Issue 63: Dossier

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Debt-trap diplomacy

Coined in 2017 to describe Chinese lending in the Global South. A geopolitical strategy in which a creditor nation or institution extends loans to a borrowing nation to enhance the creditor’s political influence and economic interests in the developing world. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank are often accused of debt-trap diplomacy for lending programs that require borrowers to undergo structural adjustment or privatization, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.

Imperial boomerang

Credited to Aimé Césaire, who wrote that “colonization works to decivilize the colonizer,” this is the theory that the techniques developed by governments to enforce imperial control abroad will eventually be turned on their own populations by those same governments. 

Labor aristocracy

The theory that some workers in the imperial core are bought off with a share of the profits extracted abroad and so come to defend the system that pays them. Friedrich Engels coined the phrase for the English craft unions; Vladimir Lenin took it up in 1916 to explain why Europe’s socialist parties, having vowed for decades to oppose imperialist war, voted for war credits in August 1914.

Proxy war

An armed conflict in which one or both combatants are armed and financed by third-party powers with a political or economic interest in the outcome of the conflict. Nicaragua’s Contra war (1981–1990) is sometimes labeled a Cold War–era proxy war: the Contras were armed and financed by the United States, while the Sandinista government was backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Resource frontier

An underdeveloped geographic area desirable for the possibility of natural resource extraction, especially minerals, timber, or oil. In the 21st century, Greenland has become a particularly attractive resource frontier: home to one of the richest rare earth deposits in the world, the island has drawn increasingly explicit American talk of buying the territory from Denmark  — or simply taking it.

Satellite state

An independent country that is in practice heavily dependent on another for political, economic, or military support — or simply under its control. During the Cold War, Soviet satellite states included Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Bulgaria. Today Belarus functions as a Russian satellite.

Settler colonialism

A system in which outsiders backed by an imperial authority occupy land with the intention of staying permanently, thereby forcibly pushing out the indigenous peoples already living on that land. Westward expansion and the genocide of native peoples in the United States is a prototypical example of settler colonialism.

Sphere of influence

A region in which a dominant power holds economic, military, political, or cultural sway over weaker states. In the 21st century, the United States, China, and Russia vie for influence over countries like Ukraine, Taiwan, and Kazakhstan.

Unequal exchange

The theory that developing countries are disadvantaged in the global economy by the lopsided transfer of labor and resources from the Global South to the Global North. An example in its most basic form: the Democratic Republic of the Congo exports the cobalt the rest of the world runs on and remains among the poorest countries on earth.