Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. When it comes to geopolitics, we tend to focus on Ukraine or Gaza or Taiwan. And when it comes to powers rival in the United States, we focus most often these days on China, but sometimes overlooked our developments in West Africa, where increasingly the rival is not China but Russia, with potential economic as well as security implications for the United States. To give us a
status report, we welcome now Ian Bremer. He's founder and president of the Eurasia Group and author, most recently of The Power of Crisis. So Ian, welcome back. Great to have you here. As I said, we tend not to focus on places like Nizier and Chad and Burkina, Faso and things, but there's a lot of developments going on right now there that are not particularly good for the US or even US investors.
Yeah. Well, I mean there are almost no journalists on the ground, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter, and this part of the world does matter. It matters in particular because there are a lot a lot of that are very important for industrial processes, especially as we turn to transition energy away from coal and towards you know, batteries, and they require a lot of what we get out
of the ground from these countries. But governance in this part of the world is very poor, indeed, explosion of insurgencies, Islamic radicalism, and very poor local governance with a lot of military coups that have happened in these countries, and some of the most authoritarian, most brutal leaders in the world want to turn to a country that will provide them support for security and not ask any questions at all about their human rights abuses and governance on the ground.
And you know the best country for that at scale, that's Russia.
Well, and to speak of that, I mean it's I guess a reconstitution of the Wagner Group now called Africa Corps. There's moved in. They actually reportedly have some troops on the ground that displaced some US and French forces.
That's right. In many of these countries they have told the Americans the French to get out after the military has taken over the leadership of the country and they want to have the need paramilitaries, they need advanced military equipment and they're willing to pay for it, and if they don't have hard currency, they can give you a percentage or control or an interest in state controlled companies on the ground that have access to these minerals, and the Russians are more than happy to do that.
Now.
That used to be through the Wagner Group. Of course, the Wagner Group quite historically imploded when mister Progosion, who ran it and had been a very close and formal advisor to Putin, turned against Putin. It has since been reconstituted with many of the same people and all the same weapons on the ground. This group that is now directly reporting to Putin and the Russian military called the Africa Court.
So Ian, what is US policy toward West Africa?
Now?
What should it be? Is there a way for us to compete with the Russians? And by the way, do we want to compete with given the nature of some of those hunters that are running some of those countries these days?
Well, I mean it's like saying, what's American policy in you know, Iran or bashar Asad, Syria or Kim Jong Uns North Korea. These are not countries the Americans can have functional diplomatic relations with because they're considered rogue states, they're considered illegitimate, they don't have the support of their people to be in charge. So again, if these countries push the Americans out, I mean, the US historically has had a fair amount of interest in what's called the
Gorilla Belt. And here I mean like gorilla the animals, as opposed to gorilla the illicit fighters through Central Africa, and the US has a lot of troops on the ground, has provided humanitarian aid and is trying to help provide security. But when you have countries like Chad, like Nize, like Burkina Fasso that are run by military juntas that overthrow
their legitimate government, the US policy is containment. It's to try to ensure that the instability of that country doesn't spill over into other countries that the US can work with. That's both true in terms of forced migration, it's true in terms of radicalism and extremism, and it's also true in terms of direct border incursions and invasions. So I mean, it's not as if the United States is competing with
Russia for influence over these governments. No, Rather, these are governments that the Americans would rather see out of power.
Let's come back to where you started with the possible relocations economically, particularly when it comes to energy transition because of some of those raw materials that really exist uranium, certainly, lithium, baux sized others. What are the possible rapplications for investors if in fact Russia's influence continues to grow in West Africa.
Well, it's going to be a greater cost because again, these are countries that are going to have resources that will be exploited in illicit ways, in legal ways using child labor for example. They're not going to be welcomed in supply chain by many advanced industrial democracies in the world.
And even when they are, the Russians are going to have a preference to ensure that the supplies are first and foremost given to friends of Russia with preferential long term contracts, China of course being the country in that category that has the greatest need for them. And there
are a lot of resources here. I mean the Russian government has secured direct access to I mean major gold reserves in the Central African Republic as well as in Sudan, platinum in Zimbabwe, diamonds in Zimbabwe as well as the ar uranium as you mentioned in Namibia. Right now, the United States still gets uranium from Russia, and Congress is
trying to stop that. They're trying to actually ensure there's money to increase production in the United States and with friends, so that if the US is going to start building reactors again. You've seen the Bill Gates announcements on your own Bloomberg that they don't have to get it from Russia.
But the more that Russia is on the ground essentially the lead supporter of many of these illicit governments, these military regimes in Central and Western Africa, you know, the Russians are going to end up also having control over some critical nodes of the minerals that are necessary for a transition energy revolution.
And West Africa has traditionally historically been a zone influence for France because they colonized it. At the same time, mister Macrone right now is distracted with a few other things closer to home, with this snap election he's called less than three weeks way. Now give us a sense of what apossible ramifications of this are.
You know, Macron's own party Center Party lost historically seventeen points under the national rally far right of Marine la penn and so on the back of that really embarrassing, much larger than expected loss and by the way, historic over fifty percent of French registered vote has turned out to vote in this European parliamentary election. That doesn't sound high, but for a European parliamentary election with not much at stake, it's by far the highest that France has ever had.
So huge embarrassment, it felt like he was going to get censored by the government over the course by the parliament over the course of the fall. It meant that his budget wasn't going to get through, he wasn't going to be able to continue to be fiscally responsible. So he decided to call a snap election, which in France means three weeks of campaigning and then they go and vote.
And the idea for mccron being if he wins, because you'll have seventy percent turnout for a parliamentary election as opposed to fifty for the European parliamentary elections, that suddenly his party will do better. He'll be able to scare people away from voting for the far left of the far right, but the left wing parties have all come together and they are working to not run candidates against each other in parliament. So that's a big problem for
the Center. And the average French citizen doesn't oppose, doesn't believe that Le Penn and her party is a threat to democracy. Only forty percent say that she is that they are compared to eighty percent David twenty years ago. So look, anything can happen. But right now these were only a week and a half away. These elections look
very bad for Macron, very dangerous. And if the Penn and the National Rally are able to capture government and her party takes the premiership, well then you know, anything in the European Union that requires agreement of all the parliaments she will be opposed to. So France will no longer be one of the strongest supporters for example, more aid for Ukraine, or greater defense spending for Europe, or
more fiscal accountability or more coordination on industrial policy. No, Instead, one of the largest and founding members of the EU will be strongly opposed to EU consolidation and sovereignty super national governance. It's a huge risk, especially against the backdrop of US elections, which if Trump wins, you'll have a president that supports a for exit from the EU and a much weaker EU, very different from Biden.
Just my question and is it too far to go expect about the possibility of, as you said, a Frexit, not Brexit, but frexit, because as you said, Marie Leapenn has been fairly hostile to the European Union.
She is very hostile, but you know, Brexit went very badly for the UK and one of the reasons why Marine La Penn is polling so well and her party is is because she's backed away from a Frexit instead just picked up all of the policies that show euroskepticism.
So I certainly think that were she to become premier, I don't think they would agitate for an exit, but I think she would be very aligned with Victor Orbon's Hungary and she'd be very aligned with a Trump policy on Europe, which essentially means that Europe would get weaker, not stronger, at a time that a lot more countries, including Ukraine, are counting on a stronger Europe for their own well being.
And it's always so helpful to talk with you. Thank you so much. That's Ian Brenner of the Eurasia Group,