Russia Defended Its “Democratic Security” Efforts in West Africa & The Sahel at the UNSC
It’s expected that the Golden Billion won’t passively stand by while Russia helps liberate its West African and Sahel partners from their neo-colonial yoke country-by-country, hence why it’s predicted that the French-Russo proxy war there will intensify.
Africa is poised to become a bigger battleground this year in the New Cold War between the US-led West’s Golden Billion and the jointly BRICS– & SCO-led Global South over the direction of the global systemic transition. The first-mentioned de facto bloc’s American and French members want to reassert their declining unipolar hegemony there in the face of the second’s leading Russian member comprehensively helping its African partners finally complete their decolonization processes.
Axios reported last fall about how France envisages pushing back against the progress that Russia has made in bolstering regional countries’ “Democratic Security” capabilities, which refers to the wide range of counter-Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategies for stabilizing their national models of democracy in the face of externally exacerbated divide-and-rule threats like those posed by the Golden Billion. According to that outlet, Paris’ primary modus operandi will be to disproportionately rely on information warfare.
These military-strategic dynamics set the backdrop to this week’s UNSC briefing on West Africa and the Sahel (WAFS). Al Jazeera reported how the Golden Billion’s three permanent representatives attempted to defame Russia’s relevant activities as supposedly destabilizing and plundering the region. In response, Russia’s Deputy Permanent Representative Anna Evstigneeva shared a sharply worded statement that the reader can review in full on her country’s official UN site in which she defended its policies there.
The WAFS region wasn’t destabilized and plundered by Russia, but by the Golden Billion as proven by NATO’s 2011 War on Libya and everything that came afterwards, including France’s unsuccessful anti-terrorist campaign across this broad swath of the continent. About the second-mentioned, she remarked that Paris’ abrupt withdrawal from Mali that was done without coordinating with Bamako compelled that host country to reach out to Russia for relevant security assistance.
That state and all others have the sovereign UN-enshrined right to cooperate with whoever they’d like in pursuit of their objective national interests such as those anti-terrorist ones that Moscow is assisting Bamako with. The principle of “African solutions to African problems” must be respected, to which end regional states and related integration organizations like ECOWAS should take the lead instead of the Golden Billion imposing its own self-interested so-called “solutions” onto everyone else.
Evstigneeva reaffirmed that false smears about Russia’s activities in the WAFS region won’t deter it from continuing to “carry on with bilateral support to countries of the region, which includes building of combat capacity of the armed forces, training of military and law enforcement personnel, and provision of humanitarian assistance.” This final part of her response to her counterparts from the Golden Billion can be interpreted as her country doubling down on its “Democratic Security” efforts.
This will in turn strengthen its regional partners’ sovereignty, which is the fundamental component for finally completing their drawn-out decolonization processes in alignment with President Putin’s vision for Russian-African relations in the emerging Multipolar World Order. Nevertheless, it’s expected that the Golden Billion won’t passively stand by while the WAFS region is liberated from their neo-colonial yoke country-by-country, hence why it’s predicted that the French-Russo proxy war there will intensify.
