It is worth remembering that Australia and New Zealand, together with 11 Pacific island states, are signatories of the 1986 Treaty of Rarotonga, which declared the South Pacific to be a nuclear-free zone. The pact, under which Canberra is to spend up to $368bn on nuclear-armed submarines, poses a major proliferation risk and represents a violation of the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Look no further than the growing process of NATOisation in the Indo-Pacific, which became further evident after the signing of 2021’s AUKUS security pact between Australia, the US and the United Kingdom.

Thanks also to over 750 military bases in eighty countries (or 85 percent of all overseas military bases), US spheres of influence extend far beyond “its hemisphere”.Īnd this is particularly visible in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and increasingly, in the Indo-Pacific, where, in the words of European Union foreign policy chief Joseph Borell, “the future of our planet and of history will be decided”, and from where by 2030, the overwhelming majority – 90 percent – of the 2.4 billion new members of the middle class are expected to reside. Yet that claim, while fully agreeable in itself, loses much of its legitimacy when applied to Russia and China selectively. In a widely discussed open letter focused on the Russia-Ukraine war and published on the University of Berkeley’s Blog by Yuriy Gorodnichenko and other economists, the authors did not linger on any of these aspects, but were keen to stress that “ spheres of influence” is a “notion that seems appropriate for the age of empires and not for the modern era”. Indeed, what became America’s 50th state (August 21, 1959) experienced one of the most effective attempted identity erasures of a native population, and its organised de-development (Iolani palace had electric lights before the White House): before US colonisation, Hawaii had electricity, mass transit, railroads and one of the world’s highest literacy rates.

Often, these have focused on strengthening US-friendly regimes or toppling unfriendly ones in its hemisphere, both in Central and South America: from Argentina to Bolivia, passing through Chile, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama and many more.Ĭuba, which in 1950 had the fifth-highest per capita income in the Western hemisphere before a brutal US blockade contributed to its economic ruin, is an effective example of how the US conceptualised and imposed the notion of its “sphere of influence”.Īt the other extreme is Hawaii, which represents a compelling example of how deindustrialisation and linguistic effacement worked. So, how would Washington react to that scenario? Perhaps the panicked headlines in the US over recent reports that China might set up a base in Cuba – a claim that Havana has denied – offer clues.įor while the Soviet Union and, since 1991, Russia have invaded several countries – from Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968) and Afghanistan (1979) to Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (20), while playing a nefarious role in others including Syria (2015) – the US has been involved in very similar and far more numerous invasions, regime changes and wars. China and Russia are major economic trade partners for Mexico. In recent years, both China and Russia have massively increased their investments in Mexico (particularly in minerals, energy and technology). Such an eventuality is not so far-fetched. Imagine this scenario: China and Mexico establish a military alliance, training military personnel along the 3,145km (1954-mile) border shared by the United States and Mexico.

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