Скачать или смотреть The Decline of Western Influence

Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-skhed-...

Find me and the show on social media @DrWilmerLeon on X (Twitter), Instagram, and YouTube
Facebook page is www.facebook.com/Drwilmerleonctd
This week our guest is Vijay Prashad.
TRANSCRIPT
Announcer (00:06):
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.

Dr Wilmer Leon (00:14):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon, and I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I, we have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between the current events and the broader historical context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the impact on the global village in which we live on today's episode. The question is, is the West's hegemonic control over the rest of the world on the decline? If so, is it salvageable for insight into this and other issues? Let's turn to my guest. He's an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He's a writer and fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of Left Word Books and the director of Tri Continental, the Institute for Social Research. He's a senior non-resident fellow at Sean Yang Institute for Financial Studies at the Remnant University of China. He's written more than 20 books, including the darker nations and the Poor Nations, and he's the author of the article, hyper Imperialism. He's Vijay Prade. Vijay, welcome to the show.

Vijay Prashad (01:45):
It's great to be with you. Yeah, truly.

Dr Wilmer Leon (01:48):
Thank you so much for giving me time in your peace. Hyper in imperialism. Well, in fact, let me start this way. Lemme start this way back in 2016 at the Democratic Convention, then Vice President Biden said, we do not scare easily. We never bow. We never bend. We never break when confronted with crisis. No, we endure, we overcome, and we always, always, always move forward. We are America second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it, Vijay. The undefeatable indispensable America are terms that are often used, well worn tropes, the realities that are existing all around us. Make these statements trite and meaningless to me. Your thoughts?

Vijay Prashad (02:47):
Well, it's interesting Wilmer, because Mr. Biden made those comments, as you said in 2016. In 2023, the United States forgot to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Munro Doctrine. Now, for those who don't know the Munro doctrine, it was enunciated by James Munro. The idea was pretty simple. Ro was saying for this new country, 1776 Revolution, 1923, Monroe Doctrine, I mean in the 18th century, a decade was a very long time. I understand that, not like now where you're sometimes just goes by so quickly. Time seems to have speed it up, but nonetheless, a young country in 1823, Mr. Monroe says at the time that, look, we just told the British Empire to go out of our shores. Not exactly because Britain still had Canada as a colony, but nonetheless Britain out of a part of North America. The United States hadn't yet ejected the French from all of North America, and there was also pockets of other Europeans involved in North America, let alone South America.
(04:13)So nonetheless, quite audaciously, Mr. Monroe said, with the backing of the whole political class. Don't forget, Jefferson had already foreshadowed some of this stuff in his speeches, but Monroe said, look, Europeans, this hemisphere, the Americas from the tip right down to TGA del Fuego is not yours. The Americans will determine the destiny of this hemisphere. Now, of course, he then said something else which is, well, we in the United States have a manifest destiny, very delightful term from Christian eschatology about the city on the hill, the church at the town square and so on. We have a manifest destiny. We are Europeans. We are Europeans who have gone beyond the Europeans in Europe, and we want to make it clear not only as Europeans, because there are Europeans in South America as well, but we want to make it clear that it's America for the Americans, except when we say Americans, we mean those from the United States of America.
(05:23)So that in fact the Monroe Doctrine, noble words as well, the MRO doctrine basically says the whole Americas is the domain of the United States. The United States therefore can intervene anywhere in the Americas when it feels that its interests or the interests of an enlightened civilization are threatened. And therefore we had a range of interventions, military interventions, most of Central America, much of the Caribbean, Haiti, colonized recolonized United States goes into Dominican Republic, the assault on Cuba after 1959. And so all done on the basis of Thero doctrine of 1823. Now, it's interesting