Collective West Just Declared War On The Global South | Dr. Jeff Rich

## Introduction A recent exchange with historian Dr. Jeff Rich exposes a disquieting pivot in Western political rhetoric: an open reclamation of colonial language and purpose. What began as polemical flourishes in a single high-profile speech has rippled outward, revealing not merely a nostalgia for past empires but a policy mood that treats empire as a legitimate instrument of contemporary power. This is not merely a rhetorical lapse. The conversation shows that it is part of a broader pattern—intellectual, legal, economic, and military—whereby former imperial powers and their partners are reasserting prerogatives that many assumed had been consigned to history. The stakes of that shift are global, touching decolonization norms, reparations debates, currency sovereignty in Africa, and even the legal framing of armed anti-colonial struggles. ## Rubio speech and Western Reconquista frame Dr. Rich coined a striking phrase to describe the rhetorical contours of that speech: the “Western Reconquista.” The label is more than flourish. It captures how the address fused a sentimentalized historical narrative—rooted in Christianized, monocultural notions of Western civilization—with an explicit call to reassert control over the political destinies of non-Western peoples. The analogy to the Iberian Reconquista is telling: it was a long, religiously inflected campaign of territorial reclamation and ethnic-religious purification, and invoking it modernizes a logic of civilizational superiority. The speech did not merely celebrate “Western values”; it argued, in effect, for the reconstitution of a Western sphere of influence that privileges certain European-derived traditions and penalizes migration, pluralism, and the claims of formerly colonized peoples. Beyond the symbolism, the speech is political theater that codifies who counts as a “civilizational ally” and who does not. It defines partners by their willingness to accept a narrow, historically selective version of Western identity, and it frames global competition as a struggle to protect that identity from erasure. That framing matters because it legitimates foreign interventions and economic coercion in the name of defending a putative civilizational order. Whether intended as an electoral flourish or strategic positioning, the address signals to allies and adversaries alike that colonial-style prerogatives are back on the table. ## Colonialism then and now in practice The conversation resists the comforting myth that colonialism is an artifact of the past. Instead, it foregrounds continuity: the techniques of domination have simply adapted. Formal political control may have diminished, but old practices persist in new guises. From direct military occupation to economic dependency, from settler-colonial expansion to cultural hegemony, the mechanisms that underpinned European imperial power remain visible across the globe. Dr. Rich forces a reminder that the United States is historically a colonial power too—its continental expansion led to the dispossession and near-genocide of Indigenous peoples, and its overseas ventures mirrored European colonialism. Contemporary manifestations include U.S. territories that remain non-self-governing and networks of influence—military bases, economic conditionalities, and political patronage—that replicate colonial dynamics without formal annexation. In the Pacific, Africa, and elsewhere, neocolonial forms hinge on controlling resources, markets, and elites rather than direct rule. The circulation of capital, the structuring of debt, and imbalances of trade and currency are modern vectors of that control. This continuity is not purely structural; it is also ideological. Celebrations of a unified “Western civilization” erase the messy plurality and the violent histories that produced it. That selective memory sanitizes empire and renders its dispossessions invisible in mainstream discourse—a blindness that makes contemporary claims to reassert control easier to normalize. ## UN decolonization norms and armed struggle One of the most consequential points in the conversation concerns the international legal architecture born from decolonization—not as a gift of liberal conscience but as the hard-won result of struggle by the so-called Global South. Postwar multilateralism codified the legitimacy of self-determination and, crucially, recognized the political and moral space for anti-colonial armed struggle. Resolutions and dedicated UN bodies reflected the priorities of newly independent states and anti-colonial leaders who insisted that sovereignty and reparative justice be central to the post-imperial world. That institutional legacy sits uneasily with the rhetoric of re-conquest. When contemporary leaders deride the UN or dismiss decolonization as a historical aberration, they are not just rejecting a historical narrative: they are undermining a legal and moral