War as a Tool of Imperialism

US soldiers invading Vietnam (source: leftvoice.com)

Introduction to the Imperialist Wars topic

Imperialism is enforced through a variety of means, including unequal treaties, economic pressure, and clandestine regime change. In extreme situations, war can be utilized as a tool for imperial expansion. Global South countries that demonstrate a high degree of resilience to imperialism might find themselves targets of direct military invasion by the powers in the Global North. These conflicts can take many forms and their objectives might vary slightly, but they all serve the general purpose of strengthening an imperial hegemony.

What usually comes to mind when one mentions imperialism are the wars of the colonial era that put most of the world under European dominance. The goals of the colonial projects were plainly to subjugate the native population and plunder their resources. It is commonly accepted in the present day that colonialist wars were a crime against humanity. However, in the colonial era, colonialism was widely accepted as a humanitarian mission that would uplift the natives. Likewise, the neocolonialism enforced upon the world in the contemporary era is written off by most Western observers as good-natured attempts by the Global North to save the peoples of the Global South from themselves. Neocolonialist wars have the same goals as old-fashioned colonialism and differ only in rhetoric and tactics used. The world has not fundamentally changed in this regard since the days of overt colonial empires.

Many observers have come to recognize that wars are typically a method of installing a compliant puppet government under the guise of liberating a population. The more brazen assaults upon Iraq, Libya, and Syria in recent decades have drawn much attention to the structural inequality forced upon the world by the Global North. Less understood is the use of de-development to suppress a country's productive capacity. Destruction of countries' infrastructure and industry is a way of reducing their independence and removing them as economic competitors. To keep the Global North industry dominant and the Global South dependent on unequal trade with the imperial core, Third World countries must be forced to focus on primary resource extraction. This can be accomplished by bombing existing industries, expelling technical experts, and forcibly installing a government that will avoid any efforts to build future industry.

De-development was used as far back as the colonial era. When the British colonized India through divide and conquer tactics, they dismantled the local cotton-weaving industries and forced Indian farmers to send raw cotton to be processed in Britain. This removed a powerful competitor from the world stage and gave Britain a cheap source of material for their own industrialization efforts. Later, the use of war for de-development became especially common in West Asia and North Africa. The oil in these regions was a major strategic resource that fueled the growth of advanced economies. Revenue from oil gave many states funds for internal development and allowed them to gain some regional influence. Thus, it has long been a priority for the Global North hegemony to routinely wage war upon West Asia and North Africa either directly or through their proxy state of Israel.

Israel itself is the product of a settler-colonial war against the Global South. In addition to plundering resources and subjugating native civilizations, colonists will often demand large swaths of land as living space for their own population. Consolidation of common lands under capitalists and industrialization created a large number of displaced peoples in Europe during early-modern era. To solve what was perceived to be overpopulation, settlements were stablished overseas atop the bones of indigenous peoples. During the Cold War, these settler-colonial states bloomed into vital strategic outposts for Western imperialism. The United States became the center of Global North imperialism. Australia allowed for a strong presence in the Asia/Pacific theater. Apartheid South Africa was an enforcer of Western interests in Sub-Sharan Africa for decades.

A similar role is played by Israel in West Asia. Serving as a proxy for the West, the Israeli military has wreaked havoc upon the entire region. The constant state of war imposed by Israel wore down the progressive Pan-Arab governments and gradually replaced them with a comprador class beholden to Western interests. Due to the huge strategic value of Israel, the West is willing to provide endless investment and weapons to its settler-colonial project. The ongoing genocide in Palestine is a decades-long process that has increased in intensity as global opposition to Israel shrinks. With all of the opposition movements suppressed by endless war, the Israelis are unhindered in their one-sided slaughter of the defenseless Palestinian people.

In the contemporary political environment, the only opposition to Western imperialism is the imperialism of newly emerging powers. For the first time since Second World War, the globe is being divided between multiple spheres of influence. Before the American unipolar era, there was a tactical alliance between imperial powers against socialism. Before the socialist bloc formed, there were constant inter-imperialist conflicts among competing capitalist powers. These were direct clashes between imperialist powers that sought to redivide territory and redistribute the spoils of colonialist wars. With the decline of socialism and the rise of the "BRICS" bloc, imperialist competition has once again flared up around the world. Regional power such as Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa seek to gain more control over their neighbors and obtain greater autonomy from the West. The war in Ukraine is likely the first of many inter-imperialist conflicts we will experience in the coming years.

On the larger scale, Chinese finance capital challenges Western interests on every corner of the globe. The West's inability to overcome China economically, along with the growing crisis of overproduction, makes a new global military conflict likely in the near future. World wars typically result from the major economic crashes that periodically occur within capitalism. The ensuing conflict stimulates sluggish economies via military Keynesianism, or the injection of government funds into the military. There is also a significant amount of industrial production destroyed, which temporarily pushes back the crisis of overproduction. First World apathy towards the suppression of the Third World has once again brought us to this point, and only the overthrow of imperialism will bring a stop to this endless cycle of war.