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0 pointsthrowawayqqq111y ago0 comments

The illusion of a neutral global institution like the UN is a result of US hegemony too. They could not tolerate international courts but prosecute Assange...

I would go even further and blame the state of the developing countries on the west too, because their selfish competetivly oriented globalisation left them as vasals since the end of colonization.

This is actually the sadest part, what will remain of this hegemony: a world order made by and for the corrupt. Maybe china makes it better since they resisted IMF, WHO, etc but i have my doubts.

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Agentus1y ago

It's clear to me many of the European colonies post & during Monarchal Empires were exploited. But Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Phillipines, Germany, and a lot of the places that were sorta "vassals" of the United States faired well off-ish. I see a lot of examples in history where the United States actually played hardball with the colonial powers of Europe post WWII siding with the exploited more, forcing concessions on the European powers.

Not that the United States isn't flawed or doesn't do hypocritical or unilateral diplomacy (Israel or anything related to communism, & I guess installing/supporting dictators that support US interests), but is it too much to ask if you can provide me a few examples where the US acted like an exploitative colonial power that hindered developing countries (at least in the past 80 years)?

throwawayqqq11OP1y ago

Besides installing dictators or at least manipulating political movements beyond latin america...

It looks like china is trying the same thing the west did after WW2: debt trap diplomacy. [0]

The linked article focuses alot on china in a negative way but the origin of debt trap diplomacy began with the bretton wood institutions (IMF, WHO, world bank) in 1944 and resulted in the debt crises of 1980s [1,2] and the globalized developing countries. These institutions where handing out massive loans meant for development but bound to sometimes very harsh economic reforms [3,4]. The effect was not the promised growth but the debt crises and the (imo intentional) economic opening of resource rich but otherwise poor countries to the well developed economies of the west.

Afaik the US did not directly acted as an expoitative power but hindered developing countries as a proxy for multinational corporations. Like for chiquita banana in latin america or for shell in nigeria [5,6].

This story is decades old, explains well the current corrupt-but-useful leaders all over the southern world and i dont even have to go into the petrodollar and its meaning for small oil exporting countries. The US/the west is imo very responsible for the global state of affairs and the gain of power/wealth is the only explaination for the development we took. This is my bridge to exploitation but propably not the smoking gun you where looking for. This topic is so vast to just focus on a single country.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy

[1] https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_debt_crisis

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_adjustment

[4] https://web.archive.org/web/20100226180656/http://www.africa...

[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2010/12/10/how-shell-infil...

[6] https://academic.oup.com/jah/article/99/1/155/854916

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