Geopolitics continues to shape patterns of global inequality, reinforcing structural imbalances across nations and regions. Dr. Kalim Siddiqui explores how imperialism, settler colonialism, and financial dominance underpin uneven development under capitalism. He calls for decolonial frameworks that challenge Western hegemony and centre sovereignty, equity, and self-determination in the Global South.
I. Introduction
Geopolitics examines how a country’s geography, location, population, and natural resources influence its political power and global interactions. These spatial factors shape foreign policy, military strategy, and a country’s position within the international system. Consequently, geopolitical dynamics are central to understanding the persistent patterns of global uneven development.
Uneven development is a hallmark of capitalism, arising from the inherently unequal processes that drive economic growth. While mainstream economic theory suggests that disparities—such as income inequality—diminish over time through the “trickle-down” effects of capital diffusion in open markets, empirical evidence contradicts this claim. Historical and contemporary forces—including colonization, war, political instability, and asymmetric global trade—continue to produce and reinforce uneven development across regions (Siddiqui, 2019a).
This article critically reassesses the relationship between geopolitics and uneven development, with a focus on escalating tensions and violent conflicts in the Global South. A stark and morally urgent example is the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, where Israel’s military invasion and occupation—backed by the political, economic and military support of the Global North—have raised profound ethical and legal questions.
Historical parallels emerge with the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, where extensive bombing campaigns deliberately targeted civilian infrastructure, including water purification plants, electricity grids, schools, hospitals, and even journalists. At the time, the lack of smartphones and restricted access to independent media allowed for tighter control over public narratives. Today, similar patterns unfold with heightened visibility, amplified by digital technology and social media.
Since the early 2000s, Israel has engaged in recurrent military campaigns in Gaza. However, the 2023 offensive marked a significant escalation, characterized by widespread bombardment of civilian infrastructure—including hospitals, universities, sanitation facilities, water purification, and residential complexes. Civilians were instructed to relocate to southern Gaza under assurances of safety, only to face further attacks in these designated “safe zones.” Israel’s political system functions not as a democracy but as an ethnocracy—a regime structured to ensure the dominance of one ethnic group over others—or, in other terms, an apartheid state.
The United States’ persistent hostility toward Iran reflects a broader imperial strategy aimed at subjugating sovereign states through regime change, sanctions, engineered instability, and the deliberate creation of failed states. This pattern aligns with earlier United States (US) interventions in Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, and Syria—actions that have resulted in millions of deaths and protracted regional destabilization (Siddiqui, 2025).
Israel’s antagonism towards Iran warrants critical scrutiny. On the pretext of national security, Israel with full support from the West have historically played a destabilizing role in the region, often it has initiated pre-emptive strikes, conducted extraterritorial assassinations, and engaged in covert operations. Its military campaigns—including repeated airstrikes against neighbouring countries under the pretext of security—and assassination of Iranian scientists have only intensified regional tensions. Rather than ensuring stability, these actions perpetuate cycles of violence and reinforce asymmetrical power dynamics, where Israel’s military superiority and Western backing allow it to act with impunity, while regional backlash is framed as unprovoked hostility.
Iran’s pursuit of sovereign policymaking and self-reliant development—exemplified by its rejection of the US-led GPS system in favour of China’s Beidou navigation satellite system—represents a direct challenge to US dominance. This shift to Beidou is not merely a technological upgrade but a strategic realignment with profound military and geopolitical consequences. Beidou is central pillar of China’s Belt and Road initiatives, linking digital with infrastructure sovereignty. Thus, Iran is securing independent precision-strike capabilities while reinforcing digital and infrastructural sovereignty—a move that undermines US influence and reshapes regional power dynamics.
This dynamic raises a pivotal question: Why does the West steadfastly support Israel despite its controversial policies? A central explanation lies in Israel’s instrumental role as a geopolitical asset—a militarized outpost functioning as a de facto “garrison state” that anchors Western influence in the oil- and gas-rich Middle East (Smith, 2021). Far from a passive beneficiary, Israel acts as a strategic proxy, enabling Western powers to project military dominance while destabilizing regional rivals who challenge petrodollar hegemony (Khalidi, 2022).
