Many of the recent resistance movements in the First and Third World have developed in response to neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus, a set of economic policies promoted and shaped by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. While indebted nation-states have embraced forms of economic globalization such as trade liberalization, privatization, and public spending cuts (or have been forced to do so by international financial institutions), they face political challenges from within. These policies have wreaked havoc on social and environmental costs in many places, leading to inequality, exclusion, poverty and environmental degradation, and exacerbating the already precarious situation of smallholders, women and indigenous peoples. Opposition to free-market capitalism and predatory forms of global governance that Third World countries often face takes many collective and individual forms, including increased migration and crime, but often includes spectacular high-level political actions that attract considerable academic and media attention. Examples include the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, southern Mexico, to protest against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other dimensions of neoliberalism, the mobilizations of the Movimento Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil to challenge the overwhelming concentration of agricultural land in the hands of a minority, the demonstrations against water privatization in Cochabamba, in Bolivia, and movements supporting the construction of to prevent environmentally destructive dams along the Narmada River in India. Until recently, resistance to neoliberalism was mainly about non-institutional forms of struggle, but now governments in the South are increasingly involved. Latin America`s political landscape has changed dramatically in recent years with the election of a number of Latin American governments campaigning on anti-neoliberal lists. The governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua are all trying to find alternatives to economic dependence and change the forces of globalization by nationalizing key natural resources such as oil and natural gas and creating alternative trading blocs to the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). such as the Bolivarian Alternative for America (ALBA). Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Bolivia`s first indigenous president Evo Morales have become important reference points and symbols of resistance for activists around the world.
Another form in which neocolonialism manifests itself is the trade imbalance between African and Western countries. African countries produce raw materials and sell them to Europeans, who take the raw materials, process them and then send the finished products back to Africa. The prices of these raw materials are usually determined by Europeans. This has led to negative trading conditions at the expense of Africans.in in other words, the African economy is not complementary, as Africans produce what they do not consume and consume what they do not produce, a system that existed during the colonial period = before neocolonialism, more than anything else, was a key feature of a certain type of third-world nationalism of the 1960s. Neocolonialism was a by-product of its largely African and Marxist origins, the Bandung movement, and the contradictions of decolonization as it unfolded after World War II and at the heart of the Cold War. For a time, it was central to thinking the theories of imperialism within a Marxist framework, but it fell into disuse of intellectual fashion. The so-called neoliberal counterrevolution and the devastating consequences of structural adjustment and economic reforms on much of the global South (and Africa in particular) have given neocolonialism a chance (visible in the various forms of anti or alternative movements of globalization). Anti-IMF movements across Africa in the 1980s and 1990s had more than a smell of Nkrumah`s original intent in this regard.
There are also close affinities between neocolonialism in Nkrumah`s sense and postcolonial theory, but the latter has always moved away from the kind of determinism and historical telos that has accompanied so many orthodox Leninist and Marxist narratives of empire. In a broader sense, neocolonial governance is seen as an indirect form of control and, in particular, through the economic, financial and trade policies of transnational corporations and global and multilateral institutions. Critics argue that neocolonialism works through the investments of multinational corporations that, while enriching some in underdeveloped countries, keep those countries as a whole in a situation of dependency; Such investments also serve to cultivate underdeveloped countries as a reservoir of cheap labor and raw materials. International financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are also often accused of engaging in neocolonialism by providing loans (as well as other forms of economic assistance) that depend on recipient countries taking measures favourable to the countries they represent, but which harm their own economies. While many see these businesses and institutions as part of an essentially new world order, the notion of neocolonialism highlights what constitutes the continuity between the present and the past in this system and constellation of powers. See also dependency theory. When neocolonialism was first proposed, it referred to the continuing economic and cultural relations of European countries with their former colonies, African countries liberated after World War II. At the 1962 Conference of the National Union of Popular Forces, Mehdi Ben Barka, a Moroccan political organizer and later president of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference, used the term al-isti`mar al-jadid (Arabic: الاستعمار الجديد “the new colonialism”) to describe political trends in Africa in the early sixties. [8] Park Yong-so, CEO of RG Energy Resources Asset Management, pointed out that “the country does not produce a single drop of crude oil and other important industrial minerals. To stimulate economic growth and secure people`s livelihoods, we cannot stress enough that securing natural resources abroad is essential to our future survival. [129] The head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Jacques Diouf, explained that increased land deals could create a form of “neocolonialism” in which poor states produce food for the rich at the expense of their own starving populations.
[130] The Invisible Government is a non-fiction book written in 1964 by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross. The book described the operations and activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time. Christopher Wright of Columbia University wrote that the book argues that “a significant number of important Cold War [sic] U.S. policies are established and implemented through government mechanisms and procedures that are invisible to the public and appear to lack the usual political and budgetary constraints on its activities and personnel.” [54] The New York Times described the book as “a journalistic and dramatic narrative that could lead us to a fundamental reassessment of the place of covert operations in a democratic nation.” [55] Wise explained that when the work was published, ordinary people generally knew little about what the CIA was doing, and that the book was “the first serious study of CIA activities,” which the CIA did not like. [56] Wright added that “admissions and subsequent assessments .