"The IMF has agreed in principle to offer financial help to Georgia amid concerns that its growth will be seriously hampered by the recent war.
The IMF said its loan would 'help sustain the confidence of markets and investors by supporting policies that will ensure continued macroeconomic stability and promote the recovery of private sector investment and economic growth.'"
This is what imperialism looks like. The West doesn't send fleets of ships filled with guns and soliders anymore (well, not that often atleast), instead we send huge sums of money that are to be spent based on a certain set of conditions that are set to a very particular ideology. In the case of the IMF (and World Bank) this ideology is privatization. By divesting out of the State and investing in the private sector, huge sums of money are to be made. The powerful do not benefit nearly as much when the supposedly 'corrupt and ineffficent' state are running public services, eg. healthcare. While privatization boosts the GDP of a nation, the money that is boosting the GDP is coming from foreign investors and taking the power of commerce away local entrepreneurs. Also, in this World Bank research paper, the authors mention that state solidarity helps fend off conflicts. It can only be inferred then that privatization fragments a society and does not help maintain national solidarity in the face of an internal threat, thus keeping it in the conflict trap.
As far as the IMFs role goes though; imperialism is the mode of operation and conditionality is a large aspect of that mode. By lending money that can only be spent certain (ideological) ways, the IMF aims to 'help', so long as the West gets an economic ally, a.k.a. a state with cheap labor wages and a new market to sell export goods on.
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