The Last Vestiges of Empire: A Call to End The West’s 21st Century Imperial Playbook Now
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From the 15 century to the emergence of the United Nations in 1945, several European countries such as the UK, France, Spain and Portugal engaged in colonial expansion, which saw them hijack the destinies of predominately black and brown people for 550 years. Following the establishment of the United Nations on the back of the Second World War, the UN Charter was adopted. This included a provision to promote self-determination and end colonialism. In 1946, the UN created a list of non-self-governing territories (NSGT), defined as territories “Whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government”. In 1960, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples; this applied to 64 territories. However, despite the efforts of the United Nations to put an end to NSGT, 17 territories comprising over 1.1 million people are still colonized.
The colonizing countries, the US, the UK and France, have used several justifications for the continuous subjugation of the 1.1 million people in the NSGT. A principal reason often cited is the need for security and defence. Several of these territories, such as the Diego Garcia in the Chagos Archipelago and Guam, host US military bases. Another justification for maintaining this control is to maintain its global influence and stability. They also claim that these territories lack the capacity for self-governance and, with the NSGT under the control of the colonizing countries, is in the best interest of the former. Besides being exploited for military and global influence, some of these territories, such as Cayman Island and the US Virgin Islands, serve as tax havens to benefit residents of the colonizing countries.
The West has adopted sinister moves to maintain control over the NSGT, such as controlled referendums and granting limited autonomy. For instance, the UK granted US citizenship to Guamanians in 1950, and Britain conducted referendums in the Falklands in a manner structured to favour British control. Protests erupted in New Caledonia in May 2024 after the French government proposed a constitutional amendment to expand voting rights to include long-term French residents, which would have diluted the political power of the indigenous Kanak people. The French government declared a state of emergency in response to the protest. Amnesty International commented, “French authorities must uphold the rights of the Indigenous Kanak people and the right to peaceful expression and assembly without discrimination.” The colonizing countries have also frustrated the UN’s decolonization agenda. Of the 17 NSGT, only four have held referendums on self-determination, while the remaining 13 territories have never had an opportunity to vote for their political independence. The UK has not participated in the UN’s Special Committee on Decolonization since 2006.
The colonisers’ military bases that dot the world’s four corners are the Siamese twins of the NSGT. These military bases are used to project power, maintain hegemony and global influence, facilitate covert surveillance, store ammunition and provide launchpads for military strikes. In addition to the colonizing countries, China and Russia are also in the race to secure more military bases; however, they rank at the bottom of the military base premier league table. The USA has around 800 bases across 70 countries, while the UK has 145 bases across 42 countries. The inhabitants of Okinawa, Guam, and Diego Garcia, where some of these bases are situated, have limited sovereignty. Because these military bases require vast areas of land, the colonizers often end up grabbing the land from the inhabitants and imposing restrictions on their ability to use it. The influx of white military personnel in bases located in Black and brown-populated areas can lead to a situation whereby a racial hierarchy emerges with the military personnel at the top and the residents at the bottom.
In the past couple of months, several African countries such as Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast and Niger have ordered France to close its military bases to maintain their sovereignty. According to Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, “Senegal is an independent country, it is a sovereign country, and sovereignty does not accept the presence of military bases in a sovereign country.”
The refusal of the UK, the US, and France to grant autonomy to their colonies is a gross injustice. It is racially unjust, colonial in nature, constitutes a human rights violation and is hypocritical. The colonization of the NSGT by the UK, US and France is a manifestation of the historical subjugation of black and brown countries by the West. It also plays into the white supremacy narrative that black and brown people lack agency and are incapable of governing themselves. It is also a manifestation of the historical racial hierarchy, which sees whiteness at the top and black and brown people at the bottom of the racial totem pole. There is a clear racial divide between the racial composition of the colonizing countries and the NSGT. For instance, American Samoa, which has a 99% non-white population, is controlled by the USA, a country that has a 75.8% white population located 10,700 kilometres away. The British Virgin Island, which has a 92.6% non-white population, is controlled by the UK, a country with an 81% white population located 6,700 kilometres away. French Polynesia, which has a 90% non-white population, is controlled by France, a country with an 85% white population located 15,700 kilometres away. This is not just a matter of policy but a grave moral issue that demands our collective condemnation and action.
