Thursday, October 18

In Himadeep Muppidi's chapter, "Colonial and Postcolonial Global Governance," the author uses examples from a post-9/11 world to show that Imperialism, Liberalism, and Realism lack any kind of global ethic and silence the weakest states in an attempt to hold up the most powerful ones. He points to two different writers (Ikenberry and Mallaby) who advance this line of thinking by both supporting and rejecting neo-imperialism. Mallaby advocates for "orderly" countries to colonize the "disorderly" nations which upset the order found in democratic states. Ikenberry takes the opposite view, but does not categorically reject Mallaby's thoughts. Rather, he argues for a return to Liberalism or Realism. Muppidi counters by pointing out that even Liberalism and Realism do not reject imperialism, and that a return to such policies would only serve to bring us back to where we are now. Even international institutions are tainted by the overwhelming power that the United States and Great Britain hold in world affairs; the World Bank has repeatedly been criticized for predatory lending and favoring American contractors. To Muppidi, a world in which there is a governing power and governed states lacks ethics.


The example of Madeline Albright's approval of economic sanctions that kill over half a million children in Iraq is disgusting to Muppidi. This power should not be exercised by any one state in his eyes.

So the question becomes, if we as as a country should not use military, economic, or international pressure to force pariah states, what can we do? The past is in the past, and in truth the United States is not to blame for problems in postcolonial states nearly as much as Great Britain is. The Balfour Declaration helped to carve up the Middle East entirely wrong, which led to almost all of the conflicts we see today in Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Iran. African border disputes or civil wars? The United States wasn't at the Berlin Conference to carve up Africa.

The point here is that the United States is today paying for the mistakes and short-sightedness of its European predecessors. Yes, the US does play a different, neoimperial role in world affairs, but its effect is not nearly as damaging as what European nations did to essentially create this Third World we talk so much about.

If military, economic, and international pressures should not be used to keep rogue states in check, Muppidi offers no feasible suggestion for how to deal with these states, and in today's world where the squeaky wheel gets the media attention, it is easier than ever for impoverished nations to reach out to one another in protest of the west.