The Interim Malian President’s Call With Putin Is Actually a Pretty Big Deal
Russia’s “Democratic Security” assistance to Mali could literally be a game changer with respect to accelerating the global systemic transition to multipolarity across Africa since it stands the chance of creating an effective model that can be employed for liberating those other neo-colonized nations that are languishing under France’s hegemonic yoke.
Calls between heads of state happen every day and usually aren’t a big deal, but Tuesday’s one between the interim Malian President and his Russian counterpart is actually pretty important. It came on the same day that this West African multipolar pioneer received Russian military aircraft for assisting in its War on Terror against Al Qaeda-connected groups that are suspected of being backed by that country’s former French colonizer. During their conversation, the official Kremlin website reported that these two leaders discussed “possible deliveries of Russian food, fertilizers and fuel to Mali” alongside trade, military, and political cooperation. Most observers might have missed it, but Mali has indisputably become one of Russia’s top strategic partners anywhere in Africa.
To explain, last year’s coup liberated this geo-pivotal state in the center of France’s self-declared “sphere of influence” that it patronizingly refers to as “Françafrique”. Mali’s military junta has since kicked out its former colonizers’ troops and put Paris in its place after it dared to defame them for their pragmatic comprehensive cooperation with Moscow. What France is so afraid of is that the “Malian model” of multipolar-inspired members of the military unexpectedly overthrowing their foreign-backed puppet leaders and rapidly placing their country on the path of fully completing their decades-long decolonization processes might be emulated by others at Paris’ zero-sum grand strategic expense. It’s for this reason why that Western European country is now waging a proxy war against Mali.
Mali isn’t just a place where Russia has successfully proven its anti-terrorist commitment that in turn ensures its partner’s territorial integrity and thus helps fully complete its decolonization processes exactly as Foreign Minister Lavrov promised that Moscow would help all African countries do. Following its interim leader’s call with President Putin, it’s also now the most high-profile place on the continent where the Kremlin is successfully practicing its policy of “Democratic Security” in non-military ways to complement its already existing military ones. This concept refers to the creative employment of counter-Hybrid War tactics and strategies that concern not just military support but also socio-economic backing as well in order to sustainably ensure stability through comprehensively preemptive means.
This novel policy was earlier practiced and perfected in the Central African Republic (CAR), after which it was exported to Mali upon that recipient state’s request, albeit customized for that West African country’s unique “Democratic Security” situation. CAR is comparatively much more isolated and cut off from the rest of the world than Mali is so most of the international community outside of the continent never really caught on to Russia’s cutting-edge means for preemptively counteracting Western destabilization plots in Africa. Mali, by contrast, has at least been reported on a lot more over the past nine years since France began its ultimately failed anti-terrorist campaign there that many locals suspect was just a cover for attempting to reimpose its hegemony over their country.
As proven by its interim leader’s call with his Russian counterpart, Moscow is now scaling up its “Democratic Security” assistance to Bamako from purely military aid to an entire package of socio-economic support that importantly includes food, fertilizers, and fuel for counteracting the destabilizing consequences of the crises that Western sanctions caused for these commodities. This serves three other purposes apart from simply helping Mali sustainably ensure stability through comprehensively preemptive means. First, the Russian-Malian Strategic Partnership is quickly becoming the focus of global media attention, which has already generated a lot of fake news from the Mainstream Media (MSM) but also raised awareness across the Global South of Russia’s “Democratic Security” policy.
Second, this newfound attention among the vast majority of the international community that’s refused to sanction Russia despite immense US pressure on them to do so will inevitably lead to more opportunities for Moscow to practice this novel policy upon other recipient states’ requests after seeing how successful it’s bound to be in Mali. And third, Mali is geostrategically important because it sits in the center of what France regards as its exclusive “sphere of influence”, and its interim government has proven itself to be regional multipolar pioneers, so Moscow’s comprehensive preemptive support for Bamako could ultimately shift the balance of influence in this latest proxy war theater of the New Cold War.
These observers lead to the conclusion that Russia’s “Democratic Security” assistance to Mali could literally be a game changer with respect to accelerating the global systemic transition to multipolarity across Africa since it stands the chance of creating an effective model that can be employed for liberating those other neo-colonized nations that are languishing under France’s hegemonic yoke. The CAR was also within France’s “sphere of influence” but is far-flung and nowhere near as geostrategically significant as Mali is. For this reason, the scaling up of Russia’s “Democratic Security” assistance to Mali as revealed by its interim leader’s latest call with President Putin is an extremely meaningful development that regional observers should pay attention to and closely follow.
