Putin on Neocolonialism, An Indian Perspective
Last week, right after the attack on the two Nord Stream pipelines belonging to Russia and Germany, Vladimir Putin spoke of Western “neocolonialism” in his speech addressed to the Russian people. I was curious as to what exactly he meant by the term neocolonialism, and whether his assertions were true.
Judging by Konstantin Kisin’s Twitter thread, Putin had remarked that the corporate West collects “hegemon’s tax” from other countries in their desire to financially control them. It is certainly true that Western colonial powers like Great Britain were once responsible for draining their colonies of resources and wealth. Historian William Dalrymple argues that the systematic looting of India undertaken by the East India Company provides a blueprint of sorts for the economic exploitation carried out by today’s joint stock corporations.[1]
In 2022, the Indian government has so far borrowed an approximate $1.75 billion[2] from the World Bank, an organization that partners with the World Economic Forum in the implementation of policies in poor countries that are related to “gender equality,”[3] “climate change,”[4] [5] “mass vaccinations”[6] It is necessary to mention that the countries with the most voting power in World Bank are the US, Japan, China, Germany, and the UK, and is purportedly funded by monies “raised in the financial markets.” It is equally worth mentioning that the activities of organizations like the World Bank and the IMF are routinely met with criticisms such as the one made by the Mises Institute’s Ryan McMaken who wrote the following:
”Given that the World Bank was founded by Keynesians at Bretton Woods, one might be somewhat skeptical of the economics and politics put forward as the justification for the scheme. On the other hand, we do know that the World Bank is a mechanism for exercising political control over the debtor nations. So it’s really just the same old story, and it’s fitting that agitators for wars of conquest find a home at the world bank. To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, perhaps the World Bank is war by other means.”[7]
Putin also mentioned control by technology. This should be an obvious nod to the activities of Big Tech corporations and the mass surveillance of the NSA and the CIA. We have already looked at how economic aid is often intertwined with developmental goals set by organizations in partnership with big corporations. This leads us to an observation of how monopoly capitalists such as Amazon and Facebook seek to invade the global field of agriculture through various backdoors created thanks to these developmental goals. An Al Jazeera article from 2021, which mentions the Indian farmers’ protest of that same year, states how “… technology companies, telecommunications, food companies, agribusinesses, or banks… are racing to collect as much data as they can from all nodes of the food system and to find ways to profit from this data. These efforts are getting more and more integrated and connected through corporate partnerships, mergers and takeovers, enabling corporate capture of the food system.”[8]
Who are these companies that are looking to invade the Indian agriculture industry? The article continues: “By far, the biggest players in this mix are the global technology companies. Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are all busy developing digital agriculture platforms to collect large amounts of data…”[9] The connection between some of these companies and the US government is well documented. Amazon, for example, is known to have cooperated with the CIA[10], and in a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Facebook co-owner Mark Zuckerberg suggested cooperation between the Big Tech giant and the FBI.[11]
In relation to the above, it is worth going back in history and reading about a similar situation that developed during the period of British-administered Bengal in India. In the late 19th century, Indian farmers in Bengal were forced by their British overseers to grow Indigo for Britain; this did not turn out well. F. Schurr, a Christian missionary, living in India during that time said that the farmers “were compelled to grow indigo and if they refused, they wouldn’t have been allowed to cultivate anything else.”[12] It is difficult not to draw comparisons between this historical episode and the present-day situation facing Indian agriculture.
Putin explicitly mentions the colonial looting of India, something that flies in the faces of American conservative influencers like Tucker Carlson, who recently remarked that Britain had brought “civilization” to India, and Mike Cernovich, who compared Putin’s factual statements to a Democratic Party campaign. The Indian external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, stated in 2019 that the British had looted $45 trillion from India in today’s value.[13] His statement is backed up by authors such as William Dalrymple and Shashi Tharoor.
Putin goes on to mention America’s foreign policy of meddling in the domestic affairs of various countries and the propping up of extremists in order to destabilize nations. In essence, he has made a valid connection between the colonial powers of yesteryears and the modern US-led western hegemony, which includes Britain. The similarities owe a lot to the coercion factor, something that is backed by the recent US sanctions on an Indian petrochemical company[14] as well as veiled threats over the purchase of Russian missiles[15].
The question now is whether Putin’s formula for a “multipolar world” is viable; that depends solely on the extent to which Putin decides on mimicking the western ways of coercion.
2. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-world-bank-1-75-billion-loan-8003376/
3. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/Gender
5. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/poor-vulnerable-countries-support-adapt-climate-change/
7. https://mises.org/wire/hillary-world-bank
8. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/2/5/the-big-tech-takeover-of-agriculture-is-dangerous
9. Ibid.
11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3PIGLDscQ
12. https://indianculture.gov.in/stories/indigo-revolt-bengal
15. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/world/wean-india-away-from-arms-made-in-russia-us-senators-437691