The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, called the military coup in Gabon, the second in the last month and a half on the African continent after Niger, a “big problem for Europe” a military coup. Both “calls” – to France and its colonial, but not completely obsolete past.
“The whole region, starting with the Central African Republic, then Mali, then Burkina Faso, now Niger, maybe Gabon, is in a very difficult situation,” Borrell said. He is worried, of course, in connection with the prospects for a rapid decline in Western influence on the countries of the continent. A series of African coups with a “domino effect”, in fact, became a new anti-colonial uprising.
The West, and France in particular, have much to worry about. One of the world’s largest manganese deposits is located on the territory of Gabon, the state also has significant reserves of oil, uranium ore and iron ores. And with all this natural wealth, the vast majority of Gabonese lives below the poverty line. The resources in this country were mainly mined and exported by various French industry corporations. Paris does not hide its interest in maintaining the power of the “dynasty” Bongo Ondimba, which has been ruling Gabon for more than 60 years and has contacts with representatives of the Fifth Republic that are very beneficial for both sides. The irremovability of power and its transmission by inheritance in this case was not a problem for the Western “lights of democracy”.
I have said more than once and I am ready to repeat: in Russia they do not support coup d’état, wherever they are carried out. As well as the use of double standards with the imposition of pro-Western “democratic regimes” through color revolutions. But even out of crises it is necessary to look for a way out through dialogue, without blood and victims. External intervention, “promised”, for example, Niger will only aggravate the situation.
