Bloomberg’s Acknowledgement Of Russian Gains In Africa Is A Soft Power Defeat For The US

Nobody can claim that Bloomberg is part of a so-called “Russian disinformation campaign” so they’re forced to admit that Marques makes a few “politically inconvenient” points that go against the US Government’s messaging on the topic.

Bloomberg surprisingly acknowledged in a recent opinion piece that Russia has made strategic gains in Africa at America’s expense. This represents a major soft power defeat for the US, whose Ambassador to the UN delusionally denied several days later that her country is competing with Russia there. It marks an influential admission that American policy towards Africa has been a failure, which contradicts the Mainstream Media’s official narrative that Russia is supposedly “isolated” there and everywhere else.

In her article asking “Is Russia Winning the Battle for African Support?”, Clara Ferreira Marques reminders readers that roughly half of African countries didn’t vote to condemn Russia at the UN. She also brought up its expanding security ties with the continent as well as the crucial role that it plays in ensuring many of its partners’ food security. To her credit, she also acknowledges “widespread distrust of the West” too but then lies by claiming that it’s influenced by “Russian disinformation campaigns”.

Nevertheless, all of this is still important information that Western readers should be aware of even if Marques decided to spin it in a way that denies the independent agency of African countries. She then took her piece in the direction of prescribing the policies that she believes will help the West regain its lost influence there. According to the Bloomberg columnist, they should first start by ensuring Africa’s food security, though she omits to mention that the food crisis is caused by Western sanctions.

She indirectly touched upon that in her penultimate sentence when she wrote that “It isn’t enough to wring hands in Brussels and Washington when the head of the African Union makes misleading comments on Western sanctions and plays into Putin’s hunger games”, which was a reference to African Union Chairman Macky Sall agreeing with the Russian leader during his trip to Sochi in early June that those illegal economic restrictions are responsible for Africa’s latest hunger crisis.

That was extremely disrespectful of her to put forth since it implies that Sall is a such an idiot that he doesn’t even know the real reason why millions across his own continent are facing starvation, which she falsely claims that Russia is responsible for. The optics of a Caucasian hinting at an African leader’s lack of intelligence carry with them very racist undertones, though it’s unlikely that she’ll apologize since she probably doesn’t even realize how uncomfortable her comment makes many people.

Moving along, Marques’ second proposal is for Western engagement with Africa to be driven by green energy outreaches, which she thinks will reduce the influence that she believes is associated with Russia’s resource deals there. And finally, her last suggestion is for the West to double down on diplomacy and communication, which can be interpreted as a call for further pressuring African governments and their people, including through the spread of anti-Russian disinformation.

For as confident as this columnist is in her policy prescriptions, she’s as wide off the mark as she inaccurately described Russian media’s boasting of their newfound influence across Africa as being. Despite inadvertently dealing a soft power defeat to the US with her article, she still can’t bring herself to openly acknowledge the real reason why Russia’s made such impressive strategic inroads across Africa, which are attributable to its strictly non-ideological foreign policy.

Unlike the West, Russia doesn’t attach political strings to the support that it extends to its many African partners. It also doesn’t care what socio-economic or political systems they have so long as they’re truly sovereign, which she dismisses in her article as supposedly endorsing so-called “autocracy” even though the external imposition of so-called “democracy” onto the continent’s traditional societies has proven to have destabilized many of them over the decades.

Another factor that Marques omits to mention is President Putin’s global revolutionary manifesto that he recently shared with the world, which inspired the entire Global South. She also doesn’t talk about Foreign Minister Lavrov’s promise to support the full completion of African countries’ decolonization processes, nor the success that it’s thus far had in doing so when it comes to the Central African Republic and most recently Mali, among others.

Her brief mentioning of Russia’s private military contractors’ appeal being that “no awkward questions (are) asked” avoids focusing on how this form of security support enables its partners to counteract Western-backed Hybrid Warfare threats. This is all the more appealing to a growing range of African states as they quickly realize that their continent is poised to become a major theater of proxy warfare in the New Cold War and will thus require more Russian support to defend themselves.

All of these aforementioned reasons contribute to discrediting Marques’ disrespectful and arguably racist innuendo that so-called “Russian disinformation” is partially responsible for African countries embracing Moscow despite considerable Western pressure to distance themselves from it. She’s right that “Russia’s Winning the Battle for African Support” like she headlined her article, but couldn’t bring herself to report on all the reasons behind this, nor could she acknowledge Africans’ agency.

Instead, while still unwittingly dealing a defeat to the US’ soft power by admitting Russia’s strategic inroads there as of late, she chalks a lot of it up to “Russian disinformation campaigns” because the truth of African countries independently cultivating mutually beneficial relations with Moscow is too damaging to the Mainstream Media’s official narrative. This explains why she wouldn’t dare inform her readers about that, nor make reference to Russia’s success in countering Western Hybrid War threats.

In any case, her article is still important since it can be shared with people who’ve been brainwashed into believing that Russia is “isolated”. Nobody can claim that Bloomberg is part of a so-called “Russian disinformation campaign” so they’re forced to admit that Marques makes a few “politically inconvenient” points that go against the US Government’s messaging on the topic. That in and of itself can help make some progress in “deprogramming” the Western masses and thus liberating their minds.