Good morning, Mr President. This is a continuation of my masterclass on imperial control devoted to you. We are now in a world that Oswaldo de Rivero, former Peruvian diplomat, once described as the global jungle. The latter has become more dangerous because fossilised predators have regenerated with indescribable ferocity, attracting epithets like “rogue imperialism”, “gangster imperialism”, etcetera.

The world is now in a flux so much that we cannot predict the next country to be invaded and gobbled by the new predators. In the global jungle, Africa, Asia and Latin America have always borne the brunt. We have been through massacres, bapid expropriation of both material and human, formalised oppressions like slavery, colonialism, apartheid and neo-colonialism. All these reflectively translate into domination, in other words, define the phenomenon of imperialism.

The latter, simply put, is the domination of one country by another. It is a relation of power in which the most powerful dominates the less endowed. In their unstrained competition, the imperialists have unleashed two world wars in modern history. The substantive cause of these wars was largely competition for control of global resources that logically required the amour of the state.

In 1884/85, Africa was partitioned among the Europeans powers in Berlin. The Berlin Conference was a pacifist way to settle claims over territorial acquisitions. This by no means ended the rivalry between the leading European powers of the time, namely, Germany, France and Britain, over territories, markets, and resources, especially in Africa and Asia.

The competition of course materialised in alliances between the powers. Two major alliances of the period were the Triple Alliance involving Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy, and the Triple Entente comprising France, Russia, and the United Kingdom. They were in fact military alliances against a backdrop of naval competition between Germany and Britain. The Sarajevo incident involving the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a Serbian nationalist triggered a war that engulfed the world between 1914 and 1918.

The lessons of the war soon to be lost engendered a major institution of global governance, the League of Nations, to help maintain global peace and security. The predatory European powers of the time upended that organisation to allow for a free ride, which led to World War II.

In Germany, the economic burden arising from the burden of WWI due to huge reparations imposed on it by the victors caused inflation, unemployment, and social instability during the 1920s.

By 1929, the global economy had collapsed, underlined by a fall in industrial output and unemployment, and spurred unguided protectionism in the form of blotted tariffs. The consequence was the quest for resources in Asia and Africa. Germany, Japan and Italy were quick about it.

The contradiction among the competing capitalist states ignited the inferno of WWII, 1939-1945. In Germany, the Nazis assumed power. As Oleg Rzheshevsky, author of World War II: Myths and the Reality, puts it: “The Second World War was unleashed by the German capitalists’ monopolies, by the Nazi leaders and by the German General Staff…”

As in the aftermath of WWI, the United Nations (UN) was the greatest achievement of the post-WWII global order to prevent the cause of war and settle international disputes amicably.  The behaviour of the alliance partners that defeated Nazi Germany would soon upend the UN. The USSR, which made the defeat of the Nazis possible, and with a different socio-economic system, was seen as the new enemy. Churchill’s Foster-Sutton speech and George Kennan’s long cable, among others, prepared the ground for the Cold War in a bipolar world order.

The collapse of the USSR was widely celebrated in both diplomatic and scholarly circles, underlined by Fukuyama’s 1989 essay, “The End of History?” It was time for the imperialist, securely under the control of the United States, to dominate the world. Both Condoleezza Rice and Samuel Huntington articulated powerful essays about the lonely superpower and the need to seize the unipolar moment and prevent the rise of any imperial candidate.

China was boldly mentioned, and Islam became the new ideological enemy in the so-called clash of civilisations. Liberal internationalism and globalisation were equipped with a turbo engine. Meta-narratives were overtaken by post-modernism—anything goes. The international community, centered on the UN, evolved into the United States and its willing allies.

Things have now reached the point of antithesis. On the part of European statesmen, only President Macron has acknowledged the end of the road for Western imperialism, but ironically seized upon its prevention. According to him: “Above all, a transformation, a geopolitical and strategic reconfiguration. We are probably in the process of experiencing the end of Western hegemony over the world.

We were used to an international order that had been based on Western hegemony since the 18th century – probably French hegemony in the 18th century, inspired by the Enlightenment; probably British hegemony in the 19th century thanks to the Industrial Revolution, and American hegemony in the 20th century thanks to two major conflicts and the economic and political domination of that power.”

The state of the global economy is too cold for comfort for the U.S.-led West. Jayati Ghosh, a Professor of Economics at UMass Amherst, has adverted to some of its contemporary dynamics thus: “Today, however, America’s imperial reach is both overextended and waning. Trump’s foreign-policy agenda is premised on the view that while U.S.-led globalisation once served the interests of American capital — especially finance — its returns have diminished with the rise of emerging powers like China.

His proposed remedy is to rely on military dominance and residual economic power to secure direct control over resources and markets within America’s exclusive sphere of influence. This means abandoning even the pretense of a rules-based international order, removing the fig leaf of promoting democracy and human rights, and shamelessly exhibiting a hoary doctrine of might-makes-right resource grabs.”

New imperialism’s way forward is to abandon rules-based order anchored on the UN charter and resort to the power of the state. The U.S. has exited many multilateral institutions. Above all, on February 5, 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expired, with the last formal and legal constraint on the strategic nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and the Russian Federation. Earlier, the U.S. withdrew from other agreements.

For example, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, in June 2002; the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987, in August 2019; and the Treaty on Open Skies of 1992, in November 2020.

Armed with a new strategic nuclear doctrine centering on attacking an adversary’s nuclear forces and command systems rather than its cities, it has also resorted to a rash of economic measures that Ghosh qualified as “a patchwork of coercive demands imposed on various trading partners.

But while Trump’s bullying may produce some short-term concessions, it is deeply counterproductive. Many countries are already seeking to reduce their dependence on the U.S. by forming new coalitions around specific concerns.” The aggression against Venezuela and Iran is only understandable in this regard. Countries are guessing which is next.

Amidst the unravelling global anarchy, Marco Rubio, U.S. Secretary of State, speaks of the resilience of Western imperialism. He intoned that in the epoch of decolonisation and socialism, “many came to believe that the West’s age of dominance had come to an end and that our future was destined to be a faint and feeble echo of our past… Our predecessors recognised that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make”.

Nevertheless, will imperialism win this war?  Ghosh says, “Given the scale and urgency of today’s global challenges, it is clear that confronting Trump’s brand of gangster imperialism requires international cooperation that does not hinge on U.S. consent. Collective action is no longer optional. To counter the threat posed by a rogue America, it is the only viable path.” Mr President, we need to be part of the required collective action to nip in the bud these opening salvos of a third world war.

Professor Akhaine lectures at the Lagos State University.