framework that legitimizes compensation, restitution, and self-rule. The conversation underscores how dangerous that undermining is. If armed anti-colonial action was once recognized as a legitimate means of resisting domination, the re-normalization of colonial rhetoric risks re-criminalizing those struggles and isolating their claims on the international stage. The legal architecture matters because it shapes who can make claims and what remedies are considered acceptable. Dismantle the moral authority of decolonization in rhetoric, and the path is paved for political and military suppression of movements seeking redress. ## Algeria reparations push and African currency control Concretely, the repercussions of this rhetorical shift are already visible in struggles over reparations and economic sovereignty. The conversation highlights Algeria’s recent legislative moves to classify colonial crimes as state crimes and to press for reparations—actions that ignite old wounds and force former metropolitan powers to confront their pasts. That push is not symbolic; it has real financial and diplomatic implications and has catalyzed conversations across Africa and the broader Global South. A related and equally tangible axis of control is monetary sovereignty. Several African nations still operate currencies printed and governed under colonial-era arrangements that give ex-metropoles leverage over exchange rates and monetary policy. The vestiges of a colonial franc zone and externally managed currency systems mean that economic sovereignty is curtailed: exchange rates and credit access can be manipulated to extract surplus and to maintain unequal terms of trade. The result is a persistent drain of wealth and constrained policy autonomy, which fuels resentment—and, critically, pushes affected countries to seek remedies within multilateral institutions. The timing of the reparations push—emerging as debates about empire are reignited in the West—may not be accidental. As Dr. Rich observes, assertive demands for reparatory justice and currency sovereignty provoke defensive reactions from former imperial powers. Those reactions, amplified by triumphant Western rhetoric, create a vicious cycle: the more the Global South seeks redress, the more vociferous the retrenchment from some Western quarters. ## Europe reactions and the Munich applause debate European responses to the contemporary re-emergence of colonial language are uneven but telling. In some capitals, the politics of memory and guilt have been replaced by a politics of pride and resentment. The applause that greeted the speech at a major security conference—what Dr. Rich calls a “mask-off” moment—signals an elite consensus in some circles: colonial nostalgia has migrated from the fringes to the mainstream of strategic conversation. At the same time, reactions within Europe are not monolithic. For many citizens and leaders in countries with direct colonial legacies, the resurfacing of imperial rhetoric is alarming and deeply dissonant with thei

Collective West Just Declared War On The Global South | Dr. Jeff Rich Munich was a real mask-off moment. Colonial goals are again official policy in the US and Europe. After a room full of collective westerners applauding the insane speech of Marko Rubio in Munich, one can only expect the worst for the years to come. They want their colonial empires back. I unpack all of this with Jeff Rich, the Australian historian behind "The Burning Archive" on Substack and YouTube. Links: Jeff Rich Substack The Burning Archive: https://jeffrich.substack.com Jeff Rich YouTube The Burning Archive: https://www.youtube.com/@theburningarchive The Burning Archive podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Wg0cDuWZGF7LVm3czaOFc Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Opt in for Academic Section from your profile settings: https://pascallottaz.substack.com/s/academic Merch & Donations: https://neutralitystudies-shop. fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:26 Rubio speech and Western Reconquista frame 00:09:04 Colonialism then and now in practice 00:15:25 UN decolonization norms and armed struggle 00:19:16 Algeria reparations push and African currency control 00:27:52 Europe reactions and the Munich applause debate 00:43:07 Soft power collapse and return to open empire talk 00:55: 09 Closing and where to follow Jeff Rich #Pascal Welcome everybody back to Neutrality Studies. My name is Pascal Lottaz, and today I'm joined by my friend and colleague Jeff Rich, an Australian historian and the author of *The Burning Archive*, a wonderful Substack and now also a YouTube channel. Actually, I could have put that one here too, but it has both. He writes and makes video content about historical issues and contemporary politics, connecting them with historical themes. The one we want to talk about today is the—again, the Rubio speech. Not just the speech, but the whole kind of return of the West to this colonial past that we