Politics of denial

Bouthaina Shaaban 

Source: Al Mayadeen English

The West’s utmost concern is the continuation of Western centralization in plundering the resources of peoples and colonies, ancient and modern, and preventing any liberation movement in the world from changing this equation. 

On his first foreign visit after being elected for the third time, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi chose Russia as a destination for this visit where he met with President Putin first at his home as friends and then in official meetings the next day. This visit, with all its geopolitical, economic, and future implications, enraged the West, which expressed its surprise at this visit. This comes although, as per their media, President Biden had a warm meeting with Prime Minister Modi during his visit to the United States last year perhaps even exaggerating the reception in his honor in the hope of winning over India away from Russia, which shows a strange naivety and a reading that still relies on their assessment of the peoples in the era of old colonialism.

The West's reaction shows a total absence of the awareness that accumulated among the peoples of the former colonies during these decades, the rising truth about the Western imperialist system characterized by hypocrisy and the plundering of peoples’ resources, and the exposure of Western centralism for what it is; the source of all wars and the extermination of millions of defenseless civilians. It has become clear now that the West’s utmost concern is the continuation of Western centralization in plundering the resources of peoples and colonies, ancient and modern, and preventing any of the liberation movements in the world from changing this equation. 

A Washington Post article on July 8, 2024, titled “Modi bear-hugs Putin in Moscow, marking deep ties between Russia and India” said in its first two expressive lines: “Despite Washington’s efforts to woo Prime Minister Narendra Modi and isolate President Vladimir Putin, the visit shows continuing close relations between their countries." The article brings back memories of the lavish reception, dinner, and praise that Modi received in the White House and the expression that the relationship with India is one of the most important relations for the United States.

However, today the Americans found that Modi is in Russia, describing President Putin as his "dear friend," and that they are discussing closer economic cooperation, trade exchange, and coordinating steps in a number of international forums and organizations that India and Russia are members of, while the US State Department spokesperson said, “We have made quite clear directly with India our concerns about their relationship with Russia.” One cannot help but smile ironically while reading such statements and others that express the mentality of colonialism, which still dominates Western politics. The United States' disappointment with India’s relationship with Russia and Modi’s relationship with President Putin, especially since this visit coincided with the meeting of NATO members in Washington, showed that Western countries are trying to hide the sun with a sieve, but how can they do that?

Overall, the American reaction to Prime Minister Modi’s important visit to Russia and all that resulted from expanding the horizons of cooperation and thinking about the future of humanity, not just the future of Russia and India, shows that the decision-makers in the United States are disconnected from reality. It seems that they have not yet realized that India today is a superpower and a key player in global politics that cannot be swayed from its national agenda through a luxurious dinner. It is only natural that Prime Minister Modi would seek his country’s interests in Russian oil at a preferential price, as well as everything that serves his country’s interests and its global status in the world of the future.

Moroccan Dr. Abdelilah Belkeziz, a distinguished professor of Orientalism and a prominent and thinker in this field, wrote an article titled “The End of Orientalism,” in which he pointed out that the circumstances, interests, budgets, and needs also changed in the West for this field and that it was replaced by a network of intelligence relations or other relations between the West and the countries that Orientalists address. But what is most important in this article is the effective reference to the change in countries, circumstances, and goals that called for and worked on the recovery and prosperity of such a field of knowledge. Since Professor Belkeziz is the best person to talk about and refute Western centralism in his writings, not to mention its repercussions on Arab people, those who study it and were negatively influenced by it, I read its title, “The End of Orientalism,” as if it implies another unwritten title, which is “The End of Western Centralism.”

All the events that we are experiencing today point, without a shadow of doubt, to the end of Western centralism, despite the Western countries’ denial of this idea and their actions and statements that entail the lurking illusion that they are the center of the universe and the ones who decide its course. Prime Minister Modi's visit to Russia also coincided with the visit of the Hungarian prime minister to China and his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which angered the European Union countries, as they saw the visit as a defect in the structure of the Union, unaware that the recent elections in France, regardless of our political position on these elections, show that the French people also longed for freedom from American hegemony and for their word and decision to be respected in their affairs.

The global reactions to the Western-backed war of extermination against defenseless Palestinian civilians in Gaza have proven to the entire world that Western centralism is brutal even against its own citizens if they decide to evade the rules and laws that the military-industrial complex has drawn up for them. The opposition has been violently suppressed and the media has been silenced. The status quo has become worthy of the most powerful dictatorships in history.

At a time when American legislators are taking legal measures to hide the outcome of the apartheid entity’s genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, using media and politics to cover up heinous genocide crimes, and when the United States is intent on sending huge bombs to “Israel” to bomb civilian homes and continue the war of extermination against defenseless Palestinian civilians... The new world is being formed away from their sight and concerns having realized, during this revealing war, that the international system led by the West has reached its inevitable dead end.

African countries today are forming a strategic alliance on the African coast in the hope that other countries will join in, while China has proposed five important principles for coexistence with India and Myanmar, from non-aggression to equality, mutual benefit, and non-interference in internal affairs. In the meantime, President Putin is working to develop Eurasian cultural and cognitive integration and achieve exchange and mutual economic benefit, totally removed from everything the West wants or can do. 

At this particular time, the people who had been colonized by Western countries discovered that the gap between what the West claimed and what it was doing was large. The Resistance liberation movements discovered that they were stronger than they had imagined and that the enemy was much weaker than it claimed. Resistance forces realized that they were capable, with patience and determination, of defeating the mightiest forces which, until recently, were considered invincible. In this new international climate, which the sacred blood of Palestinian civilians has fueled, the policy of denial and disapproval will no longer benefit the West. They must put their feet on the ground to discover that it is harming them and that the brutal regime they have established with their weapons of annihilation and destruction to serve their interests only is no longer sustainable. Humanity, today, is in another place reshaping the future without the West, which has been oblivious to it and its core values and aspirations.