Institutional Hegemony: The West & ‘the Rest of Us’
by Prof. Emeka Aniagolu
As tragic as the unfolding war Russia is waging against Ukraine is, defined in terms of the loss of human life — combatants and non-combatants; the strictures of international law bent or broken, the sheer destruction of physical infrastructure as well as disruption of economic activity; there should be lessons for the rest of us from the non-Western World, especially, Africa. The scariest lesson to us ought to be the sanctions the West has put in place in retaliation for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It ought to be fairly obvious that the ‘rest of us’ have politico-militarily, economically, and in terms of the Internet and other forms of telecommunications; become pawns on the chessboard of a hegemonic West.
If, indeed, President Putin is trying to restore the Cold War-era empire of the Soviet Union; the West is and has been presiding over its own global empire for nearly 500 years now. From the 15th century on, in relay: The Portuguese, the Spanish, the French, the English, the Dutch, etc; invaded foreign lands — in the Americas, in sub-continental India, in Africa and in Australia; subjugated or committed genocide against the natives of those lands. That, in fact, was how the countries called the United States of America, Canada, in Latin America, Australia and New Zealand; came into existence in the modern world. While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may or may not be morally or legally right, it is definitely not unique to Russia as some kind of outlier “Evil Empire.”
At, any rate, between the so-called “Evil Empire” — as Russia has been portrayed since the Ukraine debacle — and the so-called “Empire of Lies,” which President Putin dubbed the US-led Western alliance; who is to say which side is ultimately right or wrong in their accusations and counter-accusations? After all, NATO was formed in 1949, whereas, the former Warsaw Pact of the Soviet-era was formed six years later, on May 14, 1955. Did the then Soviet Union feel threatened by NATO or the other way round?
For my purposes, I wish to examine the gamut of institutional levers the West controls as a means of bringing to heel adversaries and/or non-conformists to its global agenda or order; using sanctions as a barometer of the power and extensive reach of those levers. In response to what is now being called: “Putin’s War,” the West, led by the United States, has marshalled an array of punitive sanctions against Russia:
· Stopping Germany’s Certification of the Gas Pipeline from Russia to Germany.
· Removing Russia from the S.W.I.F.T international payment system for banks and governments around the world.
· Google has stopped payment of Ad Revenues to Russia’s State Media.
· YouTube has stopped payment of Ad Revenues to Russia’s State Media.
· Restrictions have been placed on technological acquisitions from the West by Russia; needed to upgrade its oil refineries, aircraft components and equipment, as well as its military and aerospace sectors.
· Restrictions have been placed on the sale of semiconductors, telecommunication, encryption security, lasers, sensors, navigation, avionics and maritime technologies.
· The United States decided to cut off 13 state-owned companies from raising money in the United States, including energy giant Gazprom and Sberbank, Russia’s Largest financial institution. The same was replicated in the UK. In addition, the UK has frozen the assets of 100 individuals, including “all the manufacturers that support Putin’s war machine.”
· Travel bans have been placed on individual Russian officials, including President Putin himself; disallowing them from travel to and from the Western World; as well as through Western airspaces.
Now, let’s reverse the scenario, both in terms of recent history and dramatis personae: The United States’ unprovoked war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq; based on a concocted “big lie,” that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Over a hundred thousand civilians were killed in that war. Other than a few condemnations from various “radical” quarters of the world; what were the institutional means by which the ‘rest of us’ could have sanctioned the United States and its allies for waging that immoral, illegal, bloody, elective war? Do I hear a deafening silence? If that is your answer, you are dead right: Nothing.
Suppose African countries decided to sanction the United States for its war against Iraq, through its continental organization, the African Union (AU), what would have been the institutional means available to them with which to have done so?
· The West does not import scientific and/or technological knowhow, components and equipment from Africa. Yes, they import raw materials from Africa, but we are more in need of the foreign exchange we earn from the sale of raw materials, than we would be willing to forego for a ban on the sales of Africa’s raw materials to disrupt Western economies. Besides, if such a ban were to work, the West will go to war against us, and we do not have the military wherewithal to defend ourselves against such a military offensive.
