Clarissa's Blog

For the past 6 years, Russian mercenary troops have been active in 18 countries of Subsaharan Africa. They engage in violence, create chaos, disrupt elections, and conduct targeted killings. Russian military presence in Africa keeps growing.

This started right after President Obama allowed the Russian conquest of the Crimea (which was NOT conducted “without a single shot fired”; you’ve been lied to) to take place. And right after the New York Times assured us that there’s a civil war, not an invasion, happening in Ukraine and Ukrainians are all Nazis anyway.

So why are Russians are so active in Africa? What’s the point? There are three crucial goals to this engagement.

1. Africa has natural resources that are important for modern technology. Controlling them is lucrative.

2. Creating chaos in Africa and preventing Subsaharan countries from enjoying peace and living better lives sends streams of desperate migrants to Europe. This keeps Europe occupied and too weak and busy to notice much else.

But these are marginal benefits. The most important goal is always and only:

3. To be more important in the world than Americans. Or anybody else. That’s the nature of the narcissistic injury I keep talking about. Nothing is ever enough. Nothing satisfies. Killing Ukrainians, torturing Africans, starving Venezuelans – it’s all good fun but it’s never enough.

There’s something really malignant and ominous happening in the world. But we never hear about it. We never hear about the really important stuff. I wonder why that is.