. President Harry Truman on January 20, 1949, specifically through his introduction of the "Point Four Program." Truman publicly divided the world into "Developed" and "Underdeveloped" regions, making the West the model and yardstick.
With this characterization, the concept acquired applied models concerned with "development" theories, promoting the notion that poor nations must pass through stages mimicking the West while ignoring the history of colonialism and wealth plunder. It told the post-colonial world: You have not attained true independence; rather, you have entered the stage of "underdevelopment" and must catch up with the global mainstream. And who defines the catching up? Who measures it? Who supervises funding? Who sets the conditions?
Thus, development theoretically and practically meant for the South catching up with the North and the West, measuring the peoples and societies of former colonies (the South) by unilateral standards, and imposing external conditions. It is the renewal of colonialism, but through soft tools and the planting of illusions and dreams that successive generations in these countries will discover they are chasing a mirage that will never materialize unless they break this fatal, vicious cycle into which they were placed.
Important Note: A vital point must be emphasized because ignoring it often leads to off-topic debates: When we speak of colonialism and the hegemony system, we are not speaking of occurrences known to peoples across all times, such as occupation, wars, or invasions. While these accompany colonialism, they are not colonialism itself. Colonialism possesses a core characteristic distinguishing it in all human history: the construction of a global system containing two mandatory positive and negative poles.
The first is represented by a powerful global governance composed of a minority of states and peoples that grow rich and advance; the second is represented by the governed majority of states and peoples that are drained, impoverished, and left behind. A dominant minority rules directly or indirectly, through violent or peaceful means, by conviction or dictate. Any analysis or research that fails to place this truth before itself when examining the affairs of governed states and peoples will miss the essential element of scientific and objective analysis.
Internal factors such as mental backwardness, the pressure of heritage, or the nature of underdeveloped peoples—some of which may be partially true—are in their totality the products of colonial hegemony in all its economic, political, security, institutional, and value dimensions. Therefore, in a research paper in the 1980s that gained some traction, we wrote under the title "Oriental Despotism, the State of the West in the East." We also delivered a lecture at the Second Palestine Conference held in December 1990 in the United States titled "The New International Order," during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the unipolar hegemony system. We explained what we termed the victory of the hegemony system at the level of its superstructure, its retreat, and the necessity to anticipate its collapse at the base-structure level.
1. Some Development Tools for Controlling Southern Countries
Many theories were developed within political science, economics, and sociology to form the intellectual framework of colonial policies, both old and new. The most prominent among them, according to their historical and functional context, are:
A. Classical Colonial Justification Theories (19th and Early 20th Century):
The "Moral" Role of the White Man: A sociological and cultural concept promoting the idea that non-European peoples are "backward" and live in "barbarism," and that it is the duty of Western capitalist nations to "civilize" and develop them—justifying the colonization and plunder of the South under a humanitarian cover.
Social Darwinism: The application of evolutionary theory to the social sphere as "survival of the fittest," considering Western societies "stronger and more advanced," thus making their dominance over weaker societies in the South a "natural law" of superiority and survival.
B. Development and Hegemony Theories Post-Occupation and Mandate (Mid-20th Century):
Modernization Theory: Formulated by American thinkers such as Walt Rostow in The Stages of Economic Growth, positing that development moves in a single straight line and that Southern nations must literally follow Western footsteps (industrialization, liberalism, weakening traditions, etc.) to achieve progress. It regarded Southern backwardness as an "internal" problem caused by culture, historical structures, and clinging to the past, completely ignoring the destructive demolition of civilizations that were superior to colonial nations upon exit, replacing them with planted colonial structures that led to backwardness and arrested development.
Although these theories adopted classical theories termed "capitalism" as developed before the 20th century (Adam Smith, Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, etc.) and furthered in the 20th century by John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, and others, they actually concealed the savage aspect of the economic system, which is its most crucial part. The hegemonic center concealed chaos and brutality in exploiting the South and colonies, while that very chaos and brutality in the South and colonies served as the momentum and greatest power providing the conditions for stability and progress in Western centers and Northern nations.
