Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred - Jude Lal Fernando

Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred - Jude Lal Fernando

15. New Imperialisms and Struggles for Peace

Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred - Jude Lal Fernando

Napoleón Saltos Galarza [+-]
Central University of Ecuador
Napoleón Saltos Galarza is the director of the School of Sociology of the Central University of Ecuador whose main expertise is in the study of changing dynamics of modern empires. He is one of the leaders of the Coordinating Committee of Social Movements in Latin America.

Description

This chapter addresses the transmutations of late capitalism from two perspectives, structural changes and changes in inter-imperialist contradictions, and domination of people. In the first aspect, we are not in the transition phase, but in a previous time, marked by the decline of world capitalism, but with the absence of an alternative utopian horizon, and we can locate anti-systemic seeds from the resistance of the people and experiences partial. We are facing extreme forms of liberal modernity which concludes the process of estrangement of the individual subject, now himself in post-humanism, whose dystopian horizon artificial intelligence and cynical rationality. In the second aspect, the paradox is the presence of "ultra-imperialism" with extreme concentration of wealth and new forms of poverty, exclusion, and disposability of towns and continents, but with the intensification of inter-imperialist contradictions. We are facing imperialism in the plural. The expectation of the "end of history" and the triumph of the West was not fulfilled after the Fall of the Wall, but we entered into a phase of wars and conflicts on a different scale. This is not a repeat of the "Cold War" between two poles, but a complex process; the contradiction between the North-South axis, led by US imperialism in relation to the traditional powers US-EU-Japan and the East-West axis, led by China-Russia alliance in connection with the BRICs, and the presence of contradictions within each pole, between dynamic globalists-financial, and nationalist-postindustrial. The end of the Westphalian order and weakening of nation states is combined with the emptiness of a world state, which is being taken over by US imperialism as a global custodian, based on a warmongering strategy and strengthening of the arms race. In relation to the peoples of the South, the main modification is the new imperialisms’ devices "accumulation by dispossession" and the delegation of civil wars framed in geopolitical disputes with emptying dynamics of nation states. Thus, the boundaries of wars and conflict hot spots are located at the intersection of three dynamics: control of the five strategic monopolies, particularly linked to traditional and technological income, the civilizational and religious-ethnic confrontations, and geopolitical disputes. The final question is about the ways to establish peace through the collective will of the people for a better world, through negotiations or renditions, resistors and disconnections, ethical and political struggles.

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Citation

Saltos Galarza, Napoleón. 15. New Imperialisms and Struggles for Peace. Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 270-287 Apr 2020. ISBN 9781800500204. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=40202. Date accessed: 10 Oct 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.40202. Apr 2020

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