The Sudan crisis and the Sahel gold rush
adamtooze.substack.com
adamtooze.substack.com
I've generally felt that traditional news falls into several traps of writing style that turn me off completely:
- an insufferable mixture of informational coverage with character profiles (e.g. I come to read about the Sahel gold rush but I am confronted with paragraphs of vibe-setting introduction as the author interviews a person of interest).
- coverage that assumes the same level of contextual knowledge for complex and distant conflicts as for recent national news.
- dull "long reads" that I just don't feel like spending a hour on.
On the other hand this piece is just informative, concise, and engaging :)
Contrary to the name, their articles aren't book reviews so much as excuses to write solid, expert articles on topics that happen to be written about in recently published books. The articles are almost always interesting even when they are about books, because of their extremely high-quality contributors — Joyce Carol Oates, Tony Judt, Gore Vidal, Zadie Smith and J. M. Coetzee come to mind. They also publish lots of global, topical analysis. During the Egypt conflict of 2011-2014, they had some of the best coverage, for example.
I also enjoy the sheer lack of pretentiousness. They have world-class writers, yet they never seem full of themselves the way some other "liberal intellectual" publications (The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Monocle, etc.) do.
(Their book coverage is great, though. They also publish books, and are responsible for keeping a lot of obscure out-of-print stuff in print.)
It's a common paradigm for many 'intellectual' publications
Actual high-brow literature, such as the Physical Review Letters or the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, have no need to pretend but then they assume a bare minimum of a college graduate reading level, plus specialized knowledge on top of that for their niche. Hence they're impenetrable for the vast majority.
"High brow" is work intended for public consumption by well educated and perhaps a bit snobby laymen. Scholarly journals by contrast are intended for specialist audiences and are considered "academic", not "high brow".
High-brow is aimed at a much smaller audience, typically implied as 'high society' or 'the elites' but not necessarily.
I chose the two examples because they are publicly accessible and high-brow not because they are the most representative of the class.
NYRB is totally different:
Did you not see this part?
But yes, sorry about the mistake.
Headline: <something that sounds really interesting about the war in Ukraine>
First para: For the uninitiated, it's easy to mistake Ilya Shevchenko for an everyday middle-aged Ukrainian man. His short-cropped brown hair, mild paunch, and gentle demeanour are disarming. When we first met, he insisted that we finish our cup of tea before we discussed important matters. [And so on]
Too eerily accurate.
But there are alternatives. We have a Newspaper called Weekendavisen which only comes out on Fridays, and it has long throughly written articles. Because it only comes out once a week, it’s often also filtered away a lot of the “breaking” news that wasn’t actually important because they don’t have to deal with feeding the live stream 24/7.
This isn’t really related to the blog post, I too think it’s great to see investigative and informative journalism thrive despite of what’s been going on with a lot of news outlets, but there are still some good ones, and I doubt they are all going away.
(Though to be fair, now that I think about it, I've also lived through enough crap to understand how incredibly misleading and over simplifying high level overviews inevitably are :-/)
I simply no longer trust journalist in places like the Guardian to have sufficient background knowledge, networks or expertise to surface dramatic stories or assess sources.
Most of what they have online are “live blogs” just repeating whatever some rando tweeted (with no context or analysis) or some clickbait-y opinion pieces that are demonstrably incorrect.
Substack is much better but then the whole task of filtering and assessing sources is put back on to the reader.
Some experts are publisher now. How many subscriber pay?
(1970 circulation of "The Economist": 100000)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/why-is-sudans-genocidal-regime...
> "Today, new protests in Sudan are approaching a new boiling point, and Lyman’s story is history. But it suggests the still very relevant and largely untold story of the relationship between Sudan and the United States—ties largely based on the clout of the powerful intelligence services in both the Trump and Obama administrations."
> "This article is based in part on interviews and documents from 13 current and former American officials serving in the State Department, Pentagon, CIA, and other areas of the U.S. government."
A more balanced perspective would note that at present, Africa is viewed as a natural resource hotspot by all the world's major industrial countries, including China, America and Russia, while African countries are themselves struggling to climb up the value chain (i.e. it's better economically to develop industry yourself rather than to just export raw materials).
See also:
https://www.mei.edu/publications/us-priorities-sudan-stabili...
> "Another source of concern for the Biden administration is Sudan’s part in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Sudan and China have deep economic ties in various fields, including agriculture, energy, and mining. Sudan’s exports to China in 2020 reached $766 million, accounting for 19% of its total exports and making China its second-largest trading partner."
As I learned all around Africa, government warnings about a county tell you little about the people there - while the government of Sudan at the time was no doubt evil, the people were some of the friendliest and kindest I've met anywhere on the planet.