C. The Role of International Institutions in Subjugating the South:
A series of international institutions, particularly after World War I and II, worked to integrate the South into the structure of the global system, using concepts of "the international community" and "international law" to force Southern states into a global architecture designed by victorious powers of WWII, ensuring economic rules always favored the Western or Northern center.
D. Modern "Capitalism" and Globalization Concepts (Late 20th Century to Present):
This explains the distortions contradicting the estimates and expectations of classical founders regarding the outcomes of the systems they discussed, whether "capitalism" or "socialism."
Neoliberalism: The product of the Chicago School of Economics led by Milton Friedman, relying on academic concepts such as "absolute free market," "privatization of the public sector," reducing the state's role, and dominating any uncontrolled parallel economy. This model was imposed on the South via the "Washington Consensus" as prerequisites for obtaining loans, leading to the dismantling of national economies and opening Southern markets to multinational corporations.
Complex Interdependence: An international relations concept developed by Joseph Nye and Robert Keohane in their famous 1970s book Power and Interdependence, promoting the idea that globalization made states interdependent and mutually reliant. In reality, this concept is used to push Southern states to integrate their economies—as peripheries providing raw materials and cheap labor—with the Northern economy as the center of technology and capital, framing this as inevitable and beneficial when it actually entrenches dependency.
2. Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)
This mechanism aimed, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s, to transform local economies from "loose," uncontrolled systems into open market economies linked to the global economic system through core steps:
Privatization
Trade and market liberalization
Reduction of government spending and austerity
Devaluation or floating of the local currency
Liberalization of interest rates and the financial sector
3. Institutions of Dependency
These played a central role in effecting "structural adjustments" to open Southern markets, privatize the public sector, deepen debt reliance, entrench dependency and poverty in many Southern nations, and destroy the pillars of economic capacity, self-sufficiency, and self-reliance.
A. International Monetary Fund (IMF): Controls monetary transactions and imposes "structural adjustment" policies by conditioning loans on price liberalization, government spending cuts, and currency floating for Southern countries facing debt crises—either through direct loans or "Special Drawing Rights" (SDRs) created by the IMF in 1969 as an accounting unit rather than a currency, providing liquidity to member states during crises.
B. World Bank Group: Tasked with funding infrastructure and development projects under conditions reinforcing capitalist and market-economy orientations, while pressuring Southern states to focus on exports and attract foreign investment at the expense of self-sufficiency. A prime example was its halting (after U.S. and British refusal to fund) of a $200 million loan to build the Aswan High Dam in Egypt in 1956 to pressure Nasser to alter policies unappealing to the West and halt his rapprochement with the Soviet Union, prompting Nasser to nationalize the Suez Canal, followed by the Tripartite Aggression (Israeli, French, and British) on Egypt.
C. World Trade Organization (WTO): Pressures for free international trade. Despite its goals of preventing or reducing protectionist policies and removing customs barriers, Northern nations practiced protectionism in its ugliest forms whenever deemed necessary to serve national interests, while Southern nations were pressured against doing so. U.S. President Donald Trump's imposition of customs tariffs according to U.S. interests is a prime example.
D. Regional Financial Institutions: Such as the Inter-American Development Bank and other regional development banks adopting the same capitalist economic philosophy.
Conclusion: Development is not merely an economic policy, but an arena of struggle.
Within every dominated state, a struggle for power, dominance, and sources of strength and influence takes place.
A struggle among dominated states to improve their positions and gains in regional and global systems.
A struggle among dominant states themselves to secure and improve their shares within dominated states.
Therefore, development in its proposed form is not a concept of liberation, but a technique for managing dependency, born from the womb of the colonial and capitalist system to tell the post-old-colonial world: You have not gained true independence; rather, you have entered the stage of "underdevelopment" and neo-colonialism, and you must catch up. Who defines the catching up? Who measures it? Who funds it? Who sets conditions? It is the dominant advanced states.
