Álvaro García Linera: The rise of 21st century protectorates

First published in Spanish at Diario Red. Translation by LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Capitalism was born out of colonialism. Since then, this historical characteristic, far from disappearing, has only mutated and diversified in form. We can say it is a way of organising global hierarchies, one that is fundamental to all modern forms of corporate economic accumulation.

Over five centuries, European capitalism deployed multiple forms of colonialism, each more cruel than the last, in the Americas, Africa and Asia. The United States, in just two centuries, has concentrated all of these forms and intensified their exploitative nature. It applied the classic European models of “colonialism of extermination” and “settler colonialism” during the 19th century to most of the Indigenous lands of North America. It invoked the “manifest destiny” of an Anglo-Saxon America to invade and seize 2 million square kilometres of Mexican territory, encompassing what are now the states of California, Utah, Nevada, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and others.

But unlike its predecessors, the US employed these types of spatial occupation as a means of constructing the territorial unity of the state, not as an extraterritorial expansion of its dominion. The usurpation of indigenous and Mexican lands resulted in their absorption as part of a continental state protected by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Meanwhile, the subjugation of other societies and countries around the globe, despite 11 declared wars and nearly 400 invasions — including the use of atomic bombs and the establishment of permanent military bases (Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom) — has not led to “settler colonialism,” with the permanent presence of an invading population exercising administrative, military and economic control over the occupied country.

This would have required spending enormous sums of money, a gigantic bureaucracy, governors and numerous troops deployed in more than 150 countries worldwide. Unlike British, Dutch, French, German or Belgian colonialism, which had limited areas of colonial expansion in different parts of the world, since the end of World War II, US dominance has had a geopolitical dimension with universal aspirations. Therefore, it preferred to refine the mechanisms of colonial subjugation based on “silent economic coercion,” applied through the global force of its technological, commercial and financial power, or, in other cases, implemented immediately after periods of military occupation (Panama, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, etc).

Thus, once the “flattening” of nations attacked by the actions of US gunboats, planes, tanks, and marines was complete, US private companies inevitably arrived to extract raw materials; meanwhile, the IMF and the World Bank arrived to further indebt the country. But, in most cases, insecure and subservient local political elites fulfilled the same role of “flattening” societies, whether through voluntary submission (neoliberalism) or internal war (military dictatorships), which paved the way for the same US corporations and banks.

This is what has come to be called “neocolonialism.” In this case, resource extraction and labour exploitation do not require cumbersome bureaucracies or foreign armies. The hierarchical relationships of unequal exchange (Emmanuel, 1973), external debt (Toussaint, 2018), capital flight (Roberts, 2021) and cultural subordination (Said, 2003) create a web of subjugation that enables the transfer of raw materials, money, labour, knowledge and moral subordination to the imperial power in a more effective and less costly way than the classic settler occupation.

Neocolonialism implies a state with fragmented sovereignty and local institutions that maintain societal cohesion. However, the extraction of wealth abroad, and the influence exerted over political life, is carried out with the acquiescence of the domestic political bureaucracy. As Nievas and Sodano have shown, between 1970–2022, the equivalent of 1-2% of the annual GDP of the US and other wealthier countries comes from net transfers from poorer countries (Wid.World, 2024).

In the decades of absolute dominance by global liberal elites and the apparent irreversible decline of nation-states, libertarian utopias emerged, envisioning a flow of global business without the need for state support. There was talk of “Private Cities” or “Special Economic Zones” (like Roatán in Honduras), where special statutes were established and government services were provided by private companies. However, these dreams soon collided with a harsh reality: to this day, no other form of social unification, territorially based and with binding effect, has been invented that can replace the state. Markets have failed.

But times have changed, and there is no longer room for such globalist whims. The US is being displaced from the global dominance it enjoyed for the past 30 years, having to retreat ever further to its primary sphere of influence. The data speaks for itself. China, which in 1980 generated 2.3% of global GDP, measured in purchasing power parity (PPP), now generates 19.8%; while the US, which once reached 21%, now accounts for 14.5% (IMF, X, 2025). China already generates 30% of the world's manufacturing output. The US accounts for 15.4% (Safeguard Global, 2025).

