The US Is Rolling Out a New Lie for Pressuring African States to Cut Off Ties with Wagner
The emerging policy is that Russian-friendly states that contract Wagner’s “Democratic Security” services will be targeted with accusations of secretly helping that group evade sanctions as well as committing war crimes with them against their own people.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller claimed during a press conference on Monday that Wagner is secretly sourcing sanctioned military equipment through Mali for use in Eastern Europe. Despite clarifying that “We have not seen, as of yet, that – any indications that these acquisitions have been finalized or executed”, this allegation still serves a very strategic purpose since it could become the public pretext upon which to pressure African states to cut off ties with that group.
Unnamed US officials told Politico earlier this month about their country’s plan to wage an information warfare-driven pressure campaign on Wagner all across Africa, which builds upon the one that French officials told Axios about last October. The larger context in which Miller rolled out this latest lie concerns the West’s ongoing efforts over the past year to delegitimize Mali’s transitional government as punishment for it kicking France out, banning its NGOs, and turning into a regional anti-imperial leader.
That country was the second one to contract Wagner’s “Democratic Security” services, which refers to counter-Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategies aimed at protecting national models of democracy from what’s more often than not Western-emanating destabilization and regime change threats. The Central African Republic was the first to showcase that group’s associated expertise, but it didn’t attract continental attention until it was successfully employed in a completely different setting in West Africa.
That showed the rest of Africa that Russia can indeed be an invaluable security partner in the New Cold War exactly as it’s presented itself as being, which in turn reduces the likelihood that they’ll ever jump on the West’s sanctions bandwagon since they’d then be more vulnerable to its Hybrid War plots. The US realized the role that Wagner plays in Russia’s African grand strategy, hence why its officials informed Politico earlier this month that they’re commencing a continental pressure campaign against it.
Mali has turned into the test of whether this new information warfare-driven policy will succeed. The reason why this country is being targeted instead of the Central African Republic is because it sits in the center of a much more fragile region whose further shattering could simultaneously facilitate the West’s divide-and-rule efforts as well as create the opportunity for more interventions there too. Mali is therefore a regional pivot state, which thus makes it one of Africa’s most strategic countries.
In parallel with the latest lie about Wagner allegedly exploiting Mali as a workaround for obtaining sanctioned military equipment is the other lie that’s been bandied about claiming that those two killed hundreds of villagers last year. Unlike the first-mentioned that’s being unilaterally pushed by the US, the second is being laundered through one of the West’s UN proxies. Taken together, they represent a coordinated attempt to delegitimize and maximally pressure Mali.
The emerging policy is that Russian-friendly states that contract Wagner’s “Democratic Security” services will be targeted with accusations of secretly helping that group evade sanctions as well as committing war crimes with them against their own people. Whether unilaterally spewed or propagandized via putatively reputable institutional proxies like those “human rights” ones connected to the UN, the purpose will be to precondition the public into accepting sanctions against those states.
That likely won’t be the end of such campaigns, however, since the socio-economic consequences of these restrictions could then be weaponized to provoke Color Revolutions and “legitimize” sprees of terrorism carried out under the cover of the culprits supposedly being “democratic freedom fighters”. To simplify, the West’s planned Hybrid War sequence is to employ information warfare to create the pretext for sanctions that in turn “justify” more direct meddling for regime change purposes.
Having exposed their machinations, it’ll now be comparatively easier to thwart them, which is the role that Wagner will play in these targeted countries since that was the reason why they were contracted in the first place. Far from successfully pressuring those states to cut off ties with that group, these impending multidimensional pressure campaigns will therefore likely only lead to those two becoming even closer due to their shared interests, which would thus make the West’s policy counterproductive.
