The G7 Annual Summit for 2023 was convened in Hiroshima, Japan, over the weekend and it has taken some key resolutions that should concern all of us in the Global South.
The G7, firstly, is an intergovernmental political forum that consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US. The EU is regarded as a strategic friend of this alliance, a “non-enumerated member”. All these nation states have a common history that binds their interests in present times.
They are major colonial powers who have subjected the world to slavery, apartheid, invasions, settler colonialism, wars and imperialism. The current world order in economic and political terms grew from the seeds of the violent conduct of these nation states – with the purpose of having monopoly control and domination of the world.
The colonised territories of the world in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands have all been subjected to the settler colonialism, resource extraction and the dehumanisation of the G7 member states.
This colonial block has also reconfigured itself in modern society by creating new world bodies, alliances, concepts and media landscapes to mask its original imperialist intentions on the Global South.
For instance, the post-World War II period in the late 1940s saw the birth of international institutions such as the UN, NATO, the IMF, the World Bank and later the World Economic Forum – whom all sponsored the concept of a free market neoliberal democracy as a gateway to enable invasions, eurocentrism, unequal free trade agreements, privatisation and security of foreign private property in colonised territories.
As a result, there has been a series of revolutionary struggles waged by these oppressed territories of the Global South to resist colonisation, World Wars and the unipolar domination of the world by these Western forces of Empire.
Although democratic independence has been declared in the Global South since the 1960s, the practice of imperialism, neoliberalism and neocolonialism still persists.
The wealth of the Global South remains in the hands of colonial Empire – and the Empire uses economic sanctions, regime changes, wars, and nuclear genocides as a tool to silence, intimidate and control the affairs of nation states in the Global South. In this context, the right to sovereignty and self-determination that each independent nation state is entitled to remains a façade in the Global South.
There has been continuing resistance from the Global South against this colonial international order of the G7 regime. For the past 30 years, China and Russia plus courageous African and Latin American states have been leading resistance and tabling an alternative world based on mutual benefit, peace, freedom, economic independence, decolonisation and self-determination.
Nation states such as Cuba, Venezuela, Burkina Faso and Tanzania to name a few have boldly confronted neocolonialism by anchoring their independent states on anti-imperialism and democratic socialism. Other left aligned nation states such as Brazil, South Africa, India and the progressive Middle East region have also challenged Empire with emerging economies based on Global South solidarity.
This emerging growth of the Global South in the past 10 years has been met with fierce violence by Empire. We have witnessed proxy wars and economic sanctions in the Global South and Eastern Europe being weaponised to maintain the old world domination of Empire. The recent invasion of Ukraine by NATO, the US and the EU as a gateway to destabilise Russia, China and the Global South is the latest example of imperialist behaviour of Empire.
The G7 Summit in Japan this weekend added three further strategies to maintain coloniality. They have resolved to use Artificial Intelligence, Green Energy Imperialism and Mass Media Propaganda against Russia in Ukraine as tools of warfare to cause further harm, destruction, genocide, economic controls and sanctions to discipline the Global South.
Weak nation states like South Africa that have deindustrialised – and that have their economies, food provisions and job security at the mercy of Empire are vulnerable to this colonial abuse. Any indication of solidarity towards the Global South from them is presented as a direct threat to the price of bread in their country.
Empire knows that these threats are real, and they have potential to cause domestic instability and regime change if it could execute them in any vulnerable nation state like South Africa. In essence, the G7 Summit has further cemented its war strategy on the world, and it has now taken a more aggressive approach to use Artificial Intelligence to eliminate who does not cooperate with its agenda.
The Global South must continue to unite, resist and build a free alternative world we all want to be part of in peace to self-determine our independence.
Dr Pedro Mzileni is a sociology lecturer at the University of the Free State, South Africa, writes in personal capacity – Twitter: @PedroMzileni
