Afrasianet - Addison Joseph - Imperialist brutality has escalated in recent times against the countries of the Global South seeking political and economic independence, such as Venezuela, Iran and Cuba, and before that attempts to change the political regimes in the Sahel countries of Africa, namely Burkina Faso under the leadership of Ibrahim Trooui.
The battle for national liberation that was launched against the old colonial project succeeded in achieving political independence, but colonialism in its traditional form still exists in some cases, such as the Israeli settler colonialism model in Palestine. The attempts of the imperialist powers to dominate the countries of the South did not stop, but continued in new forms called "neo-colonialism", through the attempt to indirectly dominate the political decision and the management of resources in these countries.
Therefore, the battle for national sovereignty has been a fundamental axis of the struggle of the progressive social forces in the countries of the South, for the independence of national decision-making, freedom from imperialist influence, the empowerment of peoples to manage their internal affairs freely, to use their resources to serve their domestic needs, and to achieve self-sufficiency and development on independent grounds.
Imperialism, as a system of capitalist domination of the world, began early on to impose the conditions of domination over the countries of the South by forcibly integrating them into the world economic system, where political decision and resources are subordinated to the interests of the imperialist powers in a variety of ways. These include the imposition of dependent political regimes, the support of loyal presidents, or the pursuit of regime change or leadership that refuses to comply with those conditions by promoting "regime change" agendas based on claims promoted by the Western propaganda machine.
The Strategy of Imperialist Attack on National Sovereignty
Imperialism is constantly seeking to expand throughout the world in order to extend its monopoly on resources and to create an economic system that facilitates the process of global domination. It uses various tools, including military power and soft interventions, to achieve these goals. US imperialism, for example, requires its project of global domination to:
Control of the global banking system
Dominating Global Markets
Ability for Intensive Military Intervention
Control of international communications
Control of sea lanes
Leadership in advanced technology
Control of the sophisticated weapons industry
Control of space
Control of oil and minerals trade
The countries that compete with them in their spheres of influence are a threat to their interests, so they are aggressively imposing the logic of hegemony, even by force if necessary to achieve their goals.
The expansionist ambitions of the imperialist powers, especially the United States, make them in a constant state of seeking to undermine the sovereignty of states whose interests are at odds with the projects of hegemony. To achieve this, several strategies are used, the most prominent of which are:
1- Fragmentation of States
This is done through a policy of "balkanization," i.e., the dismantling of the state into rival ethnic or sectarian entities, in a way that is easy to control. This is done by politicizing tribal and sectarian affiliations, making them the basis for the distribution of power and resources, leading to ongoing internal conflicts. This is accompanied by the weakening of the central state and the undermining of its security and political sovereignty, by imposing rules of the political game, controlling political actors, and imposing settlements subject to external conditions. Cases such as Iraq and Libya are cited as examples.
2- Containment
This strategy relies on changing the attitudes of political regimes by soft means, such as material inducements or protection for ruling elites, in exchange for passing policies that serve imperialist interests. This includes opening markets to multinational corporations, and abandoning policies that support the national economy.
3- The debt trap
International loans are often conditional, making debtor countries more dependent on external lenders, thus losing some of their decision-making autonomy. These countries are forced to adopt creditor-imposed economic policies, such as those of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which include exchange rate liberalization, currency floating, the lifting of subsidies on goods and services, and the imposition of austerity measures, which reflect negatively on the poor.
4. Changing the systems
This is done by supporting or orchestrating military coups against regimes that refuse to bow to external pressure, and replacing them with loyalist regimes or leaders. Historical examples include Arbenz in Guatemala, Mossadegh in Iran, Salvador Allende in Chile, and Tomás Sancara in Burkina Faso.
5. Military intervention
The military option is the last means of imposing hegemony, and it is used when other means fail. It is based on the logic of force without much regard for international law, with the aim of changing regimes or reshaping political and economic relations by force, as happened in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and others.
Imperialist propaganda as a tool to justify the attack on the sovereignty of states
The interventions of the imperialist powers in the countries of the South are accompanied by intensive propaganda processes aimed at influencing the consciousness of the peoples of those countries and convincing them that these interventions are in their interest. This propaganda also seeks to convince public opinion in the imperialist countries that there is moral justification for what is presented as "wars" or foreign interventions.
To promote this propaganda, the imperialist regime employs the media, think tanks, and civil society organizations linked to external funding, in order to monopolize information and direct ideas in a way that serves its goals, thus influencing public opinion and misleading peoples.
The role of such propaganda is to justify military or political interventions under various pretexts, such as counter-terrorism, fighting the drug trade, claiming to possess weapons of mass destruction, democratizing or protecting human rights, including issues such as "emancipating women from abuses."
The Battle of National Sovereignty
The peoples of the Global South are under a fierce and brutal attack from imperialism, which aims to undermine the right of peoples to self-determination and to choose their own path to benefit from their resources in a way that serves their living and development needs. This is based on the use of military force supported by an economic power that seeks to control the wealth of these peoples.
This reality imposes a major role on the progressive and democratic forces of the countries of the South, in cooperation with the forces that love peace and social progress in the countries of the North, to unite and work together to confront and counter the project of imperialist domination. Global solidarity among the progressive forces is one of the most powerful weapons that peoples have against this project.
The unification of the front of the struggle of social and democratic forces against imperialism and its military options, with the aim of thwarting the hegemonic scheme led by the United States of America, gives the solidarity of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America a global dimension and promotes action at multiple levels, popular and official. This battle is fought mainly by the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America, as well as by the peoples of Europe and North America, who seek freedom from the domination of oligarchic interests, in order to write a new history of resistance to empires.
The peoples of the world find themselves confronted with a common enemy: globalized monopoly capital and the imperialist system, along with the governments of the comprador's ruling classes in the countries of the South, as well as some international institutions that act as servants of this system, such as the World Bank and others.
The struggle for the national sovereignty of peoples is aimed at achieving a comprehensive and just security system for all the peoples of the world, based on an equitable treatment of universal issues in the interests of all humankind. This requires a radical change in the global balance of power, as a prerequisite for building a new world order that is an alternative to the imperialist capitalist system, which guarantees the interests of developing countries and their right to independent development and political independence.
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