In a speech held at the Munich Security Conference Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for a renewal of the colonial age:
In a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate.
This is the path that President Trump and the United States has embarked upon. It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on. It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again. 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.
Arnaud Bertrand summarizes:
The man literally laments the outcome of WW2 because it marked the end of the era during which “the West had been expanding”, a “path” he “hopes [the US and Europe] walk together again.”
And just to ensure you’re clear about what he means: he wants to restore the building of “vast empires extending across the globe” and blames “anti-colonial uprisings” for what they did to “the great Western empires.”
He also says that “we cannot continue” to allow “abstractions of international law” get in the way of US interests.
Basically the man is openly saying that the whole post-colonial order was a mistake and he’s calling on Europe to share the spoils of building a new one.
Some of the dimwits in the room did applaud that revisionist nonsense.
Bertrand cautiones:
What’s the thinking here? That Trump’s America – “America first” – would suddenly become magnanimous and share with Europe just out of sentiment? That’s not how imperialism works: the whole premise of it is that the strong dominate the weak.
When an imperial power is speaking to you of sentiments, of how much they like you and how they want to partner with you – the much weaker party – that’s cause for worry, not applause …
Rubio’s speech was a call up of satraps who are willing to be the proxy forces fo fight for U.S. global hegemony – just as the Europeans already are with regards to Ukraine.
But Rubio is living in the past. A past in which the Europeans, through their supremacy in warfare, could conquer and devastate vast areas of the planet:
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
The West, thankfully, no longer has exclusive access to weaponry. It can no longer raise the forces needed – the technology, money, people and ideology – to subjugate the planet. Any attempt to do so will only end in disaster.
Europe would thereby be well advised to stay away Rubio’s unhinged nonsense.