The brute and harsh Colonialism of the past is now being reinvented to take a more subtle form. Countries that are colonised by the Americans today did not think so and pretended not to know. When the savage Europeans came out to conquer and plunder the world, it was by pure brute force enforced by massacres and genocides. After subjugating the conquered people, when the natives were too weak and too few to resist, the killings stopped, but the discrimination and control of the conquered people as subjects of the Empires, with lesser rights, lesser human rights and lesser equality continued. The last vestiges of the atrocities and cruelties left its final marks in the apartheid regime of South Africa. The worst case of human bondage and genocides was the USA, when the few survivors of the land live a neglected life as a vanquished people. The whole country, their land, is taken over and occupied by the invaders, their murderers and calling it their home.
Neo Colonialism, with the advantage of history and military dominance, allowed the victor to continue to stay in the land of the losers, with military bases to protect the victor's interest and to control the losers with their military presence. South Korea and Japan are two prominent Asian states under the rule of Neo Colonialism. In Europe, Germany is still under the invisible chain of the American Empire.
Another form of Neo Colonialism is to exert control and domination of the states under the pretext of military alliances or military pacts like NATO, the QUAD, and AUKUS. Every member of such organisations is constrained and restrained from acting independently of the organisation or the major partner of the organisation ie the USA. The USA can thus control and dictate to the member states who to be friends with, and who are their enemies and to do as the Americans commanded like sanctions and even going to war.
Then there are the bilateral alliances or pacts that allowed the Americans to station troops in the land of the lesser partner in the name of protecting the latter. All the Americans need to do is to ram up tension and a sense of instability and fear, and the lesser partner would be pressured to allow the Americans to send in their soldiers and weapons of war. Whatever it is called, to allow foreign soldiers to station in one's country is treason, capitulation to a foreign power, to turn the country into a semi colony of the foreign power. Once in, the foreign power would not leave and would cook up all kinds of reasons or instill fear, fabricate threats, to justify their military occupation of the country concerned forever.
South Korea and Japan are always made to believe there is a threat coming from North Korea and China and to allow the perpetual stationing of American soldiers in the numerous bases in their countries. Philippines is the latest victim, willingly or by coercion, allowing more bases for the Americans to station soldiers in the country when in reality, it is being turned into a forward base camp for the American Empire. The Americans thus could deployed their soldiers and military hardware to confront China, to fight a war with China using the Philippines as the front line, the war zone. Philippines thus become the forward defensive line of the American Empire, as part of the American strategy in its coming war against China.
Colonialism, neo Colonialism, is all about the occupation of a colonised country with military bases and soldiers.
PS. Another form of Neo Colonialism is to instal and run a proxy govt like in Ukraine and in many other states. Control the govt by putting American puppet leaders and run the country on behalf of the American Empire.