This alliance is perpetuated by a deliberate narrative apparatus. Western media systematically constructs Israel as a liberal, European-style democracy, obscuring two contradictions: its geographic reality as an Asian state and its ongoing settler-colonial displacement of Indigenous Palestinians (Pappé, 2017). Such framing racializes the conflict, positioning Israel as a “white” civilizational bulwark against a vilified, “non-Western” Arab world (Said, 1978; Siddiqui, 2024a). This dichotomy not only justifies unconditional support but also erases Palestinian agency, reducing their resistance to irrational “terrorism” rather than a struggle against apartheid.
The Global North has consistently opposed states and movements that challenge Western hegemony. Countries such as Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela—along with anti-imperialist movements like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—embody forms of defiance that reject neoliberal subordination and Western strategic dominance. While these actors are often vilified as “security threats,” they also represent broader post-colonial struggles for sovereignty and self-determination. Consequently, they face systematic repression through sanctions, political isolation, and military intervention.
The US perceives such resistance as contagious, fearing that successful defiance could inspire broader challenges to its dominance. The same political coalition that justified the 2003 invasion of Iraq—under fabricated pretences—now advocates for confrontation with Iran, another resource-rich country pursuing an independent political and economic path. The US demands for regime change are not merely about geopolitical strategy but reflect a deeper imperative: the enforcement of global submission to Western financial capital, mirroring the post-Soviet expansion of neoliberalism into formerly autonomous states.
Britain and the United States have a long history of intervention and regime change in Iran. The first major intervention occurred in 1907, followed by another in 1953, when Iran’s democratically elected nationalist government, led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, was overthrown in a US and British-backed coup. This operation reinstated the Shah, consolidating the US control over Iran’s political and economic affairs.
After Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, as a leading oil and gas producer, Iran has increasingly challenged the US-led petrodollar system by rejecting the US dollar in international trade. Instead, it has pursued transactions with China, Cuba, India, Russia, and other BRICS members in their respective national currencies, positioning itself at the forefront of the de-dollarization movement. This shift represents a significant challenge to the hegemony of the US dollar, particularly in global energy markets.
Historically, in 1974 the US has enforced the petrodollar system, compelling Arab oil and gas exporters to trade exclusively in US dollars. This policy artificially bolstered global demand for the dollar, reinforcing its dominance in international finance. Iran’s defiance of this system undermines a key pillar of US economic power, marking a strategic and economic turning point.
The international economy is undergoing a significant transformation as BRICS and other countries attempt to reduce the use of US dollar in trade, currency reserves and investment, while increasing South-South economic cooperation. However, these efforts have been undermined by the policies of Donald Trump, who sought to reinforce US economic hegemony by pressuring countries to limit trade and investment with China, Russia, and other countries pursuing economic autonomy. By compelling countries to comply with US sanctions—particularly against China, Russia, Venezuela, and Iran—Washington has sought to preserve its unipolar dominance. The US perceives China as an existential threat, a perspective that has driven its geopolitical confrontations, including NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine and the US-backed Israeli offensive against Iran. These conflicts are not merely regional disputes but part of a broader struggle to prevent the erosion of dollar hegemony and sustain US global hegemony (Siddiqui, 2022a).
However, for emerging economies, particularly BRICS members, failure to critically examine historical patterns of Western intervention risks rendering them vulnerable to analogous tactics (Siddiqui, 2024b). US antagonism toward autonomous development not only stifles the emergence of a multipolar world order but also exposes a fundamental contradiction: the disparity between its professed adherence to democracy and international law at home and its coercive, often violent, actions abroad. This tension demands urgent scrutiny from Global South striving to safeguard sovereignty and advance a more equitable international economic order.
The US imperialism systematically seeks to dominate developing counties, routinely justifying interventions by framing their political and economic policy as threats to its “strategic interests.” When developing countries pursue independent development pathways—diverging from Western-prescribed models—the US and its allies perceive such efforts as challenges to their geopolitical dominance and global hegemony. The US has opposed any effort of an independent development in the Global South, particularly when such development challenges US strategic or economic hegemony. (Siddiqui, 2023a).
II. Uneven Development as a Feature of Capitalism
Uneven development refers to spatial inequalities in economic conditions, including disparities in levels of employment, industrialisation, income, education, infrastructure, and growth rates. These imbalances stem from asymmetrical sectoral expansion within and between economies.
