Grave New World

The Foreseeable Resurgence of Proxy Warfare in Africa

Abstract

The shift to multipolarity has China and Russia rising to compete against the American hegemonic world order that has dominated the international scene since the end of the Cold War. However, given this competition, Africa has re-emerged as a theatre in which these tensions are unfolding. China, Russia and America are returning to the predatory relationships they engaged in during the Cold War, with African states becoming allies or environments for extraction and exploitation. Economic interest is central to these relationships. These hegemons are building corridors to promote their economic stability through access to lucrative resources and weapons deals, with politically unstable, conflict-ridden and resource-rich African states most susceptible to this fleecing. This paper applies a Marxist geopolitical lens to explain this phenomenon and why alternative theories, namely Neorealism, fail to fully appreciate the internal and multifaceted reasonings for these dynamics