The UK, USA and France control the NSGT with a 15th-century colonial mindset. The UK’s government expulsion of the people of the Chagos Archipelago to allow the USA to take control of a military base in Diego Garcia demonstrates this colonial mindset as visually presented in John Pilger’s documentary titled, “Stealing of a Nation.” According to the documentary, because the USA wanted a military base at Diego Garcia, the UK government engaged in gross human rights violations. It agreed to “sweep and sanitize” the Island to make it available for the USA. The UK coerced the Chagossian people to leave the Island by blocking access to food, medicine and fuel and gassing almost a thousand pets using exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. The Chagossians were forced onto a ship and to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. After arriving in Seychelles, they were imprisoned and exiled to Mauritius. Upon reaching Mauritius, they were placed in a derelict housing estate unsuitable for human habitation. According to John Pilger, “No human being would treat another human being the way the British Administration treated the Chagossian people in this part of the world except if we go back to the days of slavery and to the days of endangered labor”.
The English language has conspired to obfuscate the 21st colonialism taking place before our very eyes. We use the term “Non-Self Governing Territories” instead of the proper term “colonies”; we describe the US, UK and France as “Administering countries or powers” instead of the proper term “colonizers”; we use the term “Commonwealth of Nations,” to disguise the words, “British Empire”. Today’s military bases are an extension of the colonial military bases of the colonial era. Despite this failed attempt at obfuscation, the Western control of the NSGT still mirrors the historical colonial practices of the 15th century. Like colonial practices of the past, this 21st-century variant also involves the denial of human rights, denial of self-determination, displacement of the indigenous population with settler colonialists, limited autonomy, land grabbing, political domination, and military presence.
The continuous existence of the NSGT and military bases breaches several UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights(UDHR) provisions. The colonizing countries have breached Article 1 and Article 2 of the UDHR by denying 1.1 million people the right to self-determination. The ill-treatment of the Chagossian by the United Kingdom breaches Article 5 of the UDHR, which stipulates that “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” The presence of military bases worldwide restricts people’s movements within the borders of their own countries, which breaches Article 13 of the UDHR. Article 17 of the UDHR states that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property,” this provision has been breached in the instance where the US and UK displaced the people of Diego Garcia from their ancestral homes to make place for a US military base.
Despite breaching these provisions, the UN has been unable to curb the excesses of the occupying colonial forces. Since 1960, when it made the first “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples,” the UN has declared four “International Decades for the Eradication of Colonialism.” Yet 1.1 million people in 17 NSGT are still under the colonial boots of the US, UK and France. In 2021, the United Nations International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea ruled that the UK had no sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago. Yet, the UK still wants to maintain a 99-year lease over the military base in Diego Garcia. Due to the veto powers granted to the UK, US and France within the UN Security Council, which enable them to block binding UN resolutions, the UN has been kneecapped from enforcing compliance with the provision of the UDHR. Furthermore, the United Nations does not have any enforcement mechanism to ensure that the colonizers give autonomy to the NSGT.
In failing to grant sovereignty to the NSGT, the colonizers are once again demonstrating their hypocrisy before a global audience. The UK, the US, and France pride themselves on being champions of the rule of law and bastions of democracy and liberty. Over the years, Western politicians have lectured the world on upholding human rights values. We hear the French Government declare, “We’ve directed additional financial resources to academics, free media organizations and students. In this crisis, France will support any political solution that addresses the profound aspirations of the Belarusian people;” we hear the British government declare, “Russia must respect its citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and fulfil its international obligations;” we hear the US government declare, “The United States stands with the people of Venezuela in their quest for freedom and democracy;” we hear USA’s Antony Blinken tell the Chinese, “We will speak out for human rights and democracy, and we will stand up for the rights and dignity of all people.” Until these colonizing countries dismantle their military bases and grant autonomy to NSGT, they have no moral justification for pontificating to others about the need to embrace human rights and democracy.
All hands must be on deck to end this last vestige of empire. The United Nations cannot address this in its current set-up, as evidenced by the West’s continuous breach of the UN’s decolonization effort. The UN Security Council should be restructured as it is the only UN body that can issue binding resolutions that member states are obligated to follow. In its current format, there are 15 members, of which 5 are permanent members, including the USA, UK, France, Russia and China. These five permanent members can veto any resolution issued by the UN. This veto gives excessive power to the permanent members, and it undermines the democratic ethos of the UN as one country can override the wishes of the remaining 192 UN member states. The veto power granted to the five permanent members should be removed in addition to the permanency of the five superpowers in the Council. Then, the reconstituted 15 members of the Security Council should serve a two-year time limit.
In the interest of fair play, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States should be recused from joining the Security Council for the next 79 years (representing the time of their permanency). China should be recused from joining for the next 53 years, representing when it first entered the Council as a permanent member in 1971. Once this structure has been implemented, the UN should pass a binding resolution calling for the colonizing countries to grant autonomy to the NSGT. Another resolution should call for the dismantling of military bases around the world within a set time frame. The UN should sanction countries that fail to abide by the resolution.
