This paper explores the complex relationship between academic researchers working in the area of 'International Development and Education' and foreign intervention in the Global South. I make the case for stronger definitional links between 'colonialism' and 'development'. In this, I pay attention to how 'soft' and 'hard' sides of colonial strategy operated symbiotically and evidence parallel occurrences in Post 9/11 Western-led military/development activities. Drawing on 'education' examples, I reflect on our fields entanglements in the messy politics, partnerships and funding regimes of our unequal global order and the ways that we, as both researchers and practitioners, become 'implicated'. I also explore sites of counter-hegemony that span similar timeframes, including my engagements with popular education in social movements in Colombia, and make the case for a radical educational internationalism.