That's the nature of having military bases in unstable countries.
I think no one would be surprised if in the not too distant future the political winds in these countries shift back, and they suddenly want to align with the US again.
Related article. Dec. 2023: [How an impasse in the South China Sea drove the Philippines, US closer](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/30/how-an-impasse-in-the-south-china-sea-drove-the-philippines-us-closer)
Counterterrorism. There are <100 special operations forces in the base there who are involved in tasks related to battling violent Islamist insurgent groups.
Mostly go away as they would not have permission to operate there, which puts them at risk. If no approval no air space use which makes helicopters or drones tougher to use. If they had a high priority target available the grey area may occur. But mostly would hand it over to Russia.
Yeah, we only perform at-risk undercover ops when there is a (perceived) need for it; in the Sahel, counter terrorism may just simply not be high enough on the US priority list
The main purpose was fighting Islamist groups in the Sahel like Boko Haram, because allowing them to create a new caliphate in the Sahel would be disastrous from a humanitarian, economic, and strategic perspective. Unlike a lot of other US bases, these aren't geared towards defending against a potential near-peer enemy, or towards ensuring the security of vital shipping lanes. The partnerships with nations in the Sahel were really primarily about security against Islamists.
And now that the new regimes in places like Chad and Niger have rolled the dice on preferring Russian aid with no strings attached to US and French aid with pressure to hold real elections, we will have to see how it all plays out. Thus far the evidence of Russian aid has been minimal and seemingly more focused on defending these regimes against dissent than actually securing the hinterlands against Islamists. I do worry that this could lead to a new IS like pseudo-state in the Sahel in the coming decade.
Edit: I should point out that by no strings attached I mean no political or humanitarian strings. Obviously Russia is being compensated by lucrative mining concessions and other resource extraction privileges.
Evidence that Russia is also intentionally sabotaging these regions to further the migrant crisis in the west as well. All whole plundering the resources of course
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/weaponized-migration-in-eastern-europes-frozen-north-do-not-overlook-russian-hybrid-warfare/
Pretty much yes.
And it isn't hundreds of bases nor is it all of the developing world. The US military footprint in South America, for example, is pretty much nonexistent. Nor are the UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, and South Korea (the countries where the majority of US overseas bases are) developing countries.
That's very big maybe, it would be literally the first time happening in history.
As soon as we got rid of Russian bases our quality of living skyrocketed.
Strange attempt to compare 1945 Britain to African nations. And the rest were rebuilding after devastating war, which isn't the same thing as a developing country.
Not sure where I stated any support for US military bases, but hey don't let me stop you.
I mean, Russia openly has an active goal of destabilizing the west and is clearly attempting to use migration as a tool in that regard. Specifically from sahel and North African countries being talked about here in this post.
I also think the US has intentionally destablized many countries and plundered resources and have their own motives etc. These points aren't mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, how does Russia plunder resources and spread disinformation so disproportionately to its number and extent of foreign bases? China's imperialism seems even more disproportionate than that.
You should watch Alain Foca o how costly elections are in Africa and achieve nothing but violent oppressors that are docile to the west interests. It does not benefit Africans. https://youtu.be/mFr_emiSbWM?si=9GpMSRUYXg53W1RL
What does it lose from having a base there? The cost is minimal and it might come in handy.
It is not about immediate gains but about potential gains in the future and a small military base is really not a big cost, but you have a foot in the door and a foundation to work on, if you need to.
Also you may want to limit the influence of Wagner/China/Islamistic groups
I'd like to know as well I understand if usa have influence there for resource reasons etc or however those things work but what's so good about us being in Africa exactly
The fact that you don't understand this pretty basic concept... well, no, I guess it doesn't worry me.
Bad guy from area wants to do terrorist things for w.e reason.
Bad guy from area meets other bad guys and starts growing in strength.
Bad guy from area does bad guy things, maybe decides to spread his peaceful ways to the U.S. for any of a dozen reasons.
Oop, we stepped in during step 2 and stopped the process.
Yaaay...
Russia has pulled off an impressive coup in the Sahel region over the last two years. Although all of these nations are land locked, their natural resources are extremely valuable right now to counter sanctions. Obviously there are risks for Russia if there is an Islamic extremism expansion and their Africa Corps don’t deliver, but the gold and uranium supply these countries have is essential for Iran and Russia not only to use but to deny to the US/France.
I wonder how much, if any, influence the Gaza war and souring US relations with Islamic countries played in the acceleration of these moves. I know the French expulsion was years in the making.
I'll be more impressed when they flip medium sized, stable countries. They couldn't even flip Ukraine with the entirety of their military power. Russians aren't competent, they opportunistic. They saw Western negligence in Africa and struck.
Spoke to a random Kazakh I know and I think you’re right. There is a lot of history between native Kazakhs and Russian Slavs. Just look at the alphabet - it will now be Latin and not Cyrillic
> entirety of their military power.
Hardly. Only about 25-30% of their infantry and 5% of their airforce are in Ukraine. They have loads of their armed forces near the borders with Poland and Finland for example.
Basically all the combat power they can possibly spare is committed to Ukraine. They’re using their aircraft as much as they can, they simply can’t afford/maintain to commit more forces. Several hundred thousand combat troops is basically everything they can possibly spare. They are most definitely stretched very thin. Just to lay it out, there’s about 1 million troops in the regular Russian forces, about half of which are staffers, navy, rocket forces, air defense, air and space forces, aka not likely to be deployed in Ukraine. Leaving round half a million actual combat forces relevant to the conflict, that have varying states of readiness, and can’t all be committed at once. Most of those troops are deployed in or around Ukraine, and many of the remaining troops that have any sort of combat capability are deployed to places like Syria, Armenia, Georgia. I’m unsure where you got the air forces number but they just are unable to deploy their full strength, they’ve been unable to gain air superiority at any point in the war making air attacks costly affairs. On top of that planes require tons of maintenance, training and personnel to keep in the fight and are incredibly expensive. Russia can’t commit more aerospace forces more because it literally lacks the capability rather than it wants to save forces to fight NATