Western Advancement Through Exploitation of Other Countries
When discussing modern-day colonialism, St. Lawrence University’s very own John Collins said “In addition to the most visible contemporary cases (eg. Iraq or Palestine), the continuing presence of resource wars in Africa and elsewhere is a further indication of the same patterns.” The “elsewhere” takes us to Serbia today.
Serbia’s authoritarian government has given the green light to the mining giant Rio Tinto for the Jadar Valley project. EU citizens are unbothered. Serbian citizens have been widely protesting. What’s going on there?
Well, to start with, European Union’s “Green Deal” – establishing a green technology industry, goal of net-zero emissions by 2050 – consists of a whole lot of green in other places too: green water, green air, green ground. Serbia is generously being added to the EU’s green program. In Germany’s latest sustainability adventure to help produce more electric vehicles, they have decided that Serbia’s lithium will do the job. It will do such a good job that it is projected that as Europe’s future biggest lithium mine, it will meet up to 90 percent of the lithium demand in Europe. While that is all lovely, some problems remain: what happens to the land, the biodiversity, contamination, and the workers? According to Hairsine, 2023, historically lithium mines have seen abuse of human rights and ecological tragedies. Not surprisingly, they have seen little improvements to the economies of the countries being mined, while the countries receiving the product have experienced significant boosts.
One may wonder, why don’t these EU countries mine on their own land? They have lithium as well, right? Great point! It is because all risky projects are kindly delegated to the struggling countries with a promise of an economic boost that never comes. Famously, Africa is the West’s mining playground, and the Middle East is the West’s weapons playground. Now, the West is coming back to exploiting the Balkans — “the Middle East” or “Latin America” of Europe.
While today’s imperialism is not obvious in all places, it still dominates the globe. Sometimes it takes the form of exploiting other countries’ lands with the consent of authoritarian and/or corrupt governments. Sometimes it takes form in redrawing borders and rewriting history.
This, unavoidably brings us to Palestine. In the olden days of the 1940s, the West had a problem to outsource. The Holocaust happened, then evil was defeated (to an extent), and it was time to either welcome the Jewish population back home or make space for them in places they found refuge: all the different countries within Europe and the states of the US. However, the problem was that the gentle West was still anti-semitic, so they did not actually want to welcome them. Solution- move them somewhere else! Historic Israel – today’s Palestine! Kill and move the Palestinians to make space!
This is obviously a trivialisation of what happened. To study the brotherhood of Zionism and Western imperialism, the creation of Israel, the real but ideologically separate centuries-long struggle of the Jews are all sciences in themselves. For this article, one simple truth is important – the West needed its own power nation in the Middle East (so much oil!) and it needed to solve “the Jewish Question.” So, why not kill two birds with one stone. Relocate the Jewish suffering to a different area, and create an even bigger suffering to those already there. After all, according to the West, one’s prosperity must always come at the cost of another’s life. Maybe it’s not nice to play God, but being an imperialist wasn’t even that big of a deal back then. All the cool guys were doing it.
Today though, is a different story. Today, it is frowned upon. You need to be discreet about it. Today, we call it creating opportunities for the less fortunate. Meddling in other countries to save the nations. Pretending the origins of Israel are not what they are. As Patrick Wolfe put it, “Settler colonial violence is always already an effort to perpetuate the denial of its origins.”
It’s not on Serbia or Zimbabwe to sacrifice their land for imperialist giants’ green lithium. It’s not on Palestinians to surrender their land and endure genocide to make up for the West’s crimes against humanity and genocide. When we say “none of us are free until all of us are free” it’s not just a catchphrase. As John Collins suggests, we need to look to colonized land (eg. Palestine) and engage in excavation of the present (2011). Today, it’s a new mine or a train station roof collapsing on the citizens in Serbia. It’s the genocide in Palestine. It’s the corruption and war in Lebanon. Tomorrow, it will be you. And you will wonder how the rest of the world doesn’t care. How you didn’t see it coming. But you can’t see if you don’t allow yourself to look.