II. Colonialism, Savage Capitalism, and Development as Layers of a Structure
1. The Division of Historical Accumulation of Capital, Science, and Global Labor
The path of "development" in the global system ultimately represented neither a neutral nor independent path; rather, it represented the relationship between the strong and the weak, the master and the subject. Yet the picture is not entirely mechanical and rigid; it is a moving hierarchy containing agency and struggle, not mere mechanical fate.
The global system rests on a hierarchical division of labor: a center or metropolis monopolizing finance, technology, innovation, renewal, science, weaponry, and standards, matched by a South and colonies supplying raw materials, energy, cheap labor, markets, and waste dumps. Dominant "development" is merely management of this dependency—beautifying it at times and deepening it at others through debt, structural adjustment, market opening, and stripping sovereignty.
Like any historical context, it contains conflicting images and varying levels. Partial and limited positive manifestations that are praised are quickly consumed by general and large negative manifestations. Moreover, specific levels and conditions emerge where certain countries appear as successful experiences, such as some East Asian nations, which requires a closer look.
2. East Asia is Not Merely a "Refuge" for the Western Model
Countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore did not grow autonomously outside an understandable cycle of struggle. All these countries were outpost stations for the West and its expanded presence confronting liberation movements in old colonies. Consequently, extensive facilities and tolerances had to be granted so they would not remain mere military bases or temporary stations, but societal environments whose welfare and living standards tied into giant multinational corporate structures, transforming into "developmental states" witnessing land reform, global banks, industrial planning, advanced education, export discipline, and sometimes labor suppression. The Cold War context provided them with an American and Western market, geopolitical protection, and opportunities to build self-capacities.
Nonetheless, their ceiling remains limited. Perhaps the most prominent example is that when Japan came close to achieving superiority in its goods, commodities, and currency, the Plaza Accord (1985) was enacted—an agreement between the U.S., West Germany, France, the UK, and Japan to systematically depreciate the U.S. dollar against major currencies, especially the Japanese yen and German mark, to address the massive U.S. trade deficit. The central banks of the five nations sold dollars in foreign exchange markets, causing the yen to soar massively within two years and harming Japanese exports. The Bank of Japan sharply lowered interest rates, triggering an asset and real estate bubble in the late 1980s followed by years of stagnation known as the "Lost Decade."
Beyond East Asian countries, China today faces a technological, trade, and protectionist war because it broke the constraint. Facilities are granted and withdrawn according to Western and Northern interests. Preventing Turkey's entry into the European Union is another example of self-interested selectivity in bringing others closer to or excluding them from real decision-making sites.
We may also cite the 2003 occupation of Iraq as one such practice—building small, developed oases to serve interests in surrounding vast spaces. To control West Asia and counter Iran, Iraq was invaded and placed under occupation by UN Security Council resolution. The Americans established complete rule over Iraq via the "Civil Administration" of Ambassador Bremer, seizing legislative and executive powers and offering privileges and perks under the slogan of "Society Building, State Building," indicating the nature of the mindset held by hegemonic powers. All this happened in the 21st century to a founding member state of the United Nations, demonstrating that our countries remain colonized in the mindset of Northern nations.
3. The Evolution of the Development Concept Alongside Colonial Stages and Savage Capitalism
From the colonial "civilizing mission" to "modernization" post-1945.
From dependency theory and the "New International Economic Order" in the 1970s to "basic needs."
From "human development" by Indian economist Amartya Sen and others to "sustainable development" and "good governance," restoring moral and human dimensions to economics.
From Millennium Goals to 2030 goals and "ESG green investment."
However, hegemonic institutions co-opted nearly all reformist attempts, recycling concepts to serve capital accumulation. "Good governance" became a loan condition, and sustainability sometimes became a wrapper for new plunder via environmental grabs, debt-for-nature swaps, fossil energy markets, etc.
