Bruce Gilley

Bruce Gilley is professor of politics and global affairs at Portland State University

Today

Bruce Gilley

It’s time to colonize Haiti

From our US edition

For more than 20 years, the United Nations has been trying to impose some form of colonial rule on Haiti, without success. The problem has never been a lack of resources, much less a lack of demand from the Haitian people. Rather, it has been a lack of political will and leadership from an organization scared to death of being accused of promoting “neo-colonialism.”  The recent action by El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele to send 100 troops to rescue four compatriots serving as technical workers who were kidnapped by gangs is a welcome sign. It shows that a successful recolonization of Haiti would require governments to drop the pretense of Haitian sovereignty and to organize a proper colonial force for the country.

Haiti

Monday

Bruce Gilley

The case for MAGA imperialism

From our US edition

Empire has always been part of the American tradition. We are a sequel state to the greatest empire in world history. Our period of colonial tutelage under that empire taught the lessons of legitimate territorial expansion against French and Spanish rivals. Our continental aggrandizement after independence was necessary. Later overseas expansion, including periods of imperial apprenticeship in places such as Liberia, the Philippines and Panama, was further evidence of our colonial métier. Like it or not, imperialism and colonialism are congenital to the American experiment. This has been the case since 1779, when the Continental Congress branded a proposal to limit westward expansion an “intolerable despotism.

Imperialism

Monday

Bruce Gilley

J.D. Vance: proconsul to Britain?

From our US edition

Vice President J.D. Vance’s family vacation in Britain was disrupted by protesters who insisted that he was not welcome in the country. In the Cotswolds, an area northwest of Oxford and the British equivalent of Martha’s Vineyard, ultraliberal white protesters huddled together on August 12 to make their meager numbers look large for the cameras, wielding signs bearing such slogans as “End Genocide!” and “Stop Fascists!” One participant quoted by the Guardian explained: “I’m most worried about his environmental policies. They risk eliminating the whole of humanity, all the creatures on the Earth.

Vance Britain