Dr Ashraf Abul Saud
In the twenty-first century, colonialism rarely announces itself with armies or flags.
It operates more quietly, specifically through financial institutions, development programmes, humanitarian aid, and even policies that shape how people live and reproduce.
One of the most provocative ideas in modern geopolitics is that of “demographic colonialism” or “population imperialism”, a notion through which major powers treat the population profiles of weaker nations as strategic tools to maintain control over resources, markets, and global influence.
This thinking did not emerge overnight. Its intellectual roots trace back to British economist Thomas Robert Malthus who argued that human populations grow faster than the resources needed to sustain them.
What began as an economic observation later evolved into a political philosophy that often framed rapid population growth in poorer countries as a threat to the stability and prosperity of the industrialised world.
By the 1970s, amid the energy crisis and decolonisation movements across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, American policymakers grew increasingly concerned.
Many of the world’s most vital resources, including oil, minerals, metals, and agricultural commodities, lay in countries with fast-growing populations.
The central question shifted from “How do we govern these nations?” to “How do we prevent them from becoming uncontrollable powers that could challenge our access to those resources?”
This thinking crystallised in the 1974 Kissinger Report (National Security Study Memorandum 200), prepared under Henry Kissinger during the Nixon administration.
The document openly linked rapid population growth in developing countries to political instability, the rise of nationalist governments, and potential threats to US access to strategic raw materials.
It argued that high fertility rates were no longer just a health or development issue, but a matter of American national security.
The report highlighted a list of countries of special concern: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and others.
Critics saw this selective focus as revealing an underlying worldview: population growth in Europe or North America was manageable, even desirable, while growth in the Global South was portrayed as a global risk that needed to be managed.
Rather than relying on direct coercion, these concerns translated into softer tools: international loans, family planning programmes, health initiatives, media campaigns, and development assistance.
Organisations promoting contraception and smaller families often presented their work in the language of empowerment, poverty reduction, and women’s rights.
Many programmes undoubtedly delivered real benefits, such as lower maternal mortality, better child health, and improved economic opportunities for families.
However, some observers argue that these initiatives also carried a deeper strategic layer. American researcher Steven Mosher, in his book ‘Population Control: Real Costs, Imaginary Benefits’, described how population control efforts were sometimes marketed as pure humanitarianism while serving larger geopolitical aims.
Similar critiques appeared in earlier works examining US diplomacy during the Cold War, where development aid and population policy became instruments of influence.
Controversies erupted in several countries. In Brazil in the early 1990s, investigations by newspapers, such as Correio Braziliense and Jornal do Brasil revealed widespread sterilisation campaigns targeting poor women, particularly those of African descent.
Parliamentary inquiries uncovered links to international funding streams tied to population programmes. Cases like these fuelled accusations that some policies went beyond voluntary family planning and veered into demographic engineering.
Such episodes inevitably invite comparison to the darker chapters of 20th-century eugenics, the belief that human reproduction could and should be managed by those in power.
While today’s policies operate under very different rhetoric and institutional frameworks, the fundamental moral question remains: Who has the right to decide which populations should grow and which should be limited, and for whose benefit?
Population policies have contributed to genuine progress in health and development in many places.
Fertility rates have fallen across much of the Global South, often with positive economic effects. But ignoring the geopolitical context, in which many of these programmes were designed risks oversimplifying history.
When powerful nations view the wombs of women in poorer countries as variables in their security equations, it raises legitimate concerns about sovereignty, dignity, and fairness.
The debate over demographic colonialism is ultimately about more than numbers. It is about whether human beings are seen primarily as resources to be managed, or as individuals and communities with the inherent right to shape their own future.
Dr Ashraf Abul Saud
is a writer and an international relations scholar.
