Description
Since Vladimir Putin took power in 2000, Russia's focus on projecting power in Africa has become the norm for Russia's foreign policy. The qualities that make Africa ripe for Russia's foreign policy strategy offers an ideal setting for examining Russia's influence in vulnerable states. Russia's behavior in Africa follows a foreign policy theme under Putin's leadership, focusing on states with past or current fragmented governing institutions, interstate violence, rich in natural resources, and a history of colonialism.
This paper asks, through a most-similar cross-case and within-case analysis: why do African government incumbents choose a Russian foreign policy model over traditional military intervention and security force assistance (SFA)? This paper explores why African states are moving from historically Western-supported foreign policy to a Russian model, one that is driven by access to material resources such as military hardware, private military contractors (PMCs), and insecure natural resource extraction. We introduce a cross-case analysis of the Russian model in Sudan and France's "traditional" interventionist model in Cote d'Ivoire. We then provide a within-case analysis of the two models in Mali as a validity check.
