President Joe Biden recently hosted the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It was a significant event whose importance was probably lost domestically in the intense presidential campaigning that is taking place and general disinterest among Americans in international affairs without an active U.S. military component.
In their end-of-conference statement, the 32 nations of the alliance reaffirmed their commitment to “defend one another and every inch of Allied territory at all times,” adding, “We are bound together by shared values of individual liberty, human rights, and the rule of law.”
The unified front has muscle behind it. NATO was created during a meeting on April 4, 1949, in Washington, D.C., when the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Alliance member nations currently have a combined population of 981 million and their territory covers 9,68 million square miles. They have a military force of 3.5 million soldiers and personnel, with the United States heading the list. In 2022, they accounted for around 55 percent of the world’s military spending. Their combined gross domestic product (GDP) is about $51 trillion -which is more than 20 times that of Russia, which they perceive as their biggest threat – and accounts for more than 30 percent of the GDP of the entire world.
The United States remains the biggest supporter of the bloc, which reflects its national security posture of keeping wars away from the homeland. It has stationed matériel and tens of thousands of troops across much of Europe for that purpose.
But there is one aspect to NATO that would not have been discussed during the conference: how some of its member-nations became as wealthy and as powerful as they are, with their populations enjoying a superior standard of living. While that is a topic for discussion at other gatherings of developed countries, it is impossible not to ponder on it whenever there is an opportunity to look at the disparity that exists among nations.
Genocide perpetrated against Indigenous peoples not only in Latin America but also in countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States to facilitate grabbing their lands and natural resources and suppressing their cultures is well known. So too is slavery and its persistent legacy.
But not much is known generally about European colonialism in Africa, which is featured in a report by historian Thomas Bailey in The Collector on June 29, titled, “The Scramble for Africa: How Europe Conquered a Continent.”
According to Bailey, “In the 19th century, Europe’s imperial superpowers were locked in a battle for global supremacy. Their colonial gaze soon fell upon Africa. The continent became a battleground for European competition as the powers scrambled to conquer the entire landmass.”
By the 1870s, relatively small European states controlled 10 percent of Africa. By 1914, seven of them occupied 90 percent of the continent. The expansion was facilitated by an 1884 conference on the colonization of Africa which, according to Bailey, “set the rules for European colonialism and decided how best to divide the continent to avoid conflict among themselves.”
Added Bailey, “Notably, the conference established the principle of effective occupation, which determined how European powers could acquire new territory. It asserted that states could acquire lands if they had treaties with local leaders, planted their flag there, and established an administration to govern the territory with a police force to maintain order.”
For example, Belgium not only occupied what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo but also then Belgian King Leopold II claimed what he called the Congo Free State as his personal property.
France occupied Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Tunisia.
Germany took over Burundi, Cameroon, Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Togo.
Italy took Eritrea, Libya and Somalia. Portugal grabbed Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique.
Spain occupied Morocco.
The United Kingdom (Great Britain) occupied Egypt, Ghana (formerly Gold Coast), Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa (formerly Cape Colony), Sudan, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia).
That scramble for power “dramatically changed the continent’s course through history and continues to define its future. Europe’s prejudiced, unrelenting inhumanity toward the African peoples is testimony to the injustices of colonialism,” Bailey wrote, and “would haunt the African people for generations and change the continent’s course of history forever.”
What is euphemistically termed “decolonization” began in 1945 and mostly ended in the 1960s. Some occupied countries became “independent” through a transfer of power but others drove out the occupiers through revolution. South Africa and Zimbabwe were among the last to become free after stubborn, decades-long resistance to foreign occupation.
But, by then, some of the colonized peoples had suffered from horrible crimes against humanity. Germany created a famine in Tanzania by burning crops to quell revolts and, in Namibia, it also poisoned the wells. “Within three years, 80 percent of the Herero people and 50 percent of the Namaqua people in Namibia had been killed,” Bailey wrote.
Britain suppressed resistance to its rule by Boers in what is now South Africa by constructing some 40 concentration camps for Boer refugees. “The camps held approximately 150,000 people in terrible conditions with little food or shelter and disease became rampant. It is believed that as many as 28,000 Boers died in British concentration camps, the majority of whom were women and children,” Bailey reported.
In what Denmark’s King Leopold II called his Congo Free State, the natives were forced into the jungle to harvest rubber. The hands of those who did not meet the strict quotas were cut off, including children. During Leopold’s reign, from 1885 to 1905, “10 million Congolese were killed, mostly through starvation but others by murder,” according to Bailey.
Today, Africa, comprising 11.73 million square miles, is home to 1.216 billion people. Its GDP is around $3 trillion. But while the former colonial exploiters went on to develop and prosper and can now say they “are bound together by shared values of individual liberty, human rights, and the rule of law,” Africa was left to grapple with the aftermath of occupation and exploitation, including destabilization. Today, the continent spends about $39 billion on defense, not against foreign forces but on internal fighting, with about 35 civil wars currently taking place.
“When the European powers descended on Africa and divided the land among themselves, they drew rudimentary borders with complete disregard for geography, ethnicity, or religion,” Bailey explained. “When African countries gained their independence, these irrational borders continued to divide the African people. Ethnic groups, such as the Mandinka (or Malinke) people located in West Africa, found their population of 11 million people divided into eight separate countries.”
What is also perhaps not generally known is that the U.S. has been, and still is, a colonial power, going back to 1867 with Alaska, which became a state in 1959. Hawaii, a colony since 1898, became a state in 1959.
The Philippines was a U.S. colony between 1899 and 1946, when it became independent, as was the Panama Canal Zone, from 1904 to 1979. Puerto Rico (from 1899), the U.S. Virgin Islands (1917), Guam (1899) and American Samoa (1900) are still U.S. colonies, historian Daniel Immerwahr noted in his book “How to Hide an Empire.”
Immerwahr put the total population of those territories at 18,835,023 in 1940, when the U.S. mainland population was 131,669,273.
African nations are a long way from overcoming their legacy of colonialism. In fact, some former colonial powers have maintained some stranglehold, especially economically. But even as NATO – whose member-states are populated mostly by “whites” – was expressing optimism as to its ability to stave off aggression, a new alliance has been taking shape with some countries forming new alliances with Russia and China at their center.
A few African nations have already begun expelling “peace-keeping” forces from the former colonial powers and also the U.S. That is a trend that could very well take hold as the continent wrestles with the destabilization they have inherited.
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Publish date : 2024-08-09 01:51:00
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