It seems something is ready to happen
Africa is now becoming a new front in the war between the Atlanticists and Eurasianists. This has been easy to predict as the ‘dark continent’ has plenty of grievance against the Atlanticist hegemony. In crude geostrategic terms the Atlanticist west will have to be cleaned out of Africa if the Eurasianists are going to defeat it world wide and confine it to its home territory.
The immediate cause is the very aggressive French response to Niger’s assertion of its independence. This can accelerate into an all out war, which would draw in the Eurasian powers. Of course Russia will not intervene directly, but it has learned that a small investment in assistance to countries fighting off Atlantic imperialism returns big advantages.
Russia has been reluctant to become the leader of the world wide reaction against imperialism. It really wants to be left alone, as one of its main political factions asserts. Yet just wanting to be left alone, plus having a strong economy and military, and nuclear arsenal, makes it intolerable to the Atlantic elite.
Russia finally understands it is in a fight it cannot avoid. It needs allies and influence if it is not going to be isolated in the world. It is also discovering that fighting imperialism does not require much resources, and in fact strengthen Russia economically.
I have been watching imperialism fold in on itself for some time now. The centers of action have kept shifting around. The middle east used to be very hot.
In recent years eastern Europe has got even hotter, and with the Ukraine war it has come to a boil. Now that it is clear that this war will not go the way the Atlanticists expected it to, they are starting to back away slightly. They have not trapped the Russians into a quagmire.
Instead, the Russians have trapped them into a war of attrition which works very much to Russia’s advantage. What has really hurt the western imperialists is that the Ukraine fiasco has shown that their military and economic power is mostly illusion. Because everything in the Atlantic countries is now sucked dry to feed a bloated rentier class, there is no reinvestment and no research and development.
They can no longer assemble effective military forces. Their weapons are obsolete. When they tried to take down the Russian economy, they took themselves down because they could not realize they had nothing the Russians needed, but were highly dependent on what the Russians had.
Likewise, the Atlantic countries have nothing the Africans need which the Affies cannot get, better and cheaper, from China. Yet Europe is very dependent on raw resources from its ‘former’ colonies in Africa. Also, on the money it still extorts from these countries, which are only ‘former’ colonies in theory, not fact.
France seems especially dependent on this kind of relationship with its neocolonies. France has gone all in with nuclear power to generate electricity. Niger is one of the largest Uranium producers in the world.
Uranium is the vital ingredient for those countries wishing to build ‘Chernobyls in waiting’ all over their territory, and contaminate themselves with nuclear waste, to get cheap power. Its neocolony of Niger is happy to provide all the Uranium France needs, at cost. This is under a ‘right of first refusal’ arrangement which Niger was so happy to sign back in 1960 to get the French to leave their territory without destroying everything on the way out.
Under this same deal France gets to name its price for all the gold Niger produces, the phosphate, and now the oil which has been recently discovered. France has no gold mines, yet one of the largest gold reserves in the world. Niger, and most of the other French neocolonies in west Africa, have also been delighted to let France issue a common currency for them, and allow them to keep all their reserves in the French treasury.
To further secure its control over these nations, France created an organization called ECOWAS. It is an acronym for something in French. It pretends to be a military and economic alliance among the 14 former French colonies of the west of Africa.
Niger and these other Sahel countries have plenty of experience at being French colonies. The Sahel is the grassland belt across the south edge of the Sahara, from the Atlantic across to the Indian Ocean. These were the original “Beau Geste” lands, where France sent its Foreign Legion to persuade local tribes who were not sufficiently appreciative of French rule.
The French have been the most ruthless and persistent colonizers among European nations. They have often extended their sphere of influence into other African nations which had been ruled by European nations which have lost interest in colonialism. This meant, mainly, Belgium and Portugal.
The British had come to rule most of South and East Africa. Believe it or not, they were less nasty than most colonizers. They left useful infrastructure behind when they left. They were less interested in being neocolonizers and let the Americans move in where they left, in exchange for a continuing share of the loot.
The American method of keeping Anglo Africa under control was to force them to take out huge loans from the International Monetary Fund, which they could not possibly repay. They were then required to organize their economies so as to export raw materials very cheap, to pay interest to the debt holders. They could not use their resources for their own development.
Thus for the first fifty years after the great year of ‘independence’ in 1960, most African countries stayed very poor. The kind of people who had been ‘compradores’, procurers for the white functionaries in their countries, and got rich doing so, became these country’s ruling elites after nominal independence. They sent their ill gotten wealth abroad to play the stock market and real estate games in the wealthy countries.
Little of the wealth produced by Africa’s people and resources was reinvested in building services, infrastructure, and productivity. There was little to invest in; the economies of these countries were kept severely crushed so as to keep them dependent. Honest governments which tried to work for the benefit of their countries were overthrown one way or another.
The two main things which African countries were able to achieve in this period were to build education and public health systems. This was with help from some good organizations in the western countries, but more so from the communist countries; China and the old Soviet Union. Thus, a generation of well educated Africans grew up who found no opportunities at home, but usually succeeded when they migrated into western countries.
All this began to change from 2010 onward. China completed its project of gaining economic parity with the west, and began more strongly asserting itself in the world. It focused on Africa, and began to gain influence by building needed infrastructure and industries without demanding exploitive conditions in return.
This resulted in an economic boom in the ‘Anglo Africa’, but not so much yet in the “Francafrique”. Many African leaders found it much easier to deal with the Chinese and started pushing back at western institutions. African states began defaulting on their external debts, demanding they be ‘restructured’, meaning written down, and in some cases they suspended payment altogether.
