Imperial Afterlives: United Statian Colonial Practices in the Twenty-First Century

This article offers a decolonial and postcolonial comparison of recent United States foreign policy approaches toward Venezuela, Colombia, and Greenland, arguing that these cases reveal enduring imperial logics that structure contemporary global governance. Rather than treating U.S. actions in Latin America and the North Atlantic as analytically distinct, the article examines how intervention, coercion, and inducement operate through different modalities while serving similar strategic and economic interests. Focusing on interventionist practices and threats in Venezuela and Colombia, the article situates these dynamics within a longer historical continuation of U.S. involvement in Latin America, from the creation of the Monroe Doctrine, the rise of authoritarian regimes in South America during the Cold War period to contemporary processes of democratic erosion and regional instability. These practices are contrasted with reported U.S. discussions regarding Greenland, even though both approaches reveal a shared willingness to instrumentalize sovereignty, self-determination, and democratic rhetoric in pursuit of geopolitical and resource-based objectives. The article argues that racialized, civilizational, and developmental narratives play a central role in legitimizing these strategies, producing Latin American states as disorderly and intervention-prone while framing European or Arctic territories as negotiable assets within a liberal international order. By juxtaposing these cases, the article exposes the selective application of multilateralism and democratic norms, highlighting how imperial power adapts rather than disappears. Ultimately, it contributes to debates on autocracies and resistance by foregrounding how colonial continuities shape contemporary crises of democracy and sovereignty across the Global South and beyond.