thought was over, right? After decades of decolonization—which he also wrote about, the decolonization of Africa—we now seem to be back, thoroughly, in a moment when the leader of the West, the Foreign Secretary of the United States, thinks it's okay to just blatantly call for more, not neocolonialism, but classic colonialism, and to ratchet up some emotions in Europe to help with that. So, Jeff, with this introduction, welcome back to the show. #Jeff Rich It's lovely to be back with you, Pascal. #Pascal -- 1 of 14 -- So, what did you make of this? What's your take on the—not neocolonial, but classic colonial— speech and rhetoric coming out of the United States these days? #Jeff Rich Well, in my Substack article, and in the video as well, I described it as the Western Reconquista, referring to the process in Spain by which the Christian powers slowly recaptured the country over time—about 500 years, actually—culminating in 1492, just as Columbus was about to sail the ocean blue to “found and build the Americas,” according to Marco Rubio. That was the year of the capture of Granada and the expulsion of the Muslims and the Jews. So it’s a very significant event, and it’s been sentimentalized quite a lot in Spanish history, particularly by Generalísimo Franco, the leader of the Falangist, fascist government after the Spanish Civil War, who was the dictator of Spain from 1936 to 1975. He explicitly described both his fight against communism and his effort to reclaim Spanish greatness in the ideology of the Reconquista. And indeed, he was actually the commander of the Spanish-African forces—the Spanish-African colonial forces. That was his power base as well. So I sort of make the comparison between this and that same kind of sentimentalized story of Western and American history, and an explicit praise not just of Western colonialism but also of Western civilization in a very monocultural sort of way. It’s described as, you know, Christian culture—Western European, largely. There’s not a lot of Eastern Europe in there. You know, the classic, kind of 1950s–1960s Western civilization course version of Western civilizational history. And to me, the United States, through Marco Rubio, is really talking about a reconquista—not just of, you know, the global majority, the former colonized world, reestablishing control over Russia and China and Africa, but also a reconquista of Europe itself. The National Security Strategy explicitly talks about healthy nations in Europe that respect Western civilization, respect traditions, all that sort of stuff, and dislike migration. And they’re the ones who can join the fight with the United States against what’s framed as civilizational erasure. So it’s really very moral, almost religious rhetoric, but also rhetoric justifying empire. And, of course, the other irony is that Columbus didn’t only sail to the Americas immediately after the reconquest. In many ways, the approach of the Spanish Empire in America was partly inspired by the same kind of religious zeal at times as well. So there are lots of parallels there, but it's also just... I think it's really quite—well, it's frightening, really, that the United States should engage in this kind of rhetoric and so explicitly disavow the last 75 or 80 years of decolonization since 1945, and to dismiss that as, you know, anti-colonial uprisings inspired by godless communism. And the only thing that’s vaguely reassuring about it is that some of that rhetoric isn’t all that new. I mean, that was the rhetoric of the Cold War too, and it’s perhaps a reminder that the United States has always had a very ambivalent relationship to decolonization. -- 2 of 14 -- #Pascal I mean, the United States was very happy to see decolonization in places that were under the control of some of its competitors or potential competitors, right? Especially the UK and France. At the same time, the United States never bothered to decolonize Puerto Rico. It never bothered. It actively fought against decolonization processes elsewhere, especially where those processes went hand in hand with socialist ideas. And those were very, very bloody. Just to remind us of what happened in Indonesia—over a million dead in the U.S.-supported Suharto crackdown on this kind of anti-colonial movement, and on and on and on. And of course, the Vietnam War was basically a reassertion of colonial dominance by Westerners. In this case, it was kind of handing over the baton from the French to the Americans, which is very reminiscent of how the handover went in the Philippines, right? But 60 or 70 years earlier, when the Spanish were about to be kicked out, they brought in the Americans, and then the Filipinos lost the war—not against the Spanish, but against the militarily superior Americans. So we see that time and again. And in Africa, you had a whole different kind of subversive neocolonialism, also interwoven with the debt trap of the IMF and World Bank. So, I mean, colonialism never ended. And