Russia’s Security Assistance to the Central African Republic Is Crucial to Its Stability
What the Kremlin has achieved in the Central African Republic and elsewhere is remarkable since it represents an effective means of ensuring Hybrid War-beleaguered and -threatened states’ security from foreign-backed threats. This has in turn stabilized those countries and their respective regions, which altogether contributes to stabilizing the continent.
Russia has been militarily assisting the Central African Republic (CAR) for several years already upon the request of its internationally recognized government, during which time it’s managed to beat back what many speculate to be French-backed rebels and thus ensure the country’s sovereignty. In fact, bilateral military cooperation has been so successful that it’s arguably become the model that Moscow’s since exported to its other African partners like Mali, albeit tailed to their unique “Democratic Security” conditions.
What the Kremlin has achieved in the CAR and elsewhere is remarkable since it represents an effective means of ensuring Hybrid War-beleaguered and -threatened states’ security from foreign-backed threats. This has in turn stabilized those countries and their respective regions, which altogether contributes to stabilizing the continent. Thus, they have a better chance of fully completing their decolonization processes like Foreign Minister Lavrov recently promised to assist them with when articulating the African dimension of President Putin’s global revolutionary manifesto.
The CAR appreciates Russia’s security assistance so much that it just asked its partner to scale it up in order to train even more of its army, police, and gendarmerie. This represents the greatest endorsement of how successful that Eurasian Great Power’s support has been, which all of Africa is now very well aware of. They realized that strategically partnering with Russia carries with it benefits that they can’t get elsewhere. The US and France only want to dominate them, while the rising powers of the Global South like China and India only focus on development.
Russia, however, has mastered the art of “Democratic Security” in countering Hybrid War threats through the model that it’s perfected in the CAR. Nobody else can provide that type of support to African countries, not even Turkey, though it must be said that Ankara’s drone sales are also very attractive. Nevertheless, they’re just one type of weapon (albeit a potentially game-changing one at that) and not part of a comprehensive security package like what Russia offers to its partners. Moscow’s “Democratic Security” model is therefore unlike anything that African states have ever experienced.
As the continent braces for becoming a major battlefield in the New Cold War, especially West Africa which is already the theater of proxy conflict between France and Russia after Paris was suspected of backing those Al Qaeda-connected militants in Mali that just declared war on Moscow, more countries are expected to request the Kremlin’s “Democratic Security” assistance after seeing how successful it’s been in the CAR. They’ll need it more than ever to defend themselves, protect their sovereignty, fully complete their decolonization processes, and thus play a greater role in multipolarity.