4. Primary Mechanisms for Impoverishing the South
The means are well-known, but they do not operate in isolation; they form a single network. The most important is that formal independence is left to the subordinate state, while foundational decisions—money, technology, weapons, food, energy, knowledge, values, and standards—are monopolized. These are the chief mechanisms for impoverishing and subduing the South:
A. The Financial Constraint: Via external debt, the IMF, the World Bank, credit rating agencies, the dollar, transfer systems like SWIFT, and financial markets. The state appears free, but it cannot default, exit the dollar, lift subsidies, or nationalize without punishment. "Independence" for it means choosing policies that do not touch the core of dependency.
B. The Commercial and Technical Constraint: Global value chains, patents, standards, semiconductors, medicine, seeds, and software. These permit subordinate nations to manufacture at the bottom while barring them from ascending to the top. If a subordinate state objects, pursues independent policies, or slips from control, technology is cut off, and decisions, obstacles, and even sanctions are deployed against it.
C. The Security Constraint: Imposing military bases, arms deals, officer training courses, intelligence networks, naval fleets, corridor control, training subordinate armies to be part of the system when needed, building alliances, and granting them political cover via international institutions like the Security Council. Whoever departs is besieged, fought, or invaded. Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Syria, and Iraq are mere examples, and the list goes on.
D. Elite Engineering: Funding parties, scholarships, visits, awards, international posts, foreign accounts, and real estate in London, Paris, and Dubai. The local elite is bought, not just conquered, becoming a partner in managing dependency—defending it in the name of "stability," "reform," and "legitimacy."
E. Manufacturing Acceptance, Consent, and Support: Achieved via media, the internet, social media, series, cinema, shows, exhibitions, universities, language, research centers, NGOs, conferences, reports, ideological writers drowning in dependency waves, TV debate guests, etc.—all producing concepts and frameworks harmonizing with the hegemony system and its values, such as the definitions of "development," "progress," "moderation," "extremism," "terrorism," "reform," and "democracy." Whoever agrees is praised and promoted; whoever rejects is distorted, belittled, and isolated, increasing the rush toward further integration rather than exit.
F. Indices and Standards: GDP, foreign investment, credit ratings, democracy index, good governance, transparency, human rights, climate, most beautiful cities, best life, least corrupt, etc. These are not neutral measurements but steering tools. Whoever follows them is classified as "successful"; whoever violates them is classified as "failed" or "rogue." Thus, those deluded by the mirage feel their actions are "correct" and their opponents are "wrong."
G. Selective International Law: Laws are applied to the weak and suspended for the strong—Security Council resolutions, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, investment treaties, international arbitration, reparations, and intellectual property. The subordinate state finds itself bound to execute, unlike the hegemonic state. The best example is the stance of the Zionist entity, the U.S. position, and several nations regarding international court rulings against genocide in Gaza.
H. Indirect Rule: The hegemonic system generally no longer needs direct occupation. It suffices that the Southern state maintains its flag, anthem, UN seat, and elections, granting an illusion of independence. Yet core decisions are made outside: Washington, New York, Brussels, Zurich, Davos, and "Tel Aviv."
I. Partition and Local Managers: The system does not rule directly but via local "managers" who believe they are independent while executing the true masters' conditions. If they overstep and violate conditions, they are replaced. Whoever submits gets endless loan rescheduling, aid, promotion, markets, weapons, legitimacy, and global awards. Whoever refuses gets sanctions, blockages, wars, coups, asset freezes, courts, and isolation, with doses adjusted by role: mediator state, raw material supplier, market, or waste dump.
Hegemonic states do not need to tell a subordinate state: "You are subordinate." They make it feel independent because it elects, decides, signs, leads, and chooses. But it chooses within a narrow corridor drawn by the hegemonic capital. The feeling that "what we are doing is correct" comes not just from oppression, but from monopolizing the definition of correct. Whoever owns the indices, universities, banks, media, and weapons owns the meaning of "success," turning the subordinate state into an industrious student in a school that isn't its own.
Emancipation does not begin with more "development" inside this corridor, but by exposing its engineering and building capacities outside its network—securing food, energy, national security, technical capability, and independence in finance and knowledge. This is costly; whoever does not pay the price remains independent on paper and subordinate in essence.