From a Marxist political economy perspective, uneven development is not an aberration but a structural necessity of capitalism, where prosperity in one region is contingent upon underdevelopment elsewhere. This concept, traceable to classical political economy, remains implicit in mainstream trade and growth theories. Marx observed that capital concentrates in specific regions, creating “cores” of accumulation and “peripheries” of exploitation. These dynamics are cyclical: regions that thrive in one phase of accumulation may decline in another due to capital’s inherent volatility (Siddiqui, 2023b).
David Harvey’s The Limits to Capital (1982) offers a critique of classical political economy by extending Marx’s analysis of capital’s inherent crises. Central to his argument is the claim that space operates not merely as a passive backdrop but as an active barrier to capital accumulation—one that capitalism must perpetually overcome, yet in doing so, generates new contradictions. Harvey demonstrates how the capitalist mode of production systematically produces and exploits geographical inequalities, transforming space itself into a contested terrain of crisis. Through processes such as urbanization, infrastructural development, and globalized labour markets, capital seeks to resolve its internal contradictions (e.g., overaccumulation, declining profit rates) by displacing them spatially—a dynamic Harvey terms “spatial fixes.”
Crucially, Harvey contends that uneven geographical development is not an accidental byproduct but a necessary condition of capitalist survival. By creating and manipulating spatial hierarchies—such as core-periphery dependencies, deindustrialized regions, and speculative urban landscapes—capitalism temporarily stabilizes its crises while deepening long-term instability. This dialectic of spatial expansion and crisis formation aligns with broader Marxist critiques of capital’s tendency toward creative destruction (Schumpeter, 1942) and its reliance on “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2003).
III. Historical Context and the Global Hierarchy
The modern global order emerged from the international division of labour established during the 18th and 19th centuries, coinciding with European colonial expansion and the transatlantic slave trade. This period was characterized by the ideological construction of racial hierarchies, which positioned white Europeans as “civilized” and superior to non-white populations. These racist doctrines justified imperial conquest, enabling European powers to extract labour and resources from colonized regions—particularly Africa, Asia, and the Americas—to fuel their own economic growth (Siddiqui, 2024c).
A striking illustration of this dynamic is the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Britain and France partitioned the Middle East under the “Mandate System,” a mechanism sanctioned by the League of Nations that institutionalized colonial control over strategic territories and resources under the veneer of “trusteeship.”
Following World War II, former colonial powers suppressed their inter-imperial rivalries and consolidated power through military and economic alliances, including: NATO (1949), ensuring collective Western security dominance, and the G7 (1973), coordinating neoliberal economic policies among advanced capitalist countries. However, despite representing less than 16% of the global population, the Global North accounts for roughly 74% of worldwide military spending in 2023—a stark indicator of enduring asymmetrical power (SIPRI, 2023).
IV. Theoretical Foundations: Marx and the Global Capitalist System
Nineteenth century critiques of capitalism, particularly Karl Marx’s work, remain indispensable for analysing contemporary global inequalities. While today’s world is far more technologically integrated than Marx’s industrial Europe, his analysis of exploitation, accumulation, and class struggle continues to expose the structural logic of global capitalism (Marx, 1976).
Central to this critique is primitive accumulation—Marx’s term for the violent processes that enabled capitalism’s rise: expropriation of land (e.g., enclosures in Britain), displacement of peasants (proletarianization), enslavement of Africans, and colonization of the Global South. Marx described this as a history written “in letters of blood and fire,” underscoring capitalism’s reliance on non-market coercion—a pattern now replicated globally through neocolonial debt, and financial imperialism (Harvey, 2003).
A defining feature of capitalism is the creation of a world market, which entails the destruction or absorption of earlier forms of production and the continual transformation of technology, institutions, and social relations. This process is not smooth or uniform; rather, it unfolds through uneven development, both across regions and within specific localities. Capitalist globalization thus generates complex spatial patterns of inclusion and exclusion, where certain areas are rapidly integrated into global circuits of capital while others are marginalized or subjected to backwardness and poverty.
