Le golfe de guinée : nouvel océan bleu, enjeux de puissance et de guerre économique entre la France, les Etats-Unis d’Amérique, la Chine et la Russie depuis 1989

Abstract

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the geopolitical map of the world has changed drastically. Compelled to limit their economic rivalries, the de facto solidarity which the Cold War had imposed on the nations of the Western bloc crumpled with the disappearance of communism. Confrontations shifted from the political, military and ideological arena to that of economics and trade. This new form of confrontation goes by the name of economic warfare. The concept is not new, even if its contemporary form has recent roots. Africa in general, and the Gulf of Guinea in particular, has long served as a battleground for ideological confrontation between the Eastern and Western blocs during the Cold War, and has now turned into a battleground for economic warfare between the major powers. This topic sets out to show how China, the United States, France and Russia are deploying their economic warfare strategies in the Gulf of Guinea, the new blue ocean. A qualitative and quantitative analysis of a variety of primary, secondary and tertiary sources shows that, in economic warfare, several instruments (political, economic, diplomatic, economic, legal) are used to win the battle. Faced with what is looming on the horizon, the States of the Gulf of Guinea must position themselves as major players in this economic war by protecting their domestic markets and setting out to conquer the foreign market.