Recently French troops have had to leave Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Now it’s Chad booting them.
Update: Senegal has now announced it intends to seek the withdrawal of French troops.
The first three countries have Russian troops in them now. Wonder how long it’ll be before Chad joins the crowd?
France has been the most important country in a lot of its ex-colonies in Africa, but it’s losing its place, not just militarily but economically. Countries are turning to China for imported goods and development at the same time as they turn to Russia for security. Chinese goods, development and loans are cheaper, and neither Russia nor China interfere nearly as much in domestic politics.
It’s just a better deal. For a long time you HAD to go to the West, but now Russia and China can supply pretty much everything you need.
As regular readers know I’ve been following Europe’s collapse for a few years now. It’s practically a freefall. In Germany Volkswagon, for example, is planning on closing factories for the first time.
Europe’s well on its way to being what it was for most of history: a backwards and irrelevant peninsula, with the main action and most important civilizations elsewhere in Asia.
bruce wilder
whither the West African CFA franc and Central African counterpart?
I know that France was forced to relinquish much of its leverage over the West African CFA, but don’t know how reform is going. Without knowing the details and exact mechanisms, I suppose that managing the two francs was important to French economic dominance and extraction in the regions.
Robert Powell
In reading of this article and viewing the included map, a couple of points or suggestions are in order: First this, “Europe’s well on its way to being what it was for most of history” which without clarification is “moot”.
Let’s use Mr. Welch’s life span, and statement of ” a few years” as the context. None of his writings note the injection of Fabian Social-ISM or Marx-ISM or derivative as if that political/religious concept ( picture like termites ) rotting of Humanities viability did, does not exist.
Expanding on this tidbit concerning ISM, as a noun or suffix: Forms nouns denoting a system, ideological movement, or nouns denoting a pathological condition. So moving to example of time- Communism -Plato, Clapham sect. Europe, and in America circa –
1840 – The socialist path begins. Saint – Simon a true Socialist, is the founder of Sociology as a tool for guilt association as well as socializing of society for political purposes.
The issues in these discussions are not as simplistic as noted in at least this article. As a retired Military analyst, Historical, Forensic and correlative, while “history is the Engine of the Future” quote, mis-use creates shallow intellectual comprehension. For example, training for, is not an indication of wanting conflict – we are the last to do so. All war is either a money or family or political war.
To ignore either the political or military process is a mistake, as they are twins in the use of deception to gain objectives.
This twin concept is true, especially as it regards The United States and original intent of Founding Documents. No longer abided by of course, while there is no comparison between our rules of the game and the Chinese rules via Mao. Raven6 1965 – 1993 and forward.
Oakchair
Countries are turning to China…
…neither Russia nor China interfere nearly as much in domestic politics.
—–
Imagine if America instead of spending the last 80 years destroying countries for an oligarch Empire had tried China’s approach.
Not only is managing an empire expensive, but it wastes a large portion of a countries attention, brainpower, and time.
There was a potential lesson from the early 20th century when the European powers with smaller empires (Germany, Russia) were stronger than the ones with larger empires (UK, France and Spain).
mago
Wow. The Powell Doctrine.
Anyway, let the steeples and spires tumble, the autobahns crack and crumble, the corvids take over.
The surviving Eurukies can resort to picking grubs from trees like their ancestors of yore, although radioactive in the year 2525.
bruce wilder
a potential lesson from the early 20th century . . . European powers with smaller empires (Germany, Russia) were stronger than the ones with larger empires (UK, France and Spain).
Spain did not have an Empire in the 20th century; maybe you were thinking of Portugal. Russia had the largest Empire after Britain and was only in the middle of the first rank as a Power. Britain was the greatest Power and had the largest Empire.
The monarchies and aristocracies associated with Empire tended to be decadent, and it was the strength of the emergent nation-state(s) that counted when the chrysalis of imperium broke under pressure of political and economic metamorphosis.
Carborundum
I would not begin to put Russia and China at anything resembling parity here. The Chinese are absolutely making huge political and economic inroads, fundamentally reshaping international relations for generations. The Russians are trying desperately to be relevant using SOF wannabes to provide services to political actors with kleptocratic impulses while bleating about how very, very powerful they are.
Very on-brand for both of them.
KT Chong
China has just discovered the world’s largest deposit of gold ore:
https://www.newsweek.com/world-largest-gold-deposit-worth-80billion-discovered-china-reports-1993489
https://www.yahoo.com/news/worlds-largest-gold-deposit-found-012530485.html
https://www.msn.com/en-sg/news/other/world-s-largest-gold-deposit-found-and-it-could-be-worth-80-billion/ar-AA1uYm5l
It is over 1,000 tonnes and worth at least $80 billion. Nowadays billions (starts with a “B”) do not sound like a lot because the US debts and economy are denominated in trillions (starts with a “T”.) However, it is $80 billion of actual physical gold, not trillions of debts and paper money that was created out of thin air.
As I was saying: it really seems that the Universe has been moving all the pieces to favor China and its ascendancy: the Russian-Ukraine War that pushed Russia towards China; the Gaza Genocide that has reminded the Global South of white-on-brown colonization, invasions, genocides, looting and plundering and pushed them towards China, BRICS and de-dollariztion; the re-election of Trump that will erode the trust between the US and Europe, which will open an opportunity for China to drive a wedge between US and its allies.
And now 1,000 tonnes of gold reserve just dropped out of the sky right into China’s laps.
KT Chong
This gold discovery in China came fresh off the heels of the largest oilfield discovery (over 200 million cubic meters) in Bohai Seas in March.
Soredemos
@Robert Powell
I’m always fascinated by the ballistic approach to punctuation and formating these schizo posts have.
Jorge
I wonder how badly the French treat Chad.
“Niger, he wrote, exported uranium worth €3.5 billion ($3.8 billion) to France in 2010 but received only €459 million in return.” That’s a 75x rip-off rate.
https://www.dw.com/en/are-nigers-uranium-supplies-to-france-under-scrutiny/a-66711717
Carbodundum
For context, if the Chinese gold find is completely recovered it will be equivalent to a little under three years of current Chinese production. The stated recoverable estimate from the Bohai Sea field (i.e., not just the recent find) is equivalent to about a month and a half of current Chinese domestic crude production (if my memory of their domestic / import ratio is correct, this would be equivalent to something like 10 days or so of total consumption).
Chipper
Is it me or do we have our first AI-generated troll?
Mark Pontin
Chipper: do we have our first AI-generated troll?
An A-generated troll would have been more lucid. That was a bit more like verbal Tourette’s.