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Imperial powers and so empires have always been with us. They've been part and parcel of history forever and a day. However, in this country, though it should be difficult to deny that the United States is just such a power, most Americans remain remarkably oblivious not just to the phenomenon, but to the very idea of it. No matter that, in this century, their country invaded and occupied two lands, Afghanistan and Iraq, thousands of miles distant (and more than a thousand miles apart). No matter that its annual military budget, now heading for the trillion-dollar mark, has for the last 20-plus years been spent in significant fashion fighting a disastrous Global War on Terror (that could indeed hardly have been more "global"), or that its military maintains a veritable empire of 750 bases scattered across the planet.
Us, imperialists? Huh?
No matter that, to this day, the U.S. continues to fight that very war on terror in Africa (something Nick Turse reports on regularly and vividly at The Intercept). No matter that, more than two months after a military coup in Niger overthrew its democratic government, the Biden administration is still keeping U.S. troops and drones in that country. Yes, Washington officials have finally admitted that a military coup did indeed occur there and has cut off financial aid to that country. But cut the military? Of course not!
Mind you, we are anything but the only imperialists on this planet. Today, TomDispatch regular Alfred McCoy, author of that classic tale of empires, To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change, and now at work on a history of the Cold War and what he calls imperial "men on the spot," focuses on the modern history of Africa. There, once upon a time, France had an empire covering one-quarter of the second largest continent on this planet and there, in our moment, a Russian agent distinctly a man on the spot Yevgeny Prigozhin helped dismantle the modern version of imperial French Africa before he himself was, it seems, dismantled by one Vladimir Putin. But let McCoy tell you this distinctly imperial tale. Tom
Moscow's Man on the Spot in Africa
A Powerful Player in the Dirty Business of Empire
By Alfred McCoy
One of modern history's major empires is falling apart right now, right before our eyes. Yet precious few in the media have reported on this extraordinary event, much less offered any analysis of its implications for the fast-changing shape of global power.
Over the past 60 years, France has used every possible diplomatic device, overt and covert, fair and foul, to incorporate some 14 African nations into a neocolonial imperium called "Françafrique" a vast region covering a quarter of Africa and stretching for nearly 3,000 miles from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Chad in the continent's center.
While the rest of that continent frequently suffered from wars, coups, and chronic instability, Françafrique long enjoyed comparative peace. By dispatching paratroopers from its many African bases (or secret agents for the occasional assassination), Paris provided a rough version of stability even if at the price of endemic corruption, entrenched autocratic rule, and deep economic exploitation. Recently, however, a rising nationalist consciousness in many of those relatively new countries has begun chafing against that European land's repeated transgressions of their sovereignty. As French colonial and post-colonial dominance over this vast region moved ever deeper into its second century, unease bordering on open hostility against that country's presence began to build.
In less than a year, in fact, the sudden withdrawal of French troops from individual African nations has turned into a full-blown retreat from much of the region. As terrorists affiliated with ISIS first became active in 2014, France deployed some 5,000 elite troops for Operation Barkhane in collaboration with six nations of Africa's arid Sahel region, the strip of territory extending across the continent, largely south of the Sahara Desert.
Yet just last December, French troops left the Central African Republic after Paris decided that the local government there was "complicit in an anti-French campaign allegedly steered by Russia." In February, Burkino Faso's new military government simply expelled French forces and hailed its new "strategic partnership" with Russia. And in August, following back-to-back coups in Mali, that country's ruling junta grew resentful of the 2,400 French troops stationed there and forced them to withdraw into neighboring Niger, which became the new main base for their operations in the Sahel region. Then, last month, French President Emmanuel Macron was forced to announce that he was pulling his troops and his ambassador out of Niger as well. After seizing power in July, that country's new military junta had demanded just such a French departure and, to drive the point home, closed its airspace to France. "Imperialist and neocolonialist forces are no longer welcome on our national territory," the junta announced.
Amid such geopolitical upheaval, a most unlikely man from Moscow appeared on the spot in 2017. His name now all too well known was Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder and commander of a notorious mercenary army, the Wagner Group. As the French retreated slowly and exceedingly reluctantly from their post-colonial imperium, Wagner began moving in, becoming Moscow's surrogate in an ongoing great-power contest for influence and control in Africa.
By the time in late 2022 that France's failing nine-year effort to secure the Sahel was drawing down, Wagner's forces were already operating secret gold mines in Sudan, running the largest gold mine in the Central African Republic with projected revenues of $100 million annually, and had earned $200 million since 2021 providing security for Mali, a land roiled by Islamist rebels. In March, Washington warned Chad's president that Wagner mercenaries were plotting to assassinate him and were also preparing Chadian rebels to attack from their bases in the Central African Republic. After the July coup in Niger, cheering crowds were seen waving (as well as wearing) Russian flags. And as 1,500 French troops and that country's ambassador were being withdrawn, Niger's new military leaders promptly contacted Wagner for support, expanding Russia's sphere of influence in the French imperium it was fast supplanting.
The strategic implications of this shift, should it continue, are potentially profound. As the NATO alliance moved ever closer to Russia's sensitive western border in the 1990s, Moscow reacted early in this century (prior to the invasion of 2022) with repeated interventions in Ukraine, launched special operations to secure its allies in Central Asia, and, above all, engaged in a little understood geopolitical flanking maneuver across two continents.
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