Marxists such as Luxemburg, Baran, Sweezy, Harvey, Amin and Patnaik have emphasized that the expansion of capitalism has historically depended on its capacity to exploit non-capitalist regions. These external spheres provide both new markets and access to cheap raw materials and labour. However, as global capitalism expands and these non-capitalist areas are increasingly incorporated into its logic, the system faces structural limitations. As Luxemburg argued, this progressive exhaustion of external markets creates crises of overaccumulation and insufficient demand, limiting the system’s ability to reproduce itself.
Samir Amin (1974) commented on Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital: “It was Rosa Luxemburg’s great merit to have seen that relations between the centre and the periphery depend on the mechanisms of primitive accumulation, because what is involved is not the economic mechanisms characteristic of the internal functioning of the capitalist mode of production, but relations between this mode of production and formations that differ from it… To Rosa Luxemburg belongs the credit of having pointed out these present-day mechanisms of primitive accumulation-in the strict sense, plundering of the Third World” (Amin 1974, p.61). Rosa Luxemburg extended Marx’s crisis theory to explain imperialism’s expansionist drive, particularly capital’s cyclical shifts between sectors and the oscillation between overproduction and crisis.
Marx also identified another critical dimension of modern capitalism: the emergence of fictitious capital. This refers to financial instruments—such as stocks, bonds, or derivatives—that represent claims to future value, but are detached from actual material production. This disjunction increases the system’s volatility and the risk of financial crises. The concept of fictitious capital provides a useful lens for understanding the boom-and-bust cycles of contemporary capitalism, particularly in financialized economies. Economists such as Charles Kindleberger (1973), Hyman Minsky (1982), and Jan Kregel (1998) have highlighted how speculative bubbles, excessive credit expansion, and deregulated financial markets contribute to systemic instability and economic and financial crises. These crises are not anomalies but intrinsic to the functioning of capitalism in its financialized phase (Siddiqui, 2022b).
V. Geopolitical Violence and the Structure of Settler Capitalism
Imperialism refers to a system of domination where powerful states extend their political, economic, and military control over other territories, often through colonization, coercive diplomacy, economic control or military intervention. In its classical form, particularly in the 19th and early 20th centuries, imperialism involved European powers occupying and exploiting vast regions of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The aim was to extract natural resources, access cheap labour, and secure markets for industrial goods. Imperialism is not merely territorial conquest—it also involves the imposition of economic systems, cultural norms, and political structures that serve the interests of the dominant power at the expense of the subordinated population (Siddiqui, 2022b).
Karl Marx underscored the foundational role of violence in capitalist development. He regarded the transatlantic slave trade as the “pedestal” upon which both capital accumulation in the plantation economies of the United States’ southern states and the British cotton industry—central to the Industrial Revolution—rested.
A radical critique of geopolitics emphasizes the centrality of capitalist economic structures and class relations in shaping international relations and global power dynamics. This perspective foregrounds the role of economic forces—particularly capital accumulation and class struggle—in driving state behaviour and international conflict. Paul Baran (1957) identified two major forms of colonialism that were deeply embedded in the logic of capitalist accumulation. The first, prevalent during the 19th century, involved European settler colonies in the North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. These settler colonies expropriated land and resources, forming a vital foundation for early capitalist accumulation.
The second form of colonialism, according to Baran, encompassed the colonized and semi-colonized regions of India, China, Indonesia, and much of Africa. These regions were integrated into the global capitalist system primarily as sites of resource extraction and cheap labour to serve the industrialization of Europe and North America. In the process, longstanding civilizations and socio-cultural systems were violently disarticulated. As Rosa Luxemburg emphasized, the communal and collective social relations that characterized these societies were necessarily “annihilated” by the advance of capitalism.
Arghiri Emmanuel’s Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade (1969) presented an important analysis of settler colonialism. He distinguishes between Britain’s settler colonies—such as North America, Australia, and New Zealand—where genocidal violence was inflicted upon indigenous populations, and South Africa, where the native population was not exterminated but instead forced into ghettos and systematically exploited by a white settler minority. In these white settler colonies, Emmanuel argued, high wages among white workers facilitated rapid capital accumulation. By contrast, in South Africa, where wages for Black workers remained extremely low, capital accumulation followed a different trajectory.
Other Marxist theorists, notably Samir Amin, further developed this analysis. Amin distinguished settler colonialism from what he termed the “Africa of the colonial trade economy,” characterized by monopolistic trade practices, the dominance of colonial import-export firms, and the mobilization of African labour through systems of labour reserves. In his later work, Amin examined settler colonialism in Israel, arguing that it followed a pattern similar to North America’s—marked by the systematic extermination or displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population.
