The Americas and Africa have been subjugated since colonial times due to the richness of their national resources.
It makes sense that their respective governments would do their best to maximise profits from such resources instead of allowing foreigners to raid their nation for pennies to the dollar.
Having said that, the unfortunate reality is that Western nations have a habit of rewriting narrative to suit them. Case in point being the unwanted “freedom” Middle Eastern nations have been subjected to when attempting to leverage critical petroleum supply against the West.
Australia has had the same debate that “nationalists” are having re: mines. In the late 2000s – mid 2010s, with the realisation that Australia had a 2-speed eceonomy and was fast becoming China’s mine, efforts increased to scrutinise and reject foreign companies from owning critical infrastructure. Interestingly, the subject has vanished entirely from public discourse courtesy of covid.
The same debate still wages in the US and Europe, fanned by the election of Trump in 2016 and leading the US-China trade wars.
Some would argue that these policies have clearly failed, although my opinion is that they’ve started a process that no government is able to stop.
If anything, since 2016, we’ve seen a growing schism between the West and the East as politicians have acknowledged that the push for globalization has not been entirely beneficial due conflicting military-political agenda, an underestimated negative impact on Western domestic economies (primarily through loss of blue collar work) and an increasing push for a greener society.
The proof is in the fact that all major Western governments (UK, EU, US, Canada, Aus) have taken measures to support domestic/allied production.
Case in point – all the above have a policy on critical minerals that serve to exclude/diversify from China as a source, despite it being the world’s largest supplier, as China has previously restricted the supply of critical minerals for political leverage.
Better yet, the COVID pandemic has laid bare just how dependent manufacturing in the Western world is on China. The early 2020s saw surgical masks disappear, late 2021 saw the computer chip crunch (manufacturers dependent on Taiwan), and now in early 2022 we’ve seen the price of oil spike thanks to the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
In summary, the world is shifting towards resource nationalism/”regionalism”. Globalisation can work, in theory, but the reality that governments are waking up to is that friction will continue to exist into the indefinite future, which will only serve to jeopardise the supply of goods critical to the function of their domestic economies. The natural response is to secure the supply, either via allies or domestic production.
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