Diplomacy, Decolonised: a Harvard Breakfast Reveals Our Global Hypocrisy
Resisting Trump should be the baseline, not a radical horizon.
A recent post making the LinkedIn rounds among privileged circles celebrated a day of diplomacy: a breakfast with Denmark’s Ambassador to the U.S., followed by an evening with a former U.S. Ambassador to Denmark and others. On the agenda? The future of US-Nordic relations, Greenland, and shared “strategic collaboration.”
Sounds innocuous enough — just another day in the halls of Harvard Kennedy School.
But it’s in these exact moments, in the careful language of respectability, that we see the mechanics of global injustice most clearly. It keeps up the façade portraying a sense of deep care for the world while actually doing a greater disservice.
The post praised “strong alliances” and downplayed Trump’s infamous rhetoric toward Greenland as unnecessary bullying. It closed with a tidy affirmation that days like these .”
But for the rest of the world — those living under drone warfare, resource plunder, and debt traps — there is nothing special about it. Just the same old colonial script as we dressed in new suits and filtered through polished optics.
The Global North Empire Doesn’t Just Bomb — It Brunches
Let’s be honest: what exactly is being celebrated here?
While Gaza faces annihilation, while Sudan is torn apart by foreign-fueled violence, and while Congolese communities are devastated by extractive economies designed to serve Western tech giants, we’re supposed to applaud the “deepening” of ties between the U.S. and Nordic states?
We’re supposed to pretend Greenland is just a diplomatic talking point, rather than a living, breathing Indigenous land — systematically surveilled, militarised, and subjected to centuries of Danish and U.S. colonial policy? Let’s not forget: . In 1953, Denmark unilaterally declared it part of the kingdom, bypassing the UN’s formal decolonisation process and denying Greenlanders a real vote. There was no referendum — just diplomatic theater. The illusion of consent became the legal cover for continued control. And while Denmark gained praise for being “progressive,” Portugal would later use this exact maneuver to justify its own colonial grip on African territories. The system learns from itself.
This is the cruelty of Global North discourse: its ability to erase violence through polite conversation. Its obsession with optics over accountability. Its capacity to speak endlessly about “cooperation” while remaining silent on the asymmetries that the cooperation rests on.
Yes, Harvard Students Are Resisting — and That Matters
It’s important to acknowledge that these events are unfolding alongside something truly powerful: From walkouts to teach-ins to demands for transparency and accountability, we are witnessing a collective refusal to normalise the politics of authoritarianism, racism, and imperial nostalgia. That is worth celebrating.
But let’s be clear: resisting Trump is a baseline, not a radical horizon. Condemning crude authoritarianism while cosying up to liberal empire does not make us morally whole. It just makes the hypocrisy more subtle. We cannot critique Trump’s bullying of Greenland while staying silent on the everyday structural violence that the “normal” U.S.–Nordic alliance entails.
If we only call out the rhetoric and not the machinery, then we are defending the system that made Trump possible in the first place.
Neo-Liberalism/Colonialism With a Smile
I’ve written before about how the Global North continues to extract from the Global South under new names: development, security partnerships, green transitions, foreign investment. Whether it’s cobalt in the Congo, surveillance tech in Palestine, or climate finance that never arrives — our “partnerships” are designed to preserve access, not justice.
This is the age of neo-liberalism in formal wear — where power is no longer imposed through direct rule, but through boardrooms, bilateral trade deals, and choreographed diplomacy. The language has changed, but the logic hasn’t.
We still control. We still exploit. We just do it now with press releases and diversity panels.
And the most insidious defenders of this world order are not the far-right ideologues. They’re the “progressives” who know how to talk about equity while quietly preserving neo-liberalism, , still unawarely following Margaret Thatcher’s chant:
“There is no such thing as society.”
The spotlight on individualism has never been brighter and it’s tearing society apart. Day by day, we look less like a community and more like a crowd of lone survivors. This slow unraveling began in the 1960s and ’70s, fueled by the neoliberal philosophies of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan — the “everyone for themselves” mantra, propped up by myths like the self-made man, the rational economic actor, the American Dream, and the hollow promise that hard work alone makes you rich. Just more slogans and fairy tales for the elites and plutocrats (a society that is ruled or controlled by people of great wealth or income).
The well-spoken politicians and diplomats who sprinkle their speeches with concern but never question the foundations of their power. Trump is only a symptom something else caused it and the cause by now is undeniably neo-liberalism and the obsession of growth which has caused inequality to rise and foster fascism, we saw it in Germany after the 1930s great depression and we are seeing it now after the 2008 financial crisis. Please do see , and ’s work if you want to be even more convinced that there is an alternative, not only an alternative a much much better on where we all can thrive, but we have to give up wealth inequality that we’ve grown so used to feeding. — as continually recommended to me in my articles — is also doing great work to make what I’m writing about in accessible.
The Violence of
What’s most troubling about is not what they say — but what they leave out. No mention of U.S. imperialism. No acknowledgment of climate injustice, of forced displacement, of Greenland’s colonised status. No reflection on what these “alliances” actually do to those outside the room.
And when you have access — when you’re in the room, holding the mic — your omissions are political. They’re not neutral. They’re complicity.
Because when war crimes are happening in real-time, and you post about “strengthening ties” without a single word of critique, you become part of the machinery that makes silence possible. You help launder violence through civility. Something we see in every leading government and diplomacy in the global north today.
What If We Cut the Ties?
Instead of talking about how to strengthen EU-U.S. relations, we should be asking: what would it mean to cut those ties — when they’re tied to extraction, militarism, and climate collapse?
What would it look like to divest from fossil economies instead of doubling down on energy security deals that poison Indigenous lands?
What would it mean to restructure diplomacy around repair, reparations, and planetary survival, rather than growth, security, and geopolitical influence?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re demands. And they should be central to any conversation about the future of international cooperation.
Harvard May Feel Special — But the World Isn’t Feeling So Lucky
If we really believe in justice, then we have to stop romanticising elite diplomacy as a neutral good. We have to start naming the systems: capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy. We have to stop laundering power through soft words and soft lighting.
Because while some of us enjoy croissants and coffee with ambassadors, others are mourning their families under rubble. Others are watching their rivers poisoned for rare earth minerals. Others are buried in debt they didn’t create.
This is not a callout of a person — it’s a call-in to all of us who live in the Global North. We need to stop congratulating ourselves for being “on the right side of history” while continuing to live off its wrongs.
Let’s stop performing progress. Let’s start practicing rupture.
Inspired by this article? Here are a few ways to dig deeper and take action
Read Less is More or Divide by Jason Hickel, and 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang, Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth — essential reads for rethinking the systems we’ve been taught to accept as inevitable. I also have more articles on the above authors research, head over to my profile for more articles.
Support grassroots movements fighting for climate justice, debt abolition, and Indigenous sovereignty. Real change doesn’t trickle down — it rises from below. If you are from Europe is doing wonderful work and we would love to have you join and contribute in any way you can.
Follow activists, scholars, and journalists writing about systemic change: The Guardian is the only one — so far — who is consistent in giving you an alternative to the status quo. Decenter your feed. Recenter your perspective.
Start conversations that feel uncomfortable. Talk about anti-capitalism. Talk about empire. Talk about neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism. Talk about extraction and exploitation. Talk about complicity, not to shame, but to build something better together.
And above all: don’t just read — organise, challenge, rupture. The future depends on what we’re willing to let go of today.
