Greg Tides

You are asking the wrong question to the wrong person. You are talking to someone who grew up on the receiving end of Western power, not someone who learned geopolitics from Netflix. I do not have a problem condemning imperialism "from all sides." I have a problem pretending that all "sides" are equal when one bloc: Built 800+ military bases abroad. Controls the global reserve currency. Runs the main sanction machinery. Overthrew dozens of governments on every continent. And backs the last open-air concentration camp in Gaza while calling it "self-defense." That bloc is not Russia. That bloc is not China. That bloc is the U.S., its European vassals, and its little settler attack dog in West Asia. So let’s be specific. When Russia moves in Ukraine, the West calls it "naked imperialism." When NATO creeps east for 30 years, tears up arms control treaties, backs coups in Kiev, and turns Ukraine into a forward operating base, that is somehow not imperialism, just "security architecture." When China insists that Taiwan is part of its own historical and legal space, it is "aggression." When the U.S. sails warships 10,000 kilometers from home, encircles China with bases and missiles, arms separatists, and openly talks about "containing" Chinese growth, that is sold as "defending democracy." You see the pattern, right? You only ask me, "Why don’t you condemn Russia and China?" because you swim in a narrative where what Washington and Brussels do is never named as empire, only as "order," "stability," or "rules-based." Let me make my position clear: If Moscow tomorrow starts stealing other people’s resources, installing puppet regimes on other continents, and sanctioning entire populations into famine, I will call that imperialism. If Beijing starts running coups in Latin America, crushing African economies with IMF-style conditionality, and building Guantánamo-style black sites, I will call that imperialism. But that is not where we are. Right now, what I see is: Russia responding to 30 years of NATO encirclement on its own borders, asserting the red lines any serious state would draw to defend its survival. China reacting strategically to a century of humiliation, rebuilding itself with discipline and patience, and securing its own periphery against a foreign navy that has no legitimate reason to be at its doorstep except to keep it down. You want to treat that as equal to: Iraq 2003, a war of choice based on lies. Libya 2011, a "no-fly zone" turned state destruction. Afghanistan, 20 years of occupation and then walking away. Chile, Congo, Indonesia, Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Syria, the list is almost endless. So no, I do not "only" criticize Western imperialism. I criticize the center of gravity of imperialism. If a tiger bites you once and a mosquito bites you three times, you do not write a long essay about "both sides of biting." You deal with the animal that can actually kill you first. That is what the Global South is doing. You ask: "Why not condemn what Russia is doing in Ukraine?" Because every Western politician and newspaper is already screaming about it 24/7, while carefully deleting the NATO, coup, and proxy-war context that led there. My voice is not needed to reinforce the loudest propaganda machine on Earth. You ask: "Why not condemn what China wants to do regarding Taiwan?" Because for 150 years, European and American ships, soldiers, missionaries, and bankers carved Asia into zones like they were slicing cake. China trying to secure reunification, however you feel about it, is not the same category as Europeans crossing oceans to carve up continents that never threatened them. Russia wants a security buffer on its immediate border after centuries of invasions from the West. China wants to finish a civil war and prevent a hostile military alliance from turning its front porch into a NATO aircraft carrier. The U.S. wants no one, anywhere, to have the ability to say "no" to its sanctions, its dollar system, its bases, its vetoes, its bombardments. You can pretend those are all "imperialisms" on the same moral plane. I do not. I live in a world where: Washington arms Israel while it erases Palestinians in real time. Brussels lectures Africa on "values" while backing French neocolonial currency systems. The same Europe that starved my part of the world through colonies now calls Russian gas a "security threat" and Chinese investment "economic warfare." And you want to talk to me about "balance"? Here is my balance: The U.S., Europe, and Israel are the primary axis of global violence today. Russia and China are big powers with their own interests, but they are also the ones pushing back against a unipolar order that has strangled the Global South for generations. If one day they become what the West is now, I will turn the same knife on them. Until then, I am not confused about where the main gun is pointed.