Old Wine in a New Bottle: US Imperialism and the Indian Moment
Old Wine in a New Bottle: US Imperialism and the Indian Moment
The illusion of a smooth transition to a multipolar world is over. What 2025–26 has exposed instead is a far more dangerous reality: a United States racing to destroy alternatives before they fully take shape.
This is not the defence of a “rules-based order.” It is the enforcement of rules written, bent, and broken by Washington alone. The vocabulary has changed, but the behaviour has not. This is imperialism without apology—old wine poured into a new bottle and sold as global stability.
Venezuela was never about democracy. It was about energy control, financial discipline, and signalling. A country sitting on oil reserves, operating outside the dollar system, and engaging rival powers was never going to be tolerated.
The same logic applies to Iran and Russia.
Iran’s political re-engineering is not about freedom or reform. A compliant Iran means leverage over crude prices, supply routes, and West Asian geopolitics. Control Iran, and Europe bends, Asia adjusts, and the petrodollar survives.
Russia, meanwhile, is being boxed in not because it is winning, but because it is still capable of resisting. Sanctions, isolation, and proxy pressure are meant to reduce Moscow’s ability to act beyond its borders.
The message is unambiguous: any nation outside the American economic ring will be destabilised, fractured, or reordered.
China is the real problem the United States is trying to solve—and it is solving it indirectly.
America knows it cannot out-produce China, out-scale China, or out-consume China. China’s strength is economic gravity: cheap labour, massive internal markets, manufacturing depth, and infrastructure dominance.
So the strategy is blunt: break China’s energy security, undermine its trade routes, destabilise its partners, and force decoupling on American terms.
India sits uncomfortably at the centre of this contest.
India’s refusal to open agriculture and dairy is not protectionism. It is civilisational self-defence. These sectors underpin social stability, livelihoods, and political sovereignty.
Foreign-funded capital is now targeting trust—trust in cooperatives, domestic brands, and Indian institutions. Break confidence first, capture markets later.
India faces a stark choice: power or piety.
Being the “responsible stakeholder” in a predatory system is not virtue—it is vulnerability.
India must decide whether it will be managed by this transition—or shape it.
History will not wait.
By Jeet Ghosh