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Wagner Group Flows: A Two‐Fold Challenge to Liberal Intervention and Liberal Order
[journal article]
Abstract Focusing on Wagner Group (WG) forces, liberal interveners too readily dismiss the scope of WG's Africa engagements, including economic and political "flows" that, in combination, challenge liberal interveners' taken-for-granted access in several states on the African continent. Operationalising the ... view more
Focusing on Wagner Group (WG) forces, liberal interveners too readily dismiss the scope of WG's Africa engagements, including economic and political "flows" that, in combination, challenge liberal interveners' taken-for-granted access in several states on the African continent. Operationalising the notion of "flows," we present an analysis that foregrounds both the scope of WG's Africa engagements and the challenges. We portray WG as a broad enterprise by attending to military, economic, and political flows. This broadening is relevant to how WG is understood to challenge liberal interveners. Besides country-specific challenges to liberal interveners' access (notably in states where they have been asked to depart or co-exist with WG), a broader reading of WG's Africa presence also foregrounds challenges at a different level, namely to liberal interveners' assumptions about the inevitable attractiveness of the liberal international order. A liberal order that Russia has utilised WG's Africa presence to contest. As such, challenges at the level of liberal order go beyond WG's Africa presence and must, therefore, be viewed alongside other challenges to liberal intervention and order, from the Taliban's takeover of Kabul to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If liberal interveners' missteps and historicity, as well as the scope of WG's Africa engagements, remain underappreciated, then various challenges specific to the WG, but also broader challenges to liberal interveners' assumptions about liberal order as self-evidently attractive, are too readily dismissed. Liberal actors' dismissiveness may invite misguided responses and unintentionally become an enabling factor for WG's influence in Africa.... view less
Keywords
Africa; interventionism; political intervention; world order; paramilitary group; Russia; political influence
Classification
International Relations, International Politics, Foreign Affairs, Development Policy
Peace and Conflict Research, International Conflicts, Security Policy
Free Keywords
Wagner Group; flows; liberal intervention; liberal order
Document language
English
Publication Year
2024
Journal
Politics and Governance, 12 (2024)
Issue topic
From Kabul to Kyiv: The Crisis of Liberal Interventionism and the Return of War
ISSN
2183-2463
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed