The bid for recolonization: Rubio’s Munich conference speech signals imperialist reorientation 

By Shabbir Rizvi

With the launch of Russia’s military operation, otherwise known as the “Ukraine War” in February 2022, many analysts, commentators, journalists, and the like correctly concluded that a multipolar world order was on its way.  

The dramatic reaction to the Russian operation from the US and its NATO alliance sought to isolate Russia financially, removing it from a closely integrated world market - banks, industry, sport, entertainment, etc.

This “360” reaction to weaken Russia proved futile, as Russia absorbed the initial financial shock, recalibrated, and turned to its allies to continue operating, with some minor economic friction at home. 

However, Russia’s operation in Ukraine - aimed at stopping the eastward march of NATO - demonstrated a fundamental shift in geopolitical trajectory brought on by the attempt to undermine Russia by the US-European Atlanticist alliance. The hegemonic order maintained by the US since its victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War was waning.

The People’s Republic of China, becoming a global economic powerhouse, was offering better trade relations and win-win cooperation to countries that, after decades, if not centuries, of colonial rule, are still in developing and industrializing stages.

Though not in this category, Russia was able to turn to China, which helped it undermine the economic shock of a Western-aligned sanctions package that sought to cripple it.

Similar trade agreements are also seen with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Democratic Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of Cuba, and, until the capture of Nicolas Maduro, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (though the latter’s future remains in the gray).

A lifeline was created to challenge a unipolar economic order.

However, a declining hegemony does not come without its challenges. Especially not in a case where the hegemonic power is the United States, whose military spending outpaces that of the next several “superpowers” combined.

In fact, a declining hegemony under such circumstances means a more aggressive actor set on consolidating as much power as possible under a global “reshuffling.” 

The global “reshuffling” would thus be acceptable only to a declining power if it can maintain as many cards as possible. Understanding inevitable changes within the global projections of its own power, the United States cannot be “world police” much longer - not alone -  especially as it openly violates international norms with its criminal support of the Israeli regime in the wake of its genocide in Gaza, the brazen kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and the policy of starvation towards Cuba.

International law, as written by a European-centric world system, has run its course, and under a new crisis of capitalism, is now being replaced by a “cowboy” lawlessness of the United States, which is essentially just the former world order’s rotten fruit realized: the colonial powers must stay intact and in charge, if not by institutions and paperwork written by imperialists, then by force.

Simply: pushed into a corner under the weight of its own contradictions, the United States is brushing off the charade of the “rules-based order” now that the charade can no longer hold, and is advocating for a renewed assault on the global south in order to maintain control over a global “multipolar” order. 

This has been made evidently clear by Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference.

Speaking to a room of European leaders and elite, Rubio has called for the recolonization of the globe:

“For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding – its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe. 

But in 1945, for the first time since the age of Columbus, it was contracting.  Europe was in ruins.  Half of it lived behind an Iron Curtain and the rest looked like it would soon follow.  The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come. 

Against that backdrop, then, as now, many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past.  But together, our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.  This is what we did together once before, and this is what President Trump and the United States want to do again now, together with you. 

....We want to do it together with you, with a Europe that is proud of its heritage and of its history; with a Europe that has the spirit of creation of liberty that sent ships out into uncharted seas and birthed our civilization; with a Europe that has the means to defend itself and the will to survive.  We should be proud of what we achieved together in the last century, but now we must confront and embrace the opportunities of a new one – because yesterday is over, the future is inevitable, and our destiny together awaits.”

The speech was met with roaring applause from European officials, who, despite having a somewhat strained relationship with the United States in the wake of Trump’s tariff policy, have demonstrated their willingness to reassert their will over the global south-periphery.

The nostalgia-invoking themes of Western domination over the world serve as a rallying call to impose the rule of old, of course, with new properties in an age of technological advancement, alternatives to capitalism, and declining European influence. 

In this speech, Rubio, a rabid neoconservative who has supported US war after war, admits that the national liberation movements of the 20th century were a blow to imperialist dominance and that this equation should be reversed. Furthermore, the speech notes the anti-capitalist character of much of these movements - the pathway to liberation for these countries was breaking away from the financial arrangements of the United States and Europe. 

US policy towards a shifting and changing world order is made clear in Munich: reversing the national liberation gains of the Global South in the 20th century and reimposing full-frontal colonial control.

Already, we see this policy regarding the hostile takeover of Venezuelan oil and the phony “Board of Peace” in Gaza - the latter being managed by the United States and its junior partners, such as the Israeli Occupation and the UK, with branches extended to more minor powers such as Hungary. 

The “Make America Great Again” framework - previously criticized by liberal politicians and media as “isolationist” - is not rebranding, but showing its true intentions.

The “Great Again” section of the reactionary slogan reflects the days of colonial dominance and rule under the umbrella of “Western Civilization.” Rubio’s speech notes the so-called “glory days” of Western Civilization in their “building” over existing peoples, nations, and societies, a racist nod towards imperialist Western supremacy. 

The wars of the previous decades were fought with fabricated excuses leaning into “human rights” and “installing democracy,” i.e., Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, etc. The renewed vision - in a period of hegemonic decline - scraps the excuses altogether and brings to the fore the true ideological goal of the United States since its inception: “Manifest Destiny.” 

The national liberation movements Rubio demonizes were not events organized and executed by a small group of elites with dreams of power. Rather, the success of these movements - from the Cuban revolution, to the liberation of Algeria, to the ‘79 revolution in Iran, and to the defeat of US imperialism in Vietnam - just to name a few  - all marked movements that were supported by each country’s supermajority in a bloody struggle against imperialism and colonialism.

Rubio’s speech seeks to undo the work of popular national struggle and install a colonial grip managed by the United States and Europe for the benefit of the international financial elite, based primarily in Silicon Valley, New York, and London. 

With this assertion, the entire Global South-periphery has been put into a new set of crosshairs by an imperialist country backed into a corner of its own making. It is a bid to undo the popular movements against imperialist domination from the 20th century onwards. 

Tariff warfare was just the start, with the US fighting to ensure a reserve currency that it cannot influence would not replace the dollar. This is a temporary measure to maintain a financial grip as the US reorients to full-scale colonial control of resources to exploit, invoking European power to realize this mission: 

“And this is why we do not want allies to rationalize the broken status quo rather than reckon with what is necessary to fix it, for we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.  We do not seek to separate, but to revitalize an old friendship and renew the greatest civilization in human history.”

The Munich speech is a call to arms for imperialism to save itself and undo its defeats. The capitalist crisis is marking its end stages - in its bid to save itself, imperialism is pursuing an aggressive approach both within the imperial core in the form of fascist policies and externally in the form of brazen colonial dominance.

The goal needs to be ideologically structured and supported. Thus, Rubio’s call to nostalgia in a moment of European decline and overall capitalist crisis is met with applause when a hand is extended to restart the flame of overt colonial plunder. 

Where Europe has suffered a defeat in Russia, it hopes to earn victory with a “slice of the pie” in its former colonies.

To that end, one can even expect another “Scramble for Africa” similar to the 19th century in the coming months - after all, Israel has already started with its recognition of the breakaway region of “Somaliland” in Somalia as well as purchasing hundreds of acres of land in Kenya - just to share two examples amongst a background of foreign-funded genocide in Congo and Sudan in the name of resource extraction.

Conversely, the Global South-periphery is also reacting. Countries like Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali have established alliances (in this case, the Alliance of the Sahel States or AES) to promote development and cooperate on defense.

In the case of the AES, the rejection of French influence and exploitation being a top priority notes the character of the struggle: sovereignty cannot be achieved under the neocolonial boot. The BRICS alliance continues to grow, though not ideologically aligned, and shows promise for cooperation through trade and infrastructure development.

And of course, the Axis of Resistance, resisting full frontal imperialist violence for decades, exacerbated by the Gaza genocide, leads the way in confronting imperialist ambitions, with a sizeable US navy armada on its way to threaten Iran due to its insistence on sovereignty. 

As the predictions cast in 2022 mentioned, the multipolar world is here, but with its own set of challenges and hurdles. Imperialism in decline is imperialism unleashed without restraint. 

The Global South's popular struggles, forged in blood against centuries of domination, now face a renewed assault against sovereignty. Victory will demand vigilance, solidarity, and unyielding resistance to the ferocious gasp of a dying order. 

Shabbir Rizvi is an anti-war activist and an editor at Vox Ummah

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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