The western Atlanticist intelligence services seem to find it harder now to organize coups to remove noncompliant governments. African military officers in recent years, even when educated and indoctrinated in Western schools, seem to have come to resent being expected to be muscle for foreign economic interests.
After 2020 African development was slowed by the downturn in global trade. Increasing American use of sanctions against noncompliant states hurt Africa. The Ukraine war has been used as a cover to block exports of Russian wheat to Africa, causing famine in many countries.
The usual Western way of thinking is to see military coups as always bad. They usually are, in places like Latin America. Sometimes coups have been used in this way in Africa, to remove governments interfering with local corruption or neocolonial extraction.
Often in Africa an army coup has been totally necessary. Corruption had led to total breakdown in a country and the army was the only stable institution left.
Western populations have been conditioned to see a representative system with parties and elections as the only form of democracy. In fact its main advantage is to facilitate rule by an oligarchy. It restricts effective government, thus often allowing conditions for extreme corruption.
This is why western style constitutions are usually forced on African states as conditions for ‘aid’. Africans have traditions of different forms of government, often much more democratic, and are usually not impressed by ‘liberal democracy’. Essential services in Africa tend to be run by local chiefs and councils doing business in traditional ways.
In recent years western powers have found it cheaper to exert pressure on uncooperative countries by funding proxy armies. These are mercenaries, usually operating under a cover of Islamic ‘jihadi’ fundamentalism. Several of the west African countries, AngloAfrican and FrancAfrique, are under attack from them.
Some of these countries have had no choice but to invite in American and French troops to help them fight the ‘terrorists’. Niger is home to several foreign bases, and a good number of ‘jihadis’. Nigeriens have noticed with impatience that the western troops are not very effective at getting rid of the jihadis, but seem to be suspiciously getting along with them.
African have had very bad experiences with foreign mercenary armies, usually paid by western commercial interests and intelligence services. Yet in recent years they have learned that mercenaries can be helpful. The Russian Wagner group has been very effective in helping the Central African Republic clear foreign ‘jihadis’ from its territory.
Thus the present crisis in Niger has been developing for some time. The trigger was the coup which overthrew the Bazoum government. Western media harps on the fact that Bazoum came into office through an election, as though ‘elected’ is part of Bazoum’s full name.
Bazoum obtained election by deceiving as to his real aims and attitudes. He campaigned on establishing the country’s independence, then did the ‘one eighty’ as soon as he was in office. Of course, the world is full of governments doing something totally different than what they were elected for promising to do; that is what ‘representative democracy’ is for.
The Nigerien military junta has the full support of the population. Its commanders are so far doing what they say they will do. The army is swamped with volunteers to defend the country and drive out occupiers.
Niger is finding allies everywhere. Several other Francafrique countries have already thrown out governments of western agents. They are promising to treat any attack on Niger as an attack on themselves.
The Niger junta is supported by the public all across western Africa, even in Anglo African countries such as Nigeria. Several governments are likely to fall if they go along with a France and ECOWAS led attack on Niger. Most of the region’s armies will likely refuse to go to war for ECOWAS.
Nonetheless, France and its ECOWAS puppets seem determined to go ahead with an attempt to remove the Nigerien junta. They have assembled forces and claim to have decided on a ‘D’ day. They do have some advantages in such a war.
Niger and its allies will have some problems defending against France and the USA, even working through proxy forces from ECOWAS. Most are landlocked countries with poorly developed infrastructure. Transportation links that exist do not facilitate lateral communications between them.
Niger gets most of its electric power from Nigeria. Most of these countries are not self sufficient in food, though the exact nutrition situation is unclear. They would likely run out of fuel quickly without relief supplies.
Niger and its allies have a very hard struggle ahead of them. They will likely not succeed, or have to endure privations on a scale with Yemen, unless they get outside help. This is why the heads of state of several of these nations were in Russia last week, being very friendly with President Putin.
Putin looked somewhat pained during the public part of the meeting. Russia is in a difficult position; it cannot be seen as encouraging conflict. It can do nothing until France and the USA have clearly broken international law.
Nonetheless, Russia is being admired in Africa. People wave Russian flags as they protest the west. They have a long memory of how much help they got from Russia during the Soviet Union times.
In the Ukraine war Russia has shown how limited western military and economic power really is. Africans have seen Russia brush off western economic sanctions. Even more, they see how sanctions against Niger’s neighbour, Mali, have had little effect.
Maximum pressure must be exerted on France and USA to back off. This will be hard for France to do because losing its African colonies will be a severe economic blow and mean its end as a major power. The big argument to persuade France is that it is eventually going to lose its colonies and its status anyway.
French control over west Africa cannot be sustained in the long run. Britain, Belgium, and Portugal all earned this painfully and expensively. The USA will learn it. It is time for France to give up on it.
Another incentive for France to drop it is the behaviour of the USA. Uncle Sam’s attempts to take the lead in west Africa, and push France aside, are causing friction between the two countries. This could turn into a mainly American war.
But to reiterate, in the initial stage of such a war the Nigerien side would have a very hard time of it. They would have to be able to bring in material and technical aid through those allies with seaports. Those ports would have to be protected.
Transport infrastructure would have to be built very quickly to get material assistance to where it is needed. Much will depend on the reaction of the armies and publics of countries which until now are aligned to ECOWAS, especially Nigeria. Many parts of West Africa will suffer greatly in such a war.
But it will most likely end with a deserved defeat for the Atlantic Imperialists. It will be long overdue. Africa has needed a real liberation for so very long.
Adults in Charge 