Every genuine political emancipation begins with the correct use of political terms.
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There is a particularly sophisticated form of colonialism that requires neither foreign troops, colonial administrations, nor territorial occupations. It is enough to control the categories through which a people interprets the world. Part of the contemporary “Third Worldist” Left seems to be trapped precisely in this problem. Its geopolitical vocabulary frequently reproduces categories created outside the realities it seeks to explain.
The most obvious example is the so-called “Global South.” The expression has gained enormous popularity in recent years, but its analytical usefulness is quite limited. Placing entirely different countries and civilizations within the same political category requires ignoring profound historical, strategic, religious, and economic differences.
According to the logic of the Third Worldist Left, India and Pakistan belong to the same “Global South” while engaging in conflicts with one another. China and, for example, Fiji also belong to the same grouping, despite occupying completely different positions within the international system. This is the central problem with umbrella terms.
Samuel Huntington’s formulation of “the West and the Rest” at least described an identifiable civilizational and power relationship, contrasting one civilization with all the others while recognizing the heterogeneity of “the Rest.” The problem with umbrella concepts is that they turn fundamental differences into a supposed unity that often exists only in discourse, without any concrete substance.
Something similar applies to “Latin America.” The expression has a concrete and politically charged history. The idea of an American “Latin race” developed within the French intellectual environment of the nineteenth century, particularly through the work of Michel Chevalier. The concept subsequently gained strength during the Second French Empire and was associated with efforts to expand French influence in the American continent, including during the French intervention in Mexico.
There are many other, more interesting terms that could be used: Hispanic America, Romance/Romanesque America, “Nuestra América,” and many others. Yet the Third Worldist Left remains attached to French “Latinism,” consciously or otherwise, thereby contributing to Paris’s historical project of expanding European influence across the American continent.
Another problem concerns the use of the word “empire.” In contemporary political language, the term often appears as a moral synonym for domination, aggression, or simply as an allusion to the United States. Historically, however, empire refers to a much broader and more sophisticated form of political organization – and, incidentally, not necessarily a monarchical one.
Another common mistake is to confuse empire with imperialism, which is a phase of capitalism, as thoroughly explained by twentieth-century Marxist authors, and has nothing to do with the traditional concept of empire.
Russia and China, for example, can be analyzed as imperial formations in historical and civilizational terms, while Brazil possesses its own imperial tradition and a continental geopolitical vocation that deserves to be studied without the taboos imposed by modern political vocabulary. None of these countries is “imperialist,” but they can perfectly well be described as “empires” because of their dimensions and political organization.
Finally, there is the confusion between multilateralism and multipolarity. Multilateralism refers to cooperation among multiple states within shared rules and institutions. In other words, it describes a global order mediated by international organizations. The United Nations itself defines the concept in these terms, associating it with consultation, inclusion, common norms, and collective action.
Multipolarity follows a different logic. It refers to the distribution of international power among different centers, which may organize their own political, economic, and strategic spaces. A multipolar world may contain multilateral organizations – or it may not – but the two concepts are not equivalent.
This distinction is fundamental. Those who confuse the terms end up assuming that any institutionalized international order automatically represents multipolarity. Reality can be very different: universal institutions can operate within a highly asymmetric power structure. It is necessary to remember that the high point of multilateralism was precisely the 2000s, when there was no serious challenge to American hegemony.
The problem, therefore, begins before the assumptions. It begins with the words used to formulate the questions. When foreign concepts are treated as universal truths, entire peoples end up interpreting their own reality through categories produced by others.
Geopolitics demands precisely the opposite: studying each civilization, each state, and each historical space according to its own specificity. Obviously, many of these terms serve us well as useful general labels. Speaking of the “Global South” or “Latin America,” for example, has become entirely natural for contemporary analysts. Nevertheless, a more sophisticated definition is necessary at the theoretical level to prevent biased interpretations.