However, Amin (1989) contended that in Israel’s case, this settler colonialism must be understood as part of a broader monopoly capitalist and imperialist project led by the US with aspirations for global dominance. In the postcolonial period, new forms of settler colonialism emerged, notably what has been described as Zionist settler colonialism. This project entailed the violent displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population and the establishment of an ethnically exclusive Jewish settler society.
Thus, the concept of settler colonialism is not merely a historical phenomenon; it is central to understanding the broader evolution of capitalism, imperialism, and geopolitical order. It reveals how the logic of accumulation—whether through displacement, exploitation, or extermination—has consistently shaped the global hierarchy of wealth and power.
VI. Concentration of Capital and Uneven Development
The accumulation of capital not only enhances productivity and transforms economic systems, but it also generates uneven development, both structurally and geographically. A central feature of this process is the centralization of capital, which reflects the inherent antagonism between competing capitals. As Marx explains: “Accumulation, therefore, presents itself as increasing concentration of the means of production, and of the command over labour; on the other, as repulsion of many individual capitals from one another… It is concentration of capitals already formed, destruction of their individual independence, expropriation of capitalist by capitalist, transformation of many small into few large capitals… Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another place been lost by many” (Marx, 1976, Capital, Vol. I, p. 586).
Marx viewed capitalism as a system in perpetual disequilibrium, primarily due to its tendency toward uneven development. This disequilibrium is not confined to a single sphere of economic life; rather, it permeates all social and economic relations under capitalism. At the heart of this instability is a structural contradiction: the constant expansion of the productive forces on the one hand, and the system’s limited capacity to generate sufficient effective demand on the other. This contradiction gives rise to what Marx referred to as “realisation crises”—moments when commodities cannot be sold at profitable prices despite being produced in abundance.
An essential feature of imperialism and exploitation—particularly in what is now commonly termed the Global North and Global South—is that imperialism does not merely signify a relationship between “advanced” and “underdeveloped” countries. Rather, this division reflects a broader process: the internationalization of capital.
A key insight from Marx’s analysis of capital accumulation is that capitalism develops unevenly. This unevenness initially manifested during the early stages of capitalism, when dynamic capitalist economies emerged in Western Europe and North America, while much of the rest of the world remained non-capitalist (Fine et al., 2024).
As capitalism matures, uneven development becomes more entrenched, driven by competition and technological innovation within countries already undergoing capitalist transformation. This unevenness is not limited to relations between countries; it also characterizes conditions within “advanced” capitalist societies. Internal competition and innovation foster systemic instability, which—alongside the tendency of the rate of profit to fall—contributes to recurring crises. These crises, in turn, intensify uneven development.
In the advanced capitalist economies (i.e. Global North), surplus value is primarily increased through technological innovation. This process reduces the labour time required for workers to produce the equivalent of their wages, thereby expanding the surplus appropriated by capitalists.
Dependency theory offers a key framework for explaining uneven development. It locates the source of global inequality mainly in the sphere of circulation, highlighting how surplus is extracted from one country and transferred to another. In contrast, other approaches emphasize the sphere of production, focusing on the global reproduction of class relations as the underlying cause of inequality.
Dependency theory divides the world into the “core” and the “periphery,” centring its analysis on their structural economic relations. The transfer of surplus from the periphery to the core is regarded as the principal mechanism inhibiting development in peripheral countries. The exploitation in the periphery deprives these regions of the resources and markets necessary for autonomous and sustained development.
The roots of global inequality—why some countries remain poor while others accumulate wealth—are better explained through the dynamics of production rather than the circulation of commodities. A persistent net outflow of surplus from a country signals the presence of structural barriers to expanded capital reproduction. If such barriers did not exist in regions like for instance, Latin America and Africa —and if profit rates were higher there than in the core—the flow of surplus would shift toward these economies rather than away from them (Siddiqui, 2019a).
