The Silent War Against Developing Nations

In 2022, when the US and it’s Western alies and Nato conspired to levy sanctions against Russia, a startling but important admission was indirectly made and recognized. The allied intended to use other means and tools as mechanisms of violence against not only the Russian state, but the Russian people. The result of those actions have led to increased instability.

Those sanctions, trade barriers and weaponization of financial systems revealed to the world in a very stark way that the West were using other methods to wage war with Russia in an attempt to crush Russia and it’s people. It became clear, that those weapons had been levied against a huge chunk of the developing world. Often with the result of crippling its ability to develop.

In 2016, the world witnessed sanctions and trade barriers engaged against China’s industries, most notably in tech. The attempt to contain China, was actually an attempt to crush China’s growing economy and imperil the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people.

Increasingly the world has began to see how these mechanisms to slow trade, manipulate systems and even create oppositional alliances act as latent malignant tools of war and violence against local populations. They are a kind of inflicted violence that hijacks economies and dashes the future of million of people around the world.

Just because a nation does not have kinetic, open conflict war does not mean it is not under attack. Whether that attack is intentional or situational may need a case by case appraisal, but undoubtedly we cannot overlook the decades of economic, ecological, and social violence that has plagued developing economies for decades. Could it be that the term developing has become obsolete, when the proper term should be aggravated economies always attempting to rebuild from instigated structural and systemic violence. They are aggravated almost every 5-12 years by instability, destabilization and economic downturns that bring all development to a screeching halt.

The economy is then left to wander aimlessly to assymble the pieces of its devastated society, once again. The cycle is evident in regions like the middle East, Latin America, southeast Asia and and Africa. It must be admitted that a system that continually destabilizes the participants, simply does not work.

It is high time we begin to look at the causes for the silent violence of food insecurity, social insecurity, financial insecurity and most importantly future insecurity. Much of the developed world, beyond some of its monied elites are left to struggle in a primitive world where opportunity and education is scarce.

As the world reorders, there is an absolute need to reevaluate the sanctions, trade barriers and other mechanisms levied against developing economies. Even with interstate schism with local ideologies and governmental systems, it must be acknowledged that sanctioning a struggling state like Zimbabwe undermines the humanity 14 million Zimbabweans and the humanitarian cause championed by the United Nations. Even as some world actors push toward southern Africa for partnerships, the sanctions in other regions must be abandoned if the fidelity of goidwill in the region is true. One cannot truly partner with one southern African state, while destroying its neighbor.

The world must acknowledge not only environmental insecurity, but the prolonged instability caused by strong-armed deals and alliances that exploit local populations and resources and undermine local governance. We must acknowledge there is a violence in food insecurity, societal insecurity almost as much as war or armed bandits terrorizing parts of west Africa and the middle East.

And beyond world alliances, nations must begin a process of self-sustainability to withstand manipulations when nefarious forces are in play. India’s tough stance on negotiations for oil is an excellent example of a nation putting its citizens first and honoring its diplomatic relationships.

The new order has ushered in a real period when the developing nations of the world will need to take their place on the world stage to prevent instability and guard against the violence of a continually insecure future. The point of an order, new or old, is that it brings order. These are rules and systems that make it possible for routinized participation. Ironically, those who decry the new order have handily destroyed the old one. Now, new players will emerge and must assert new rules and order to ensure their own survival, in an effort to move away from the violence of a hot war of weaponized systems and sanctions.

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