France seems intent on using its Council of the European Union presidency to tighten its slipping grip on Africa and to catalyze increased European integration.
As the world’s bread basket, Africa has long fed the coffers of French industry, from defense to natural resources. Paris has traditionally considered itself to be a privileged partner of the continent, and particularly of its former colonies. With France itself being relatively resource poor, the relationships are considered critical to France’s own sovereignty.
If France can call the shots with its African partners, then it doesn’t need to hunt for resources on less friendly grounds over which it has much less leverage and control. And now it also gets to call the shots for Europe – at least temporarily. And Macron certainly isn’t going to let that opportunity go to waste.
So when Macron took over the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on January 1, 2022, he turned his sights straight to Africa.
The first event organized by the French government in this role was a meeting on identifying the priorities for EU members in their relationship with the African Union ahead of a February summit between the two. During a press conference on January 11, Macron said that he wants Europe to be “stronger in the world” and to “to build a new alliance, to rebuild our European Union-African Union partnership.”
While Macron may wax poetic in public about investing in “green infrastructures” and “supporting prosperity and peace” in Africa, one can catch a glimpse of another agenda behind his platitudes.
Macron has long had a dream of greater European integration, of which one of the cornerstones is his dream of a ‘European defense’.
The notion fits with Macron’s vision of Europe that mirrors and extends the position of former French General and President Charles de Gaulle of France as a geopolitical power capable of serving as a broker between the Russian and American geopolitical power poles. And Africa provides the perfect backdrop of conflict and proximity to Europe to serve as a pretext for showcasing this new European army concept.
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“For we do not
wrestle against
flesh and blood,
but against the
rulers, against
the authorities,
against the
cosmic powers
over this present
darkness, against
the spiritual forces
of evil in the
heavenly places.”
—Ephesians 6:12
“Believers who view other people as the enemy will not be able to vanquish the real foe.”
—David Jeremiah
Flesh and blood (human beings) are NOT the Enemy. We human beings have a common Enemy, and it’s Not each other. The Enemies strategy is to pin us all against each other. Satan is having big success with that strategy currently.
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