“A Blatant Call by the U.S. Empire to Resuscitate Western Colonialism”

This is insane.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio just gave one of the most explicitly pro-colonialist speeches I have seen in the 21st century.

The U.S. empire wants Europe to help it recolonize the Global South.

Rubio praised Western colonialists for “settl[ing] new continents, build[ing] vast empires extending out across the globe.”

Then Rubio complained about the Global South’s decolonization, portraying it as a sinister communist plot.

Rubio lamented: “The great Western empires had entered into terminal decline, accelerated by godless communist revolutions and by anti-colonial uprisings that would transform the world and drape the red hammer and sickle across vast swaths of the map in the years to come.”

Rubio delivered this speech at the Munich Security Conference, surrounded by European leaders, who gave him a standing ovation. They loved the pro-colonialist diatribe.

The U.S. secretary of state insisted that North American and European imperialists should unite in order to reverse “the West’s managed decline,” to revive “the West’s age of dominance,” to “renew the greatest civilization in human history.”

This is a blatant call by the U.S. empire to resuscitate Western colonialism and recolonize the Global South (which represents the Global Majority).

What the U.S. empire did to Gaza, Venezuela, and currently Cuba is what it wants to do to the entire Global South.

~ Benjamin Norton
via social media
February 15, 2026

Related Off-site Links:
Rubio’s Speech Signals U.S. Colonial Aspiration – Sushim Mukul (India Today, February 16, 2026).
Forget MAGA. Welcome to MEGA: Make Empire Great Again – Mehdi Hasan (The Guardian, February 17, 2025).
Trump’s “Naked Imperialism” Leaves Allies Facing U.S. Coercion – Stephen Wertheim (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 21, 2026).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• John Pilger on Resisting Empire
• Resisting the Hand of the Empire
• Chris Hedges on the End of the American Empire
• Progressive Perspectives on the Trump Regime’s Illegal Attack on Venezuela
• “Our Anti-Imperialism Must Be Consistent”
• The Queen and Colonialism
• Queer Native Americans, Colonialism, and the Fourth of July
• Remembering Lumumba

Image: AI image by Sushim Mukul.