Not only did locals help my buy bread, they refused to let me pay for it. They invited me into their homes repeatedly, etc. etc.
The currency was in such a free fall I was getting a different rate literally every day. It's one of the countries in the world that is cut-off from global markets, and so regular credit and bank cards do not work. Still, people were smiling, laughing and getting on with life.
Here's some of my footage and experiences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pqtfwlfDAw
I'd heard that the war in Sudan had started up, and this explains why: the resource curse. Physical control becomes so valuable that the country tears itself apart to get at the money.
> "The regime would license production by a handful of large companies on the enclave model familiar from the oil industry. This was both “modern” and it would leave the existing structure of politics and society in place"
Very good way of looking at it. This is how oil works in various Gulf states. Westerners are brought in for technical expertise, but kept away from the rest of the country and in particular its power structure.
The article, however, does not have any concrete thoughts on how exactly the gold is connected to the current round of fighting. Other analyses suggest that it was inevitable anyway since (i) the agreed-upon scheme of transition of power to the civilian government did not entail any actual transition of power to the civilian government (the scheme must have been implemented by the military, which does not want to relinquish power) and (ii) the proposed scheme to combine two military factions into a single one was unworkable. Given that RSF already seems to control the gold-producing region, there is no self-evident resource-based reason for it to try and capture the capital.
Wagner has no morals at all.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/20/sudan-civil-war-biden-b...
Good luck finding a conflict where the US wasn't poking around before it started.
I get it, it's funny, but US destroyed so many unnecessary lives it;s not really. Im in favor of a strong US as a leading power of the World, instead of China or Russia, but there needs to be a lot more accountabliity.
The Cold War saw the U.S. and USSR take geopolitical positions with global remit. There is no conflict where either “wasn’t poking around before it started” because there was no place either wasn’t. In some cases, e.g. the banana republics, we can clearly trace causation to one party. Sudan is more complicated: there is a mix of foreign interests, some American-aligned, some not.
The conflicts we hear the least about tend to be those we were least involved in. Myanmar. Tigray. Whatever the fuck South Africa is currently up to.
Sure. But the American strategy relies on building alliances. That naturally aligns us to others in a way a more-domineering imperial approach doesn’t.
And also... “To be an enemy of America can be dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”
Nobody has permanent friends or alliances. The point is we, a maritime power, tend to be mutually supportive in our alliances in a way land powers are not. (We prefer them to have strong economies and militaries, for instance, and are generally okay, if not thrilled, when they compete with us.)
Contrast to all the newly formed (and preexisting but growing) non-western alliances and trade agreements.
At this rate, we’re going to isolate ourselves (Europe is already feeling significant pain). The West is only around a billion people out of what, 8 billion?
The U.S. still does this. Now the Eastern European countries are used as a wedge against the Western ones. Pipelines are blown up, which is not supportive.
Bullshit.
The American strategy with Iran has been to surround it with enemies, including the Saudis. It took China to come in and make peace between the two. In that instance, and many others, the clear USA strategy was to make enemies.
There's a difference between alliances and proxies. The USA likes having vassals, it does not like having alliances with equals. Like in Ukraine the USA likes to have its proxies do its dirty work. And like in its growing bombast towards China, the USA would gladly sacrifice Korea and Taiwan if it hurt China.
I’ll concede that our strategy with Iran makes zero sense to me. But I never said we don’t make, or even seek out, enemies. Just that we build alliances. That’s true in our approach with Iran, which leans heavily on our Saudi, Emirati and Israeli allies.
> USA likes having vassals, it does not like having alliances with equals
We like both. Our alliances with Canada, the U.K. and Australia are ones of supreme, to the point of vulnerability, mutual respect. Our alliances with France and Germany approach co-equal status–we regularly disagree without abandoning each other. We obviously don’t give a shit about the people in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or, frankly, Ukraine, the way we do about Western Europe or Korea.
> the USA would gladly sacrifice Korea and Taiwan if it hurt China
Just got back from Taipei. Don’t think anyone there sees our committing to defending their homeland as sacrificing them.
They don't have to see it that way. In fact, it's much better that they don't.
Easier to sacrifice them when it's convenient.
This is directly helping them with their defense.
Which they couldn't really hope to win. In short, the US is just trying to instigate conflict, a thing US does best.
It's not like Taiwan is going to do a first strike against the mainland, or invade the mainland.
Weapons would only be needed in the case of an invasion from China.
And if that happens, then they will want as many weapons as they can get.
It's not like they are turning down the weapons. They are accepting the military aid, because they want to have methods of defending themselves.
Sort of the attitude that’s putting Beijing in a regional bind.
