France has been forced to withdraw its troops from Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. All three countries have forged closer ties with Moscow.
Every since de-colonization France has been the primary power in these countries. When France left most of its colonies it charged them for what it had built during colonial times and has made them pay those debts back. With interest, the debts are still being paid.
Beautiful that, “we conquered you and occupied you and you’re going to pay for that.” France also had a great deal of trade with its former colonial subjects. But that hasn’t been going so well lately.
I’m a bit of a broken record on this, but almost anything you can buy from the West, you can now buy from China. If you’re an African country who needs hydrocarbons or wheat, military equipment or mercenaries, well, Russia is happy to supply those.
And African countries are huge resource exporters, as a rule. China’s deals for resources are better, too. Want a railroad, hospitals, ports, even an entire city? They’ll build it for you, faster and for less than the West, and if you want to borrow money to pay for it, their rates are lower.
Same thing with internet. Want to buy cell phones or computers? China’s are cheaper and essentially as good. Want a telecom network? China’s prices are cheaper and the build faster.
The West doesn’t have a good reputation in Africa. We conquered them, colonized them, and post colonization we have treated them like garbage and with serious disrespect, as if they’re morons, not a region suffering from what we did to them.
On an individual level there’s a fair bit of Chinese racism against Africans, but not at the diplomatic level. Russia and China have a fairly simple policy towards African countries: their internal affairs are their business.
The best quote is from a Kenyan official, “Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture.”
This goes back to what I’ve been saying about Europe, they think their shit doesn’t smell. They believe they are the peak of civilization, with the best government and organization and that they have the right to tell everyone else what to do, because obviously, they’re right, not the inheritors of five hundred years of colonization and looting, currently protected by America as satrapies, occupied after WWII, but no longer even (when lumped all together) in the top four creators of new scientific advances. (Those are China, America, Japan and South Korea.)
This delusional view of their virtues and everyone else’s flaws doesn’t go over well, but Africa and everyone else didn’t have any choice but to put up with it: after the USSR fell and until recently, the West and its conquered subjects (Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) were the only game in town. If you wanted anything remotely advanced, you had to buy it from the West and if you didn’t play by the West’s rules, they would coup you or punish you in various ways you couldn’t resist.
Those times are ending. America can’t even coerce or bribe a country as fundamentally weak and poor as Yemen.
So the Africans are turning to China and Russia, who treat them with a great deal more respect and give them far better terms.
France’s evening glory is ending. Soon they’ll be out everywhere or almost everywhere. The same is true of Europe as a whole. And even the US is being kicked out (most recently out of Niger.)
And Europe will return to it’s normal state: a backwards and largely unimportant peninsula on the periphery of Asia.
Oh, and those colonial debts for being conquered and ruled: about the time the Western financial system becomes one of only two financial systems, the ex-colonies will just stop paying.
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