In recent years, investors and businesses worldwide have been using environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment principles to deal with companies and countries they want to deal with. Credit rating agencies such as Moody’s, Standard and Poor and Fitch are essential in factoring ESG principles in assessing sovereign debts. Credit rating agencies often factor human rights and political freedom within the social component of ESG. These agencies penalize countries that violate human rights and democratic values by giving them lower ESG scores, which could impact the breaching sovereign’s ability to source funding in the international market.
Countries with lower ESG scores often have higher CDS spreads, which results in higher borrowing costs. Western countries tend to have higher sovereign ESG scores and rank higher on democratic and human rights indexes such as the Rule of Law Index, Democracy Index and Global State of Democracy Index. For instance, according to the Global State of Democracy Initiative Index, which measures democratic trends, France ranks 7th out of 173 countries regarding representation. The UK and US rank 20th and 46th, respectively. In contrast, Nigeria and India rank 95th and 71st, respectively.
As credit agencies tend to rely on such indices in assigning ESG scores, it should be no surprise that countries in the Global South are ranked lower than France, the UK, and the USA, even though they don’t have military bases and colonies. Decolonizing the credit rating process is imperative so rating agencies can reassess their ESG screening criteria by incorporating colonial factors in their ESG analysis. France, the US, and the UK’s control of the NSGT breaches the social and governance pillars of ESG as they violate the rights of citizens of these territories to self-determination. In territories like New Caledonia and French Polynesia, France is disregarding the rights of the indigenous population. Colonizing other countries is a fundamental breach of human rights and has no place in the so-called civilized world. Since the colonizing countries refuse to give up their colonies, the credit rating agencies should downgrade their sovereign debts and organizations that track and rank sovereigns for democratic and human rights values should downgrade France, the US and the UK in a manner commensurate with the colonizer’s denial of political autonomy to its colonies. Investors should also pay attention to these human rights breaches before considering investing in sovereign debt issued by the colonizers.
One of the first steps towards dismantling military bases is to end the incestuous relationship between governments and the defence industry, as manifested by the military-industrial complex. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States spent $916bn on military expenditure in 2023, 40 per cent of that year’s total military spending worldwide. According to Macrotrends, US military spending between 2020 and 2024 was approximately $4.28 trillion. Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, defence stocks have been up by 48%, and the Asset Under Management for the SPADE Defense Index has been up by 268%.
The lobbying of the defence sector also needs to be addressed. In 2024, the defence sector, comprising companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, spent $110m lobbying US politicians. Another disturbing trend is the revolving door between the defence sector and the government. According to a report commissioned by Senator Elizabeth Warren titled, “Pentagon Alchemy: How Defense Officials Pass Through the Revolving Door and Peddle Brass for Gold,” in 2022, there were 672 instances whereby the top 20 military contractors hired individuals from government departments such as the Department of Defense. 91% of these eventually became lobbyists for their new employers. For instance, Boeing, which has spent $352m since 1998 lobbying US politicians, was the biggest recruiter of US government officials, recruiting eighty-five officials, including seventy-seven lobbyists, six senior executives and two board members. Admiral John M. Richardson, a former Chief of Naval Operations for the US Navy and former Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program Director, is on the board of Boeing. As the private sector continues to profit from militarism and the revolving door remains open, ending the need for military bases becomes difficult. It also makes the pursuit of peace globally almost impossible.
To end the last vestige of empire currently manifesting in the guise of NSGT and military bases, we would have to yield to the advice of Dr Martin Luther King, who came up with the concept of the Three Triple Evils, namely racism, materialism (economic exploitation), and militarism. According to King, these three evils are interrelated and self-reinforcing, perpetuating injustice and inequality. King said, “A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these evils are tied together.
This triple evil is being played out in the 21st century as we see the black and brown-populated NSGT exploited politically and economically by the so-called administering powers who have taken considerable sway of lands to use as military bases. As millions face homelessness and poverty in the UK, the US and France, it makes no sense for these colonizers to be spending billions of dollars maintaining military bases and colonies around the world. King called for a revolution of values where people are humanized rather than objectified. He advocated for a transition to a “Beloved Community” grounded in love, justice, and equality for all people. The prevalence of NSGT and military bases is a stain in our world today and has no place in a civilized world. Activists and civil society anti-imperialists must work towards making King’s vision a reality by dismantling this 21st-century imperial system perpetrating these evils.
Selah.
Ahmed Olayinka Sule, CFA
@Alatenumo
January 2025
cc
Secretary General United Nations
Amnesty International
Polynesian Leaders Group
UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations
US Permanent Representative to the United Nations
France Permanent Representative to the United Nations
Standard and Poor
Fitch Ratings
Moody’s
