It was such scientific racism that legitimised imperial expansion: under this logic, having one\u2019s homeland annexed by the British empire was not dispossession, it was an advancement for humanity itself.<\/p>\n
For a time, many of us believed this ideology \u2014 with its ethical cover for exploitation and brutality \u2014 had been consigned to the past. Not anymore.<\/p>\n
In the past few years, the genocide in Gaza and the de-facto annexation of the West Bank have reminded us that imperial expansion has not disappeared; it has merely been rebranded. Much of the Western political establishment continues to frame such projects as matters of \u201csecurity,\u201d \u201cstability,\u201d or \u201cshared values.\u201d And in 2026, leaders like Donald Trump\u00a0and his allies have revived colonial tropes with striking openness.<\/p>\n
Profit-making, wrapped in the language of a \u201ccivilising mission,\u201d that echoes Rudyard Kipling\u2019s ‘White Man\u2019s Burden’, underpins how foreign intervention is sold to the public \u2014 whether in Iran, Greenland, or Venezuela. Meanwhile, legacy media often provides reassuring framing: strategic necessity, geopolitical chess, and national interests. Whilst leaving out the human side of the story.<\/p>\n
Greenland is a revealing example. The dominant concern among Western liberals was Danish sovereignty, not Greenlandic self-determination. European leaders expressed<\/a> solidarity \u201cwith the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland,\u201d subtly conflating a colonial administrative structure with the will of an Indigenous population.<\/p>\n As critics<\/a> have noted, supporting Denmark in the name of international law risks reinforcing an imperial conception of international law \u2014 one that arbitrates between empires rather than empowering colonised peoples.<\/p>\n Much of the coverage focused either on Denmark\u2019s legal claim or on Trump\u2019s bombastic style. Trump \u201cwants\u201d Greenland, he \u201cneeds it\u201d for security. As Republican Senator Eric Schmitt\u00a0told<\/a> the BBC: \u201cEurope should understand that a strong America is good \u2014 it\u2019s good for Western civilisation.\u201d<\/p>\n But what does \u201cWestern civilisation\u201d mean in this context? Civilisation for whom? And at whose expense?<\/p>\n The Greenlandic Inuit \u2014 the Indigenous people of the territory \u2014 were largely absent from the conversation. Palestinians are conspicuously missing from the so-called reconstruction discussions around Gaza that are taking place at the \u2018Board of Peace\u2019, all whilst aid remains severely limited<\/a>, and Israel is continuing to encroach on the Strip as the yellow line going further west.<\/p>\n Decisions about land, sovereignty, and resources are debated in distant capitals, while those most affected are treated as secondary actors in their own history. Their voices, once again missing from Western media.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This rhetoric was echoed when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio\u00a0addressed<\/a> the Munich Security Conference\u00a0on 14 February. He urged European allies not to be \u201cshackled by guilt and shame\u201d over their \u201cculture and heritage\u201d and to help the US \u201crevive the West\u2019s age of dominance\u201d. He received a standing ovation.<\/p>\n Soon after, the State Department\u2019s official X account proclaimed <\/a>that Western civilisation stretches \u201cfrom Athens to Rome to America\u201d and must embrace its \u201cnoble legacy\u201d to reverse its decline.<\/p>\n Yet, few seriously believe that the motivation behind acquiring or threatening to invade Greenland is the defence of Plato or the Parthenon. It is about resources \u2014 oil, methane, uranium, nickel, titanium, tungsten, zinc, gold and diamonds \u2014 Greenland\u2019s vast and largely untapped mineral wealth<\/a>.<\/p>\n And this is how colonialism has always functioned, through threats and political pressure, economic domination, and extraction of land as well as labour for the benefit of the coloniser. It is not an archaic system, it is a recurring pattern.<\/p>\n Iran offers another telling case. Western outlets provide extensive coverage to opposition figures such as Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed shah, while often devoting far less space to the diversity of political voices within Iran itself. The country\u2019s complexity \u2014 its ethnic plurality, its ideological divisions, its deeply fragmented diaspora \u2014 is flattened into a binary: regime versus liberation through Western pressure.<\/p>\n History should have served as a warning. In 1953, US and British intelligence services intervened <\/a>in Iran, restoring Mohammad Reza Pahlavi\u00a0to power after the nationalisation of oil. At the time, US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles\u00a0justified<\/a> intervention partly on the grounds that the \u201cfree world\u201d could not be deprived of Iranian oil. Strategic resources, once again, were framed as moral necessity.<\/p>\n
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