III. Impoverishing the South as a Core Part of Enriching the North
This is the core of the matter. Facts leave no room for doubt: so-called "aid," development programs, consultants, loans, development banks, and the like are merely a cover for an organized relationship of plunder. The numbers speak for themselves:
1. Financial Flows: Who is Financing Whom?
A. Net Drain: The North extracted $242 trillion in net resources from the South (1990–2015) via unequal exchange—equivalent to a quarter of the North's cumulative GDP during that period, as noted in an economic study supervised by Jason Hickel and a group of researchers published in Global Environmental Change.
B. Capital Flow: In 2023, the North extracted $921 billion from the South via the financial system—four times what it spent on "aid."
C. Profits: Between $30 billion and $50 billion flow out of the South annually as profits for multinational corporations headquartered in the North.
D. Interest: The South paid $971 billion in debt service in 2024, absorbing 40% of its public revenues (50% for African nations).
2. Unequal Exchange: Labor Hours Versus Nothing
A. Wages: Wages for Southern workers are 87%–95% lower than their Northern counterparts for the same skill level.
B. Labor: Southern workers contribute 90% of the labor hours driving the global economy, yet receive only 21% of global income.
C. Resources: 50% of the materials and labor consumed in the North are appropriated from the South via unequal exchange and other mechanisms of wealth and value transfer from South to North.
3. Resource Plunder and Illicit Flows
A. Global South nations lose nearly $1.0 to $1.1 trillion annually due to illicit financial flows.
B. Control: The IMF and World Bank impose "structural adjustment," lowering wages and opening markets to deepen dependency.
4. Historical Roots: Not a Mere Past Coincidence
From India alone: $64.82 trillion was plundered between 1765 and 1900. How much was plundered from the rest of the continents?
Reparations: Britain borrowed 40% of its treasury revenues to compensate slave owners, while slaves received nothing.
5. The Debt Trap: Volume of Public Debt and Debt as a Control Tool
A. Debt Volume: External debt for 130 Southern nations reached $12.3 trillion in 2025 according to UNCTAD, with government market debt as a percentage of output reaching 73.9% (varying by country: Venezuela 309%, Egypt 90%, Saudi Arabia 56.1%, Iraq 53%, etc.).
B. Northern States (Advanced Economies): Total government debt reached a record expected level of $75.8 trillion by the end of 2026, hitting 108% of GDP in 2025, with massive figures like Japan (206.5%) and the U.S. (123.9%).
C. Net interest on Global South public debt rose from $363 billion in 2010 to nearly $995 billion in 2025.
D. Repayment Mechanism: Two different worlds.
In the North: Management and refinancing (debt is replaced on favorable terms via sovereign bonds in local currency); financial power (currency control like the dollar gives the Federal Reserve enormous flexibility to ease burdens or punish); debt monetization (inflation and negative interest rates erode real debt value over time).
In the South: Austerity and debt service (vast revenues absorbed for debt service, swallowing 39%–96% of Senegal's revenues and 60% of Angola's); severe restrictions (harsh IMF conditions like austerity, subsidy removal, and privatization); 44 Southern nations suffer from "very high" debt levels, and 15 face risk due to debt service.
The relationship simply put: The difference is not in debt volume, but in who holds power and decision-making authority.
The North holds the "printing press key" (currency sovereignty), safe havens for capital, and debt rescheduling, shifting burdens onto others and managing debt as a political tool and economic hegemony.
The South is forced to play by "real economy" rules: paying interest and principal from real resources, draining its economy and people. This is not a creditor-debtor relationship, but an organized financial hegemony system. Impoverishing the South and trapping it in debt is a primary condition for sustaining Northern welfare.
Conclusion: These are not "international economic relations"; this is an organized plunder system. The North does not help the South; it extorts it, drains its resources, steals its labor, drowns it in endless debt, and sows internal conflicts that exhaust it and rob it of its sanity and priority-setting. What is called "development" is merely management of this process, and the impoverishment of the South is not a side effect, but a fundamental prerequisite for enriching the North. We are not facing a closed history, but a reality upon which Northern progress and triumph—and Southern deterioration and decline—were built. This is vital to understand now, especially as closing old plunder avenues shakes the foundations of the hegemony system, increases internal contradictions in Northern societies, and expands opportunities for Southern emancipation.