We have allies of colour and allies of convenience. They’re easy to differentiate because we care deeply, almost genuinely, about the internal politics of the former (e.g. the U.K., Germany, Japan, et cetera). They’re discussed as a prize to be contested for. And we tend to welcome their immigrants. With the latter, we don’t, they’re closer to assets, and as a result we tend to prefer the efficiency of autocracy with them. The Gulf and Pakistan fall into this bucket. I understand why we do it, strategically. But I agree it tarnishes our reputation.
The difference is, most countries don’t have any relationships in the first category. (Think: the Scandinavia, the Baltic sisters.) Certainly not superpowers.
I bring that up not to crow about the USA’s bygone righteousness, but to highlight that the people of Japan and Germany were ready to embrace a new paradigm, because the old one had resulted in so much suffering and death.
No country does. Countries don't have morals, countries have interests.
Actions by countries are of course almost always justified based on the former, rather than the latter.
"Everyone is as depraved as me, so I can and should be infinitely depraved preemptively."
A nation is comprised and guided by people
Thus, unless something extraordinary happens, nations will act in their own interest
That's a common belief, especially among people outside the U.S. But I think it's totally wrong. I don't think you can look at the Iraq or Afghanistan wars, our our support in Ukraine, and say that's serving America's interests. George W. Bush and Hilary Clinton exemplify a bipartisan coalition, cut from the same cloth, that believes in liberal democracy and individualistic human rights as a religion, and who think America is justified in using war to promote that religion around the world.
What you are describing to me sounds a lot more like a single powerbase with a few disagreements of narcissism amongst its participants, with a dramatic hegemonic control over the broader citizenship.
The self interests of this neoliberal consensus include empire-building, and have since the cold war that spawned and shaped it. A program to spread that hegemony broader and broader to preserve the flow of resources into the imperial center.
I'm trying not to assign morality here per se; just give I think a better model with, I think, more explanatory power.
I also disagree that your model has "more explanatory power." We spent $6 trillion going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we certainly didn't get $6 trillion in oil. We opened up trade with China, gave them our technology, and put them on a path to leapfrogging ahead of us. Your theory is that America is an empire trying to direct "the flow of resources into the imperial center"--but if that's the case then our imperial leaders are extremely incompetent.
What happened in Iraq and China makes much more sense under my model. It was an attempt at converting those countries into our religion of liberal democracy, human rights, and capitalism.
In fact they mostly don't work at all.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2023/04/11/1169072190/why...
The article (which I quote above) argues that the artisanal mining in central Africa is often called "primitive" but is actually a modern phenomenon based on the availability of metal detectors. Certainly these devices have been around since much longer than 2009. What changed? Manufacturing cost? Regional distribution networks? Trade agreements with China?
https://unherd.com/2023/04/how-wagner-plundered-sudans-gold/
They are also active in the rest of Africa:
Does anyone know how a non-profit "London-based investigative body" obtains call logs, commercial airline tickets, entry permits, visa applications, and browsing history of people they are investigating [1]?
In practice that often means they do "parallel reconstruction" to launder information they receive from special services. This "investigative body" in question is owned by a disgraced russian oligarh
I wouldn’t use it as a source of anything that the Russians would want to discredit (such as bellingcat).
That’s because we are seeing a lot more disinformation and propaganda in the past year, it’s a major part of Russias strategy to destabilise the west.
Their website literally publishes anti western pro authoritarian propaganda.
But if you want to just believe anything the Russian and other authoritarian regimes say go head.
> Do you think this wiki article is written in a neutral manner?
Yes.
Do you think so even after the "Trump-Russia" fiasco and Twitter Files?
>But if you want to just believe anything the Russian and other authoritarian regimes say go head.
Trying not to engage in binary thinking
No I think so after the very obvious Russian propaganda that is being pushed all over the internet.
There was even a notable uptick of Russian propaganda being pushed here after the war started.
> Trying not to engage in binary thinking
You haven't really addressed any of my points but thats okay, ill add some more for you, why do so many writers for MintPress Media have a history with working for Russias stated backed propaganda media arm RT?.
MintPress hiring ex-RT -> it's propaganda arm
On a serious note, I fail to see how RT is considered state-propaganda, but BBC is not
I have yet to see a single article on RT saying that maybe the war in Ukraine isn't a good thing and Russia should leave.
> MintPress hiring ex-RT -> it's propaganda arm
RT just serves as an extension for the Russian intelligence services as a propaganda arm, so if you have a problem with ex spooks working at bellingcat you should have a problem with ex-RT working at MintPress.
Bellingcat's investigation on Navalny's poisoning was entertaining as hell and I enjoyed it a lot, and I am not accusing them on lying in their reports. However they funded by National Endowment for Democracy which is CIA in disguise
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-of...