Russia is imperialist. It is bullying its neighbors. But Russia’s imperialist ambition is not on the same level as US-led/western imperialism, and so the latest war is not a contention between two superpowers, but a regional power (Russia) reacting to threats being imposed on them by a higher power, at least as they perceive it, i.e. an expanding NATO, Ukraine falling into the orbit of “The West”, etc.
This is a perspective that is often missing when I discuss anything related to foreign policies and international geopolitics with Americans. They simply do not possess the vocabulary of imperialism. They had never felt the existential threat and pressure to prioritize a foreign culture over their own. It is difficult to see this because, like hegemony, imperialism shines the brightest — blindingly so — when you are standing inside the lighthouse.
Over the last few years, there has been a trend among American media to re-invoke the term “the New Cold War.” But the new “Cold War” isn’t a real Cold War. The Cold War wasn’t even a real “Cold War” in the way it is colloquially understood. For most Americans, the Cold War was a game of nuclear chess, where the US and the USSR were at a stalemate because they were evenly matched. But at no point were the two superpowers evenly matched. In terms of mutual destruction, perhaps, but not in terms of almost any other measure.
The USSR was never close to being a real rival of the collective West any more than China is today. The US dollar has been the dominating currency in the world since the end of WWII, and before that, it was the Pound sterling of the British Empire that produced the US .The US has almost 750 military bases and installations around the world, its buddy, the UK, is number two with 145 bases. Russia has a few dozens today, and China has 5. (Edit notes: It is difficult to count these bases/installations in an apples-to-apples way. Depending on how you count them, the exact number may be different. For starters, you can check out this Wikipedia page. I have also updated the numbers here based on an article from the US-based Cato Institute instead of multiple sources from before to be more consistent.)
I am not here to defend Russia. I felt the need to clarify this just like someone needs to say “I believe in Climate Change” before saying anything bad about the movie Don’t Look Up. I’m not here to defend Russia. What I am trying to do is to dispel the false premise that a lot of Americans have, that Russia (or China) is this great threatening villain like Drago in Rocky IV while America is this beacon of hope stepping up to the plate to defend the world from evil. The collective West has dominated the world economically, technologically, and militarily for so long, that it is crazy to me that this is still the dominating narrative in the West when discussing Russia or China.
This narrative is perhaps kept alive because of the game of musical chairs among Western powers in the last 600 years. Rivalries among Western colonial powers had been the driving force behind almost every large-scale war up until WWII. Those were rivalries between nations with more or less equal military power, e.g. England and France, but this mentality did not end with the truce among these colonial powers (including the US) since the end of WWII, and the perception of existential threat morphed into an ideological one. Instead of fighting back a neighboring empire that crossed your border with their cavalry, Americans are bombing guerilla fighters and civilians because they crossed an imaginary and ideological redline.
I hate the term Pax Americana because the world isn’t more peaceful because of anything the US does. The world is only more peaceful now from the point of view of the collective West, aka from the point of view of the colonial powers. It is more peaceful now because the colonial powers (aka the collective West) have united and decided to stop killing each other over opportunities to plunder and commit genocide all the time everywhere.
Russia is a regional power, not a global superpower. China is a regional power, not a global superpower. Although both have some imperial ambition, they are not on the same scale as the colonial powers that came before, i.e. those they perceive as threats to their survival. China is not trying to convert everyone to Confucianism and make everyone speak and write Chinese and watch Chinese movies and read Chinese books, at least not on the same level the West has done with Christianity and their cultural and political exports.
The Anglicisation of the world has already been completed and the world has already accepted it. English is, ironically, the lingua franca of the world in every professional field, and despite how much North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, or the UK or France tries to impose screening quotas for foreign films, they will always watch more American movies than they will watch a local production. Perhaps this acceptance is needed for peace, otherwise, Russian operatives might have enough sway to sponsor Hawaiian nationalists to expel all non-natives off the island and declare independence, or to surround the US with hundreds of military bases, perhaps even a few in Indian Reservations controlled by separatists.
That being said, it is important for those who are native to the global hegemonic culture to understand this instinct to rebel against this air that we all breathe, that is without scent to you but foreign to others.
The road is dark and America is driving a huge pickup truck with the high beams turned on to make the road brighter and safer for everyone.
