Why Russia will inevitably take Africa from France

МОСКВА, 14 июня 2021, Институт РУССТРАТ.

French President Emmanuel Macron went into hysterics. And this would be fine because of Boshirov’s machinations with Petrov in Europe or the growing scandal with the American wiretapping of European leaders through Denmark. But no.

The French president was offended by the authorities and local leaders of the African Republic of Mali, who said that the French are not able to ensure order in their country, and their actions, on the contrary, strengthen the division. Whereas the Russians came to the neighbouring Central African Republic, and in just three years have positive progress. And before that, the Russians dealt with a similar problem in Syria. In general, “how great it would be if these specialists found an opportunity to turn to us.”

The leader of the Fifth Republic did not like this so much so that the African Union suspended the membership of the Republic of Mali in its organisation “until the restoration of constitutional order there”. Paris hinted at the creation of serious economic problems for Mali “in the zone of Francophonie” (the monetary system of all former French colonies in Africa is tightly tied to the French franc, and now, by inertia, to the euro).

Moreover, the French leader openly stated that Paris is ready to completely withdraw French troops from Mali if the country continues to follow the path of deepening Islamic radicalism. In general, let someone else continue to fight with ISIS.

The latter caused a shock to the British, the Belgians and a number of other European governments, who also participated in the “UN mission in Mali” with their military contingents. For example, London holds as many as 300 bayonets there, which, in the event of the departure of the French paratroopers and the foreign legion, will not be enough to ensure control even over the capital alone.

In a certain sense, Macron can be understood. Having reshaped its policy to the new external realities, France continues to desperately try to maintain its dominance over the former colonies in Africa, which to this day form the basis of its sources of raw materials and, consequently, material well-being.

In these times, the economy is not easy at all. The United States is closing its market for European goods and even food. The competition with China is a quiet losing battle. The Russian market is also closed due to the sanctions that Paris so rashly got into in 2014-2015.

The Americans first set fire to the economically important Middle East with colour revolutions, and now they are clearly losing to the Turks and especially to the Russians. For “doing business”, Paris does not have many options left.

But the problem is that, trying to preserve the old colonial model as much as possible, Paris at the same time blocks in every possible way any internal development in the controlled territories. Thus repeating the Spanish mistake in the Netherlands, which ended with the Dutch Revolution of 1566-1609. For the emerging local bourgeois elites, there was simply no place in the Spanish system of power, which automatically placed them in the invariant principled opponents of the Spanish crown.

Turkey, which is also interested in the idea of reviving something similar to the Ottoman Empire, is trying to use the situation in its favour, in which the growing popularity of Islamic religious ideas turns out to be a good trump card.

In the end, with “black” militants in Syria and Iraq, Ankara, at one time, established quite profitable and quite successful cooperation, believing that it would be able to grab under its hand not only “moderate democratic radicals”, but also to take control of absolutely all the “new leaders”, thereby forming a “new Ottoman space” from Central Asia to North and Central Africa inclusive.

However, only in Africa it turns out badly. Instead of the relatively sane “green” militants who agree with the Turkish leadership, the so-called Sahel Zone is sinking deeper and deeper into openly “black” militant radicalism, which creates problems not only for European countries, or Western democracy as a whole, but also intensifies the internal civil war, which even the UN troops are powerless to cope with.

In short, in Central Africa, a blatant vacuum of geopolitical power is deepening, into the zone of which Russia is already openly entering, as the only country in the world capable of offering local warring groups a completely new civilisational model that allows both Russian and its own local economic and political interests to be combined without conflict.

The process, of course, is not fast. Moscow is still feeling for the contours of its own technology, but geopolitically it has already become fundamental. Simply because none of our competitors on the planet is simply able to offer any better solution.

Yes, the enemy still has the ability to kick at least locally, as, for example, in the history of the Russian naval base in Sudan, the government of which was first two-handed in favour, and now, not without American participation, abruptly changed its position to the opposite. But this has little effect on the overall dynamics of the process – “the jackals bark and the caravan goes by”.

Институт международных политических и экономических стратегий Русстрат

(@russtrat)