VII. Foreign Capital and Uneven Development
The extraction of value from the Global South—whether through unequal trade or profit repatriation—constitutes a key form of exploitation. Since the imposition of neoliberalism on developing countries following the 1980s debt crisis and the broader crisis in advanced capitalist economies, profound shifts have occurred in the global economic landscape. Neoliberal reforms involved trade and capital liberalization, privatization of public assets, and increased reliance on private investors and market mechanisms. Under this model, development came to be understood as contingent on access to foreign capital and export-oriented growth.
As illustrated in Figure 1, flows of foreign capital—especially in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI)—have risen sharply worldwide since the 1990s, with developing economies receiving a growing share. Under neoliberal globalisation, the FDI is often portrayed as a driver of job creation, technology transfer, and investment inflows (Siddiqui, 2015).
However, an analysis of FDI patterns reveals significant unevenness. A substantial proportion of global FDI remains concentrated within advanced economies, and the majority of the top ten FDI destinations are found in this group (see Figure 2). Among developing regions, East Asia has attracted a disproportionately high share of FDI (Siddiqui, 2010), while Africa continues to receive the lowest levels of foreign capital (see Figure 3) (UNCTAD, 2024).
Figure 1: Foreign Direct Investment by Region and Economy, 1990–2023.
Figure 2: Foreign Dirce Investment Inflows, Top 10 Destination Economies, $ billions, 2024.
Figure 3: Foreign Dirce Investment (FDI) Inflows by Economic Grouping and Regions, $ billions, percentage.
According to the World Investment Report 2024, global foreign direct investment (FDI) declined by 2% to $1.3 trillion in 2023, reflecting the combined impact of a slowing global economy and heightened geopolitical tensions. The report underscores the potential of business facilitation measures and digital government solutions to counter low investment levels by fostering more transparent and efficient regulatory environments. Notably, FDI flows to developing countries fell by 7%, reaching $867 billion in 2024.
Despite growth in FDI targeting global value chain–intensive manufacturing sectors—such as automotive and electronics—in regions with favourable market access, many developing countries remain marginalized. These countries continue to face difficulties in attracting foreign investment and integrating into global production networks (IMF, 2025).
Nonetheless, the share of value added in the global economy by developing countries—particularly in manufacturing—has shown modest growth since 2008, as reported by the UN Statistics Division. For instance, manufacturing value added as a percentage of GDP in the least developed countries rose from 10.26% in 2008 to 12.67% in 2018. However, this increase has been concentrated largely in Asia, indicating the region’s expanding role in global production and trade (UNCTAD, 2024).
Emerging markets in South Asia have demonstrated significant growth potential, with some regions experiencing robust economic expansion. In contrast, East Asia is projected to see a gradual slowdown, with expected growth of approximately 4.5% in 2025 and 4.0% in subsequent years. Sub-Saharan Africa is forecasted to grow from a lower base, with projections of 3.5% in 2025 and 4.1% by 2026–2027 (IMF, 2025)
While global poverty has declined over the past two decades, but inequality within countries has increased markedly. The income gap between the top 10% and the bottom 50% of earners within countries has nearly doubled, rising from a ratio of 8.5 to 15. As a result, despite strong growth and economic convergence in parts of the developing world, global inequality remains deeply entrenched (Chancel, et al. 2024).
Understanding the past is essential for interpreting present inequalities. Historical perspectives allow us to examine critical questions, such as whether inequality levels have ever been lower than today and how different societies have responded to them. From a historical perspective, today’s levels of inequality are comparable to those at the height of Western imperialism in the early 20th century. In fact, the share of global income captured by the poorest half of the world’s population is now roughly half of what it was in 1820—prior to the onset of the “Great Divergence” between Western powers and their colonies (Chancel, et al. 2024).
Between-country inequality continued to rise until around 1980, after which it began to decline, particularly between 1980 and 2020. This shift reflects the narrowing of regional income gaps, most notably due to East Asia’s upward movement—especially China’s rapid growth—within the global income distribution. This convergence marks a significant departure from earlier patterns of divergence (Chancel, et al. 2024).
In the 19th century, Europe’s accumulation of foreign wealth was facilitated by colonial extraction and favourable terms of trade, including low commodity prices. On the eve of World War I, European foreign wealth—measured by net foreign assets held abroad—amounted to roughly 70% of Europe’s GDP, or about 30% of global GDP. During this period, Europe industrialized while its colonies primarily exported raw materials. More than half of global primary commodity output was directed to Europe, creating a structural imbalance: Europe exported manufactured goods such as British textiles, railways and ships, but these surpluses were far outweighed by deficits in primary commodity trade (Chancel, et al. 2024).
