A new East India Company rising? Rubio's speech signals US colonial aspiration

At the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on the West to compete for "market share in the economies of the Global South" as part of building a "new Western century". Critics point to the coloniser tone in Rubio's speech and ask countries like India to criticise it.

For much of the 18th and 19th centuries, European powers carved up Asia and Africa in a race for markets and raw materials. Railways were laid, and ports were built. Extracted resources were not used to develop local industry but shipped to Europe. These came at great human and economic cost. Now, centuries later, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called on the West to compete again, this time to win "market share in the economies of the Global South". Experts see this as the Trump administration's bid at colonisation, and have asked countries like India to slam it.

Marco Rubio, addressing the Munich Security Conference, framed it as part of building a "new Western century".

The Munich Security Conference is one of the world's most influential annual forums on foreign and security policy. It brings together hundreds of heads of state, ministers, military chiefs, diplomats, and policy experts from over 70 countries to debate global security challenges.

Rubio's approach has made many ears perk up as the wounds from being colonised are still fresh in much of the Global South. A big question—Does the Global South face a fresh phase of economic domination? And this time, it might not be led directly by Europe, but by what Rubio himself described as the "Child of Europe", the United States. The Global South refers to a diverse, non-monolithic group of developing nations, primarily in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania.

"It was not the British government that seized India at the end of the 18th century, but a dangerously unregulated private company headquartered in one small office, five windows wide, in London, and managed in India by an unstable sociopath – Clive," wrote William Dalrymple in his book, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire.

The English East India Company extended its tentacles across the world, including in China, Southeast Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, and parts of Africa, which forms much of the Global South today.