one of the biggest mistakes in Europe is to believe that colonialism, just like, you know, feudalism, are these terms from the past, from the medieval ages, right? And yes, feudalism in Europe is over. The only feudal remnants we still have are the aristocratic houses and the kings and queens and so on in Europe, but they're not systemically relevant anymore. They're more like rich people from days past. But colonialism is still very much with us, systemically. Can you maybe talk a little bit about the traits or the ways in which we still see colonialism today—maybe also from your native Australia, or looking at it from a Pacific perspective? #Jeff Rich Well, look, absolutely. I mean, people often say there’s been 500 years of European colonialism, and I think there’s an important mistake there that particularly American commentators tend to forget, which is that America was a colonizing power too—not just with Cuba and the Philippines or whatever, but really from the start. Part of the impetus for the 1776 revolution was the frustration of the local elites with the constraints being placed by the British on, um, American expansion to the west, which was also American dispossession of the Native nations. So America colonized the North American continent over a period of, whatever it is, about 100 years or so, which is often described as the closing of the frontier, but it also includes the conquest of half of old Spanish Mexico in the 1840s, and the sort of—well, the genocide, not to put too fine a point on it—of the various Native nations. And in fact, it's the conflict with the Native nations that in part underpins the original Monroe Doctrine back in 1823. The United States has always been a colonial power, and even today it still is, because there are 17 non-self-governing territories left in the world, controlled by France, Britain, -- 3 of 14 -- and the United States. There’s not a lot of population there, but they’re still there. So the United States’ record, in terms of being a colonial power and also being a pretty unprincipled and inconsistent supporter of decolonization, is pretty patchy. And the other thing is, you know, people talk about 500 years of European colonialism, but colonialism existed both before and after the period of European dominance—post-1492, with Vasco da Gama going to India, Columbus and the conquistadors going to the Americas and taking over those societies. It’s had many forms, shapes, and characteristics during that time. The nature of British colonialism within that period itself was different; Spanish colonialism was different. And, you know, the different colonies had very different experiences. The experience of Australia as, you know, a colony, and then, you know, a dominion, and then a fully fledged nation—and then perhaps a new colony of the United States in more recent times—is very different from the experience of somewhere like Mexico or the African nations, which were largely colonized formally in the 1880s, but had previously been subjected to all forms of imperial power and influence, not least through transatlantic slavery. So I guess there are many forms of colonialism, and although there’s very little, if you like, at a political or constitutional level, formal control of one country by another, it still does exist. New Caledonia in the Pacific is still a colony of France, but it’s pretty uncommon these days. But there’s this thing that people often refer to as neocolonialism, which is perhaps most simply described as controlling a country without seeming to control it—controlling it through economic practices, political elites, media control, and things like that. That sort of colonialism, I guess, is still persistent. And as you say, the story of decolonization is not over. It’s not over formally, in the sense that there are still those 17 self-governing territories, including Guam and places like New Caledonia. I think one of the most scandalous ones is Gibraltar in Spain, which Britain took over in 1707 and still claims. But that process isn’t over either, and there’s still a UN Committee on Decolonization. In fact, just a day or two after Marco Rubio gave his speech praising Western colonialism and dismissing all the efforts of decolonization, the UN Secretary-General was actually speaking at the African Union conference at the same time, and struck a very different tone—condemning colonialism and supporting the efforts of, I guess, global majority nations to seek reparations for it. There’s been a lot of movement around that in recent times as well. But perhaps we can talk about that, because some of the most interesting responses to Rubio’s speech, I think, have come not so much from Europeans or Americans, but from how the speech has gone down in decolonized countries—in India, in Africa, and around the world. #Pascal Yeah, no, precisely. I mean, this cannot go down well. And, you know, one of the reasons why in the UN—I want to say in the UN Charter, but