WSJ Documentary On Wagner Group: Mining the Absence of Environmental Leadership

WSJ Documentary On Wagner Group: Mining the Absence of Environmental Leadership

The new 2023 Wall Street Journal Documentary on Russia's Wagner Group - Shadow Men: Inside Wagner, Russia's Secret War Company - deserves a Pulitzer Prize.  I try to embed it below, but follow the link above if that does not work.

It's a story linking the exploitation of extracted natural resources to war crimes. First in Syria - which offered Wagner Group 25% of the money at oil fields they protected - to become a "lilly pad" expansion to Libya, Central African Republic, and other weak states.  The gold mine they took over in Central African Republic is now a major source of funding for Wagner Group and Russia's war on Ukraine.

What I will add here for commentary is that the colonial forced extraction of virgin raw materials, in unregulated and poverty stricken lands, demands we re-read Heart of Darkness. But my liberal and environmentalist colleagues largely draw the absolutely wrong lesson from that. The mostly well intentioned left tries, through Basel Convention Amendments and R2 and E-Steward Certifications - to label suspect, racially profile, and boycott trade in everything that is NOT virgin material extraction.

The "cultural lobotomy" of denying Africa's Tech Sector to come test and buy used equipment comes out of a fear of exploitation. We want to keep our consciences shiny, and good enough on you for that. But watch the documentary below. Wagner understands what immense power a hundred dollar bill has to an African or a Russian prisoner.  They pay people to be brutal, they recruit sharp-elbowed youth, and they succeed in taking over governments precisely because people in those places are so inexpensive.

Why environmentalists what to deny those people good jobs in repair and recycling is not so much unfathomable as it is a symptom of tragic misunderstanding. Hanlon's Razor. I get frustrated at groups like Basel Action Network and SERI at times, but don't want to overstep and mistake ignorance or stupidity for malelovence. But when we don't allow the Youth in Emerging Markets to create valuable recycling and repair jobs - like our litter collection offset project underway in Cameroon - it just leaves a vacuum which allows exploitation of  hopelessness by filthy new Belgian Leopolds (the king who did not annex Congo, but made the Congolese people his personal property) like Yevgeny Prigozhin become the de facto job market for high school graduates.   

Boycotting or shaming trade as "exploitation" is, de facto, removing your privileged ass from environmental leadership. Contract managers, certification bodies, regulators, and activists who would prevent me from employing geeks of color in these same emerging markets are helping to supply the labor Wagner relies on to brutalize freedom seekers. 

Watch.

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Next up, I'll try to illustrate how you can blow your mind with a $1500 in the hands of a former four year old in Cameroun.