Let me first preface this entire post and say that it’s a blog post, not a research paper. Let me also say that I don’t have a ton of experience writing about Central Asia. That being said I do think about Central Asia often and have spent 15 months smack dab in the middle of it. This experience doesn’t inherently qualify me to speak about imperialism, rather my experiences and pondering compel me to speak anyway.
Imperialism-It’s both an action and an attitude. I think it’s common to first think about the Imperialist policies towards the African continent in the 18th and 19th century. Likewise I think that it’s easy to regard the word “imperialism” as an action or attitude of the past because it’s taught in history classes. When I think of the word imperialism I perhaps over simplify it by equating it to words like rape, pillage, burn, destroy, control, and dominate, but mostly in an economic sense.
While we may or may not be deriving monetary gain directly through oil or other exports out of the countries that we are occupying, there certainly are beneficiaries of economic gain indirectly from our presence there. Likewise we are seeking to dominate the region with a military presence and through political dominance of governments that we have helped to install. These governments have limited power and influence in the region and are currently only kept in place through our military presence.
Imperialism as an attitude can be described as a belief that one nation (or group of nations) is inherently better than another. When I consider how the U.S. and many “Western” nations view and interact with the Central Asia I do see an imperialist attitude represented. This is evidenced by our now prolonged military presence and past interactions with Central Asian countries. Through a “Western” military coup of Eastern nations we have taken down regimes and instated governments dependent upon either the pocket book, or military strength of “Western” nations. By what authority was this done if not by our own? Through our actions we have demonstrated an attitude of superiority. By violating sovereignty we have, through our actions, demonstrated our belief that our authority supersedes the authority of another nation.
How I act towards you can greatly determine how you respond to me. If I were to attempt to punch you in the face would you offer to buy me lunch? Most likely you wouldn’t. You would have first a defensive posture attempting to stop my punch and a counter response, perhaps of an offensive nature. Likewise our imperialist attitude in Central Asia demonstrated by our actions are likely to breed an offensive response back towards us.
There are many questions that are raised as a result of historical and current practices towards other nations. How should we learn from our past actions and attitudes towards other nations? What should we expect to happen as a result of historical and past actions towards other countries? How can we as citizens of an imperialist society act to repair the damage that our society has created? Should we? These and many more questions.