Following World War I, the structure of global creditor and debtor countries began to shift. Between 1914 and 1950, Europe’s foreign assets largely disappeared. These were gradually replaced by US holdings between the 1920s and 1970s, followed by a rise in asset accumulation by oil-exporting countries—particularly in the Middle East—and from 1970s onwards by East Asian economies, notably Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and China (Siddiqui, 2021).
Globalization has consistently produced both winners and losers. In the 19th century, imperial powers asserted dominance through military force and resource extraction. In contrast, the neoliberal wave of globalization promoted the illusion of self-regulating markets, yet yielded outcomes that were similarly unequal. In an era marked by growing geopolitical tensions driven by global imbalances, there is an urgent need to design collective frameworks for a more equitable international economic order. Serious proposals for reforming the financial, monetary, and trading systems must be brought forward to ensure shared prosperity.
VIII. Conclusion
This study has demonstrated that geopolitics—shaped by a country’s geographical position, labour resources, and access to natural endowments—remains a decisive force in structuring global power relations. These spatial factors fundamentally influence foreign policy, development trajectories, and hierarchical positioning within the world system. While neoliberal globalization has spurred economic growth in parts of East Asia, and China (Siddiqui, 2024d), the Global South at large has faced divergent outcomes, with prosperity gaps widening relative to the Global North. Crucially, geopolitics cannot be analysed in isolation: historical legacies of colonialism, cultural specificities, industrial capacity, education, health, infrastructure, and—above all—the external domination exerted by Global North are indispensable to explaining enduring inequalities (Siddiqui, 2019b).
Uneven development is not incidental but characteristics of global capitalism, arising from the system’s inherent drive to concentrate wealth, productive capital, and political power in core regions while marginalisation and peripheralizing others. Contrary to mainstream economic theories—which posit that market liberalization and technological diffusion will eventually reduce disparities, but lacks empirical evidence. These disparities are not merely consequences of internal governance failures in the Global South, as neoliberal orthodoxy suggests, but products of structural global forces: the colonisation, contemporary imperialist interventions, asymmetrical trade regimes, and geopolitical coercion designed to sustain Western hegemony.
While formal colonialism has receded, its logics persist through neocolonial instruments: economic sanctions, regime changes, currency manipulation, and resource extraction. These mechanisms aim to subordinate sovereign states and control strategic assets, as exemplified by: the Middle East’s oil reserves, targeted through perpetual conflict and alignment engineering; Venezuela’s oil wealth, undermined by sanctions and hybrid warfare; West Africa’s mineral riches, exploited by foreign companies and also by financialized extraction. The government change in Iran, for instance, would secure the US dominance over one of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves—fulfilling a longstanding imperial objective to control global energy supplies and undermining independent development models (Siddiqui, 2024e).
Finally, a critical reassessment of uneven development must go beyond surface-level economic indicators to examine the structural dynamics of global power, control over resources, and the political economy of global capitalism. The persistence of uneven development demands renewed attention to the geopolitical and historical roots of inequality. The imperative of alternative paradigms prioritizing sovereignty, equitable redistribution, and ecological sustainability in the Global South. The persistence of these disparities calls for decolonial frameworks that centre historical redress, collective self-determination, and a rupture from the neoliberal world order. Only through such a reckoning can the roots of inequality be dismantled.
About the Author
Dr. Kalim Siddiqui is an economist specializing in International Political Economy, Development Economics, Trade and Economic Policy. Since 1989, he has been teaching economics at various universities in Norway and the UK. Dr. Siddiqui’s research interests encompass a wide range of topics, including political economy, international trade, and economic history, South Asia, and emerging economies. He has presented papers at international conferences across numerous countries, reflecting his global engagement in the field. His scholarly pursuits span six broad domains: Political Economy, Development Economics, Economic History, Economic Policy, Globalization, and International Trade. Dr. Siddiqui has made significant contributions to research in areas such as trade policy, globalization, and political economy. His work has been published in chapters of edited books and articles published in peer-reviewed journals. For inquiries, Dr. Siddiqui can be reached at: [email protected]
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