For its part, Russia has demonstrated with its invasion of Ukraine that it possesses the military and economic muscle to once again establish itself as the leading Eurasian power. Meanwhile, the European Union, in the wake of the recent threat to annex Greenland, has shown the US that it too can inflict economic damage, for example, by selling off its holdings of US Treasury bonds ($2 trillion) or by potentially reversing the flow of savings held in New York banks (another $2 trillion) and so on.

In a world so fragmented by the competition of powers and empires, colonial forms are also being transformed. US invasions and bombings anywhere in the world will not disappear, but they will become increasingly shorter, more devastating in their technical effectiveness, and without prolonged military occupations. The preferred weapon for subjugating states will now be tariff wars, blockades, and economic blackmail.

This is a type of “hard economic power” characteristic of times of competitive hegemonies; different from the “soft economic power” (debt, unequal exchange, etc) favoured by the now-extinct phase of exclusive US hegemony. This type of “soft power” will not disappear. But it will no longer be the most active.

And, once inside the US “area of ​​influence”, the colonial form will undergo two substantial modifications.

First, we will repeatedly witness acts of force aimed at expanding the US’ territorial reach. Trump’s statements about renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” his threat to retake control of the Panama Canal, to make Canada the 51st US state, or to claim ownership of Greenland, all demonstrate a clear desire to expand US sovereign territory among its neighbours. These expansionist ambitions toward the north and centre of the continent, to integrate them into a “living space,” will continue in the coming years.

Second, the figure of protectorates will be revived to maintain economic and political control of countries possessing “strategic” raw materials (oil, rare earths, lithium, copper, etc) for North American industry, or of geographical areas of high interest to private investors.

A protectorate is a formally independent state that has ceded some of the main levers of its sovereignty to a stronger state (the “Protector”). The subjugated state retains its entire legal framework and institutions that enable the political and cultural cohesion of the population within its territory. This constitutes part of the local social authority that the “Protector” cannot replace, at least not without a high economic and political cost. However, control of foreign relations, its main productive (extractive) and financial activities, is under the tutelage of the foreign power.

Sometimes this form of “indirect” (Lugard, 1905), or shared government can be achieved through small but effective military and bureaucratic occupations; in other cases, the threat of armed intervention is sufficient to direct the main spheres of the economy and defence from the outside. Protectorates included Morocco under France and Spain between 1912–56 and Egypt under Great Britain between 1892–1922. In Latin America, the US exercised protectorates in Nicaragua (1912–33), the Dominican Republic (1916–24) and, among others, Cuba between 1903–34.

It is telling that at the same time the US is attempting to revive renewed versions of protectorates to control oil and foreign currency flows in Venezuela, or in Greenland to seize its minerals and Arctic trade routes, President Donald Trump has renamed the Monroe Doctrine (which condemned European powers under the guise of “America for the Americans”) as the “Donroe Doctrine.” Under this legal and moral umbrella, various US administrations in the first 150 years quadrupled its initial state territory and established numerous protectorates over several Latin American countries. This is internal aggrandizement at the expense of neighbouring countries. For Latin America, it represents a substantial reconfiguration of the conditions for political sovereignty and democracy itself, conditions that will be different from those that prevailed in the last 40 years.

But it is also a dramatic confession: that of imperial contraction. The US is abdicating its role as world leader, a position it held since 1989. Now it will control its continental “sphere of influence” through the application of aggressive, de facto colonial practices. It will seek to contain and weaken China’s trade networks and then engage with the rest of the world through relationships of hostile competition or submission, depending on the power other countries manage to exert.

We have entered a geofragmented world, not only because value chains have retreated to calculations of “national security” and strategic rivalries, or because of the rise of protectionist policies and all-against-all tariff wars, but also because of the slow implosion of US hegemony, which has shifted from a global superpower to a furious regional power. For the rest of the countries that wish to resist this fate of subjugation, what lies ahead is a renewed agenda of national sovereignty, regional industrialism and anti-colonialism.