Reparations as Geopolitical Performance

Reparations claims can function less as principled demands for historical justice and more as diplomatic signaling: states press former colonial powers publicly while simultaneously deepening strategic ties with other historical actors who share or practiced similar pasts. This produces selective accountability and reconfigures who gets pressured, credited, or partnered in contemporary international relations. — If reparations rhetoric is often performative, it reshapes diplomatic bargaining, skews accountability debates, and affects how historical narratives are mobilized in foreign policy across Africa, China, and former colonial powers.