After reading a few books by Stephan Bown, I came away with a different view of colonization. Regardless of where on earth it occurred, colonization was preceded by commercial interests of some wealthy European group. In Canada it started with the fur trade. In South Africa it was gold and diamonds. The Sub-continent and Southeast Asia, the spice trade initiated what came after. Initially, each of the colonizers were called upon to protect the fleets of commercial ventures. Over time this morphed into military intervention in each of the trading areas and eventually, each European nation “claimed” dominion of these protected lands. Since commercial interests were being impacted by in-fighting between the colonizers, the Berlin Conference was convened in 1884. The conference intended for an amicable division of resources through the partitioning of the African continent. The Germans were late to the party and thus hoped to gain lands and resources without fighting for it on the high seas. It helped a great deal that each of the colonized areas were “children of a lesser god”. This was easy because you can tell by just looking at them.
With that as a background, I would like to suggest that today’s conflicts are driven by the protection of commercial interests. In the West, these are private interests and elsewhere, there are sovereign funds that require protection. The spark for this piece was a news item about a Canadian warship in the South China Sea. The same warship that was greeted in Shanghai with a parade less than a decade earlier.
Canada has lost its way as a honest broker around the world as its commercial interests are tied so closely with our southern neighbour. Canada was strong-armed into arresting a Huawei executive at the request of the US. I assume this was done as we were still attempting a charm offensive with Trump. In turn, the US, fearing Huawei’s advanced technology in 5G, risked losing the worldwide commercial advantage they have enjoyed since the end of WWII.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine last year provided the US with an excuse to build a false equivalent between that conflict and the China Taiwan situation. The US official One China policy has been shredded even though they continue to claim the policy remains in place. Here again, commercial interests are at play as Taiwan is a central hub in the supply chain for high-end chips. The reunification of Taiwan with the mainland would be risking a lot of US interests and under the guise of “Freedom of Navigation”, the US is, and has been baiting the Chinese with FONOPs for over a decade.
All conflicts have roots in some historical event. The current Ukraine situation resulted from NATO expansion after the breakup of the USSR. Rather than contracting based on a reduced threat, the expansion gave rise to a Putin. The shame associated with that dissolution had Russians looking for a Czar and they have found that in a neo-Ivan the Terrible.
The identical scenario is being built with China today. China endured a “Century of Shame” in colonial times and they are not about to let it happen again. My belief, and it could be wrong, is that China has no interest in taking over the world in a military sense. They ARE expanding their sphere of influence and yes, there is an authoritarian versus democratic debate to be had but not at the expense of a hot war.
My current dilemma is who do I vote for in the next Canadian election? As a once card carrying Liberal, I’m having a hard time seeing the “Sunny Ways” our current PM espoused. I certainly can’t vote Conservative, as they were the ones under PM Harper, who started the anti-China sentiment. Maybe I’ll move to the US when President Cornel West is inaugurated.
