…and they are welcoming insecurity and exploitation by Russia. Prigozhin wasn’t there because he gave a shit about those people. He was there to exploit them.
Whataboutism and projection. You can’t just say “but what about Russia” when people are fighting against North Atlantic imperialism. This article is about North Atlantic imperialism. Mentioning Russian so-called imperialism is whataboutism.
Also, Russia isn’t doing imperialism because it in no way meets the definition of imperialim. It’s economy is smaller than Brazil’s and smaller than South Korea’s. 60% of its exports are raw materials or intermediate materials. India exports 3 times more capital than Russia does. Clearly South Korea and India aren’t imperialist. Russia isn’t either.
What is connection between size of economy and imperialism?
Imperialism is:
- Monopoly capitalism
- Export of finance capital as primary
- dividing up the world amongst other finance capitalists
Korea, Brazil, and India are in no position to be imperialist. They are countries exploited by the imperialist bloc. Russia is even smaller than these countries and is even more exploited. It literally does not fit the definition of imperialism.
I feel like that’s a wrong definition, here is one more broadly used:
imperialism | IM’pIerIalIz(a)m | noun [mass noun] a policy of extending a country’s power and influence through colonization, use of military force, or other means
So the use of military (Wagner) force also constitutes it. Also, the size of that country has nothing to do with it.
The dictionary definiton you gave is useless for political analysis, hence we use more accurate and precise definitions when in the domain.
An example of why your definition is useless is that it cannot be used to distinguish between imperialism and anti-imperialism. If imperilaism extends a country’s power, then it inherently extends it into some other country’s sphere of influence. When that country fights back, they are inherently extending their influence. Calling both imperialism results in zero understanding that couldn’t have been achieved without using the word and instead using the words force, expansion, violence, or many other words.
Imperialism is something specific and fighting against imperialism is not imperialism.
My brother in climate change, we don’t always have to pick a team. We can say neocolonialism/imperialism is bad, no matter by whom it is perpetrated.
The size of the economy of a country trying to profit from another does not have any impact on this. It is completely possible to say it is reprehensible of France to try and benefit from an African country, exactly in the same way as it would be for Russia to do the same thing, maybe with the same methods, maybe with other methods.
Profiting from another country is not imperialism. Profiting from another country is literally what is required in capitalism. You cannot avoid it. Condemning Russia for exploiting African countries is ludicrous in this regard. African countries WILL be exploited under a capitalist world order because that is the logic of exchange under capitalism. African countries would need to move beyond raw materials and intermediate materials and even beyond standard manufacturing and into high tech manufacturing but they can become exploiters of some other country. We are so far away from that state of affairs. Therefore, countries in Africa must of logical necessity be exploited if they are to participate at all in the global economy. These is no space in the North Atlantic capitalist world order for any other outcome.
So now we have to figure out what’s better - maintaining North Atlantic dominance in an unbroken 600-year genocidal campaign to control all of the world’s people and resources? Or resistance, revolution, and development supported by Russia and China who are the only 2 countries currently able to withstand the North Atlantic geostrategically, financially, militarily, politically, and diplomatically.
The answer, of course, is that anti-imperialism supported by Russia is far superior to letting the status quo ride, and is also superior to going up against the North Atlantic alone.
