Because the British are very arrogant, they still think that the rest of the world is a crowd of subjects. Subservient support for the United States guarantees them only some survival, but few privileges.
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The victory in the Second World War was the swan song of the British Empire. What we saw after that was an unbridled decline, which only avoided reaching rock bottom because the British clung to the Americans to save themselves. As a result, they became an appendage of the American empire. This began with the war itself. Before it, the British and the Americans competed for world markets. In Latin America itself, British competitiveness was only overcome by the United States after the start of the Second World War. Subsequently, the Crown lost hundreds of millions of subjects with the independence of about 50 colonies that became nations in the following three decades.
Today, the empire where the sun never set is nothing more than nostalgia. Because the British are very arrogant, they still think that the rest of the world is a crowd of subjects. Subservient support for the United States guarantees them only some survival, but few privileges. When Bush invaded and devastated Iraq, British companies were left with the pulp, the juice of which was consumed by American multinationals. But Tony Blair’s successors maintained their vulture policy (even though the Chilcot Inquiry ruled that their participation in the invasion of Iraq was illegal) and for over a year they have been bombing Yemen together with the Americans, in the name of freeing the seas for navigation… by the U.S., which has long since replaced London as the great maritime power.
But this does not mean that the decadent and dependent British Empire is not harmful to the rest of the world. The Afghans suffered first-hand from the Anglo-French-American aggression and the Taliban took revenge by expelling them in 2021, displaying coffins with their flags at victory demonstrations. However, British imperialists have returned to the fray by conspiring with the U.S. to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, and MI6 is currently working hard with the CIA to blackmail the terrorists who have become pop stars and the Turks into expelling the Russians from the military bases in Latakia and Tartous. They have already indicated that there will be no stability while Russia is in Syrian territory. Only the most naive voters believed that Sir Keir Starmer would adopt a policy different from that of the Conservatives who governed the country for a decade and a half. The genocide in Gaza co-sponsored by Washington, London and the West is there for all to see.
It is not only through weapons that British imperialism acts to destabilize and take control of the small slice that the U.S. allows it to have. The British flags that fluttered in the hands of masked protesters in Hong Kong between 2019 and 2020 made the interference in its former colonies clear.
Since China is the United States’ greatest enemy – even more so than Russia, for most of the U.S. establishment – a vast containment network is being created in the Asia-Pacific. And the British are obviously part of it. The AUKUS, established in 2021, has only just formalized the pact that allows the Americans and British to use Australia as an instrument of aggression against the Chinese. Western military bases on the Pacific islands are part of the network and enable strong control over those small nations, which are being pitted against China by the Anglo-Americans – and whose citizens’ data is contained in the CIA and MI6 files, thanks to the Five Eyes Alliance.
However, the main mechanism by which London still manages to prove itself useful to its masters in Washington is financial. A fundamental characteristic of European colonization in Asia, Africa and Latin America was the theft of native gold and its deposit in English banks. This was even done by other powers of the time, such as Portugal and Spain. The tradition of plundering has continued and even today many countries in the so-called “Global South” send part of their international gold reserves to English banks.
But this comes at a higher price than one might imagine. As part of the coup campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the Bank of England withheld U.S.$1.95 billion in gold reserves from Caracas in 2020. And it never returned them, even after complaints from Venezuela and part of the international community. Javier Milei seems not to care about the possibility that Argentina may suffer the same fate and has already withdrawn U.S.$1 billion in reserves from the Central Bank (estimated at U.S.$4.6 billion) to send to the British. It is estimated that 60% of Argentina’s gold reserves have been destined for London in recent years.
This is one of the reasons why The Economist – the City of London newspaper – published an interview with Milei, an article written by the Argentine president and three podcasts praising the “Argentine economic miracle” in November. After all, Milei’s dream, as he himself has stated several times, is to take Argentina back to the time when it was practically a colony of the United Kingdom (more than of the United States itself!), when, due to so much control over the Argentine economy and politics, many Argentine military personnel began to support Nazi Germany in World War II just to get rid of the British if they lost.
Juan Domingo Perón once told an anecdote to demonstrate the level of subjugation in Argentina. The British had taken control of the railways – built by the Argentines themselves, not by them, as was customary – and the Argentines had to pay them to transport meat from the countryside to the city and ports. The anecdote was about a meatpacking plant set up by the British in 1905:
“The British brought 1 million pounds sterling as investment capital, that is, 11 million pesos at the exchange rate at the time. After installing their machines, they asked the Banco de la Nación for a loan that was successively increased to 100 million pesos. Thus, of the 100 million pesos, the foreign capital was only 10%. But in the first financial remittance, 10% of the installed capital went to London. With that, they repatriated all the invested capital and over the next fifty years they decapitalized us at a rate of 10 million a year, for a total of 500 million pesos.”
The small Caribbean islands have demonstrated greater dignity and sovereignty than the government of one of the Latin American giants. Barbados gained independence from the British Crown and adopted a republican system in 2021. Jamaica, where Africans were enslaved and taken there by the British, is now demanding $10 billion in compensation. In total, the Caribbean nations want the United Kingdom to compensate them $33 trillion for slavery and colonial plunder. This would simply be a return of part of the wealth that was stolen and allowed the Empire to grow even richer.
Will London compensate them with Syrian oil and Argentine gold?