IV. Is There an Absolute Determinism and a Final Destiny?
The structure is harsh, but agency exists. Some states adapted and maneuvered (Malaysia, Turkey, India, and Brazil at times). Others resisted and paid the price (Cuba, Iran, Venezuela). China itself emerged from the Third World to a semi-center via a mix of state public property on one hand and market/international trade on the other. Other states hold half-sovereignty, with economies split between state control and parallel markets.
Some states adapted to Northern states or are necessities for them. Others remain heavily dominated, like most African and Latin American nations. Others have crossed a major threshold in breaking with the hegemony system, like Russia, Iran, China, and others. We face a multi-level world—an old world collapsing and a new one being rebuilt, registering daily expansion and success in achieving further independence and emancipation.
A world pursuing an independent path to build a new world of real assets and sectors rather than illusory numbers and speculative exchanges. A world of new alliances: Belt and Road, BRICS, Shanghai. A multipolar world filled with new values and concepts, leaning toward strategic alliances rather than daily policies. A world where popular power emerges above state power. Thus, its alliances and ambitions are not limited to lifting the South, but returning the North to its natural place among other nations and civilizations.
1. Alternatives and Foundations
Our submission to "development" as part of the hegemony system does not mean we do not want progress, lack an alternative, or abandon a socio-economic liberation project. Therefore, our paths must be redefined by exploiting everything remaining from our history, past, underground structures, and resilient, resistant, tested, sound, just, and effective pillars—harmonizing them with human achievements produced by North or South, past or present.
Foundations must be built that can withstand current global conditions, not imagined or past ones. Understanding our outside is identical to understanding our inside. The primary prerequisites of resilience, resistance, and building alternatives are achieving independence in core matters needed by any human society under current conditions:
A. Food Sovereignty: Producing what we eat rather than importing sustenance from our master. This policy is not new and exists in our beliefs and practices. The intent is not to avoid trade in food security, but to build a strategy preventing starvation and subjugation. Economist Ricardo advised the UK to specialize in textiles and leave agriculture to Portugal according to "comparative advantage," but WWII experience and Germany's blockade of Britain pushed London to secure food safety during crises.
B. Energy Sovereignty: Controlling energy sources rather than being blackmailed by them. Historically and today, energy is the source of nations' power—wood and oil in the past, then coal, oil, gas, nuclear energy, and clean energy. Lagging in owning energy from our own or allies' assets leaves us captive and easily weakened economically, socially, and politically.
C. Technical Sovereignty: Building scientific capabilities rather than renting technology cut off at the first dispute. Our nations (and Asia generally) are the cradle of technologies, sciences, and innovations, having historically transferred sciences to a medieval Europe that later claimed them as its own, branded us as barbarians, and fought us with them. Science, technology, and innovation ensure progress, justice, and protection against enemy cunning.
D. Financial Sovereignty: Controlling our currency and savings rather than letting them be hostages to the dollar and debt. National or circulated currency must remain part of our decisions, not decisions of those wishing us harm. Stability in circulated currency stabilizes transactions, and sustained transactions elevate economies and nations.
E. Security Sovereignty: Owning our defense decisions rather than being an outpost or proxy arena for the hegemony system. Emulating the West does not guarantee success; building expensive armies, planes, and tanks that turn to scrap in the first battle is flawed. Military doctrine, armament, and defense means—such as tunnels or low-cost reverse engineering matching our peoples' nature—are better suited. Our goal is not invading others, but defending our countries and peoples.
F. Economic Shura or Democracy: People deciding what is built rather than leaving it to a foreign-linked elite. We need to review the applications and outcomes of democratic experiences in our countries; what succeeds in the West or North does not necessarily succeed for us. They possess colonialism and the exploitation of other nations to dampen domestic friction, while our nations face plundered wealth and weakened status, increasing social conflict among our strata.
G. Social Justice: Building for the people, not the elite and foreign corporations. The human being must always be the goal. The state and system serve the people—not just elites, officials, and affluent strata, but the entire populace, granting them priority in fairness, services, and national potential.
In other words: We do not ask, "How do we catch up with the West?" but rather, "How do we build our countries and do justice to our peoples?"
The concept of development evolved alongside colonialism, hegemony, and savage capitalism, but the core struggle remained singular: who owns the world's surplus and decides its fate. No historical precedent matches this concept in its center, mechanisms, and goals. Old empires plundered, killed, and occupied, but they did not invent a single global apparatus measuring every people's "progress" via indices, classifying them, and conditioning domestic policies on loans and aid. This is a novel apparatus with no historical equivalent, which must be understood on its own terms rather than compared to anything else.
Facilities are granted and withdrawn. The West is not a model; it is a historical, value, and geopolitical exception. This system uses qualitative opposites: Chinese against Chinese, Korean against Korean, Muslim against Muslim, Arab against Arab. This is not incidental; it is the essence of hegemony and globalization. It divides the victim's limbs to control them, preparing local managers to suppress in the name of "international legitimacy," "the international system," "the international community," and "international public opinion"—all platforms for encircling, suppressing, and controlling peoples.
China is besieged because it refused its role and contributes to a multipolar world dropping unipolar hegemony. Russia is encircled by NATO and targeted for dismantling because it is four times larger than Europe. Iran is besieged, attacked, and sanctioned by nuclear states because it seeks independence and peaceful nuclear energy. Cuba is besieged for leaving the fold. Venezuela was plundered and its president targeted because it holds oil. The list goes on. Whoever submits gets his dose; whoever refuses is besieged, punished, and waged war upon in various forms.
2. Exit and Rupture
Exit does not occur via the proposed concept of development. Development says: Climb the ladder. But the ladder requires a base and pillars available to colonial states and unavailable to colonized ones. Whoever reaches the top needs someone left at the bottom. Who distributes the doses? Who decides who climbs? It is the hegemony system. Whoever opposes and resists is the new world.
China rose partially because it fought, not because it followed, and it remains besieged. Russia acquiesced after 1990 and the Soviet collapse, but the greed and arrogance of the hegemony system forced it to retreat and seriously consider exiting this entire system. Iran negotiated and signed the nuclear deal with the West in 2015, only for President Trump to tear it up, and Iran was attacked by states possessing nuclear arsenals. This is the reality of an unjust world: rupture with it is the only path to escaping its captivity and aggression.
Rupture is costly, and the hegemony system cannot survive unless others pay. It persists in its policy that whoever does not pay remains in the fold. This is not justification; it is description.
The question is not "How do we catch up?" but "How do we rupture?" and "What are the priorities of rupture?" Whoever ruptures must be prepared to pay the price. Whoever stays on the ladder stays at the bottom or in the middle, depending on their role.
Therefore, we say development is an instrument of captivity—a tool to shackle our countries and keep us in the circle of control and dependency, raising the question: Is there emancipatory development within this system?
The answer is no. Emancipation is not models of development; emancipation is models of rupture. Rupture is not a slogan; it is a policy with costs, responsibilities, and duties requiring the awareness of peoples, elites, and leaderships.
Rupture does not mean isolation; on the contrary, it means cutting off from the hegemony cycle and entering the cycle of liberation and emancipation. This must unite all anti-hegemony forces, including the peoples, elites, and youth of the North and West. They are a genuine part of the forces of liberation, renewal, and rupture—natural allies and sincere advocates against genocide, Zionism, old/new colonialism, racism, and Western metropolitan centrality.
As Samir Amin stated: "Delinking" is not autarky, but exiting the logic of center accumulation and reorganizing the economy and society according to internal logic rather than global market demands.
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Adil Abdul-Mahdi, former Prime Minister of Iraq).