· The international currencies of trade and asset-holding are denominated and transacted in the national currencies of Western countries, especially, the dollar and the euro; not in the currencies of African countries — big and small;
· All the major international political and economic institutions are located in the West and/or controlled by the West:
Ø The so-called World Bank (properly named: International Bank for Reconstruction & Development — IBRD) is headquartered in Washington DC. (Established in 1944)
Ø The International Monetary Fund (IMF), is headquartered in Washington DC. (Established in 1944)
Ø The United Nations is headquartered in New York City (formed October 24, 1945). Of the five Permanent Members of the UN Security Council: the US, the UK, France, The Russian Federation and China, three — the US, UK and France are Western powers. If, for whatever reasons, Russia and China are neutralized, the UN Security Council would become an exclusive club of Western powers.
Ø The International Court of Justice (ICJ), is located in The Hague, The Netherlands (Established in June, 1945)
Ø The World Trade Organization (WTO) — currently headed by Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala — is located in Geneva, Switzerland. On January 1, 1995 it commenced operations, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was established in 1948.
Ø The famous S.W.I.F.T, from which Russia has been cutoff as part of sanctions against it, is based in Belgium — a member of NATO (formed on April 4, 1949) and host to the headquarters of the European Union (EU).
Ø Finally, the recently created International Criminal Court (ICC), is located in The Hague Netherlands. And speaking of the ICC, “The US participated in the negotiations that led to the creation of the court. However, in 1998 the US was one of only seven countries — along with China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar, and Yemen — that voted against the Rome Statute. US President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000 but did not submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. In 2002, President George W. Bush effectively “unsigned” the treaty, sending a note to the United Nations secretary-general that the US no longer intended to ratify the treaty and that it did not have any obligations toward it.”[1]
· All the so-called social media “handles,” search engines and/or platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Google, YouTube, the Internet itself, etc; are owned and operated by individuals and/or companies in the West.
· All the major countries in and of the West, despite the so-called Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT): possess Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles — with nuclear warheads — on land and sea; and not one African country has any.
· The United States, if not the UK and France, have blue-water navies that can traverse the world’s major bodies of water: The Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, among others. No African country has any such blue-water navy.
· It might interest the reader to note that there is no other military alliance system in the world comparable to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Soviet-era Warsaw Pact, formed by the Soviet Union to counter NATO, was disbanded in 1990; whereas NATO is still very much alive and well.
· Finally, when the COVID-19 Pandemic broke out, everybody thought, including my humble self, that Africa was going to be the mass grave of the cream of the Black race; and African leaders and health experts frantically jumped on the bandwagon of begging for vaccines from the West; even as so-called “Vaccine Nationalism” took hold in the West.
The foregoing, if it teaches us anything, ought to alert African leaders of thought and government, that the complex of “international” economic and political institutions enumerated above, are not benign entities of international commerce and relations. Experience has proven beyond reasonable doubt, that they are Western created and controlled institutions that can be easily weaponized by the West, if and when the occasion calls for it!
From WWII, the world entered into what essentially became the American-led global Western Empire. With America’s decisive military assistance to Europe in the defeat of the so-called “Axis Powers:” Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan; the US became the unquestioned engine-head of the reconstruction of the post-war European political economy, as well as the reconstitution of the Western-led, controlled and dominated global institutions of international trade and finance, the so-called: Bretton Woods System; the Marshal Plan for the post-war reconstruction of war-torn Western Europe, the creation of NATO and leading the Western capitalist charge against Communist Soviet Union and China.
The world assumed a bipolar ideological and politico-military posture and standoff, which was made far worse as well as far more dangerous because of nuclear weapons in the mix of the military arsenal of both sides. That bipolar posture/standoff lasted from 1945 to 1991, a period of nearly a half-century. It is arguable that the world has entered upon a new age: the end of the so-called “American Century,” and the beginning of a new multipolar world in which there are now three main global centers of power: The US (with its NATO allies), the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.
The national as well as continental policies of individual African countries and the AU, ought to be national and continental liberation, not national and/or continental conformity to what pleases or favors the West. Otherwise, we will sink deeper and deeper into the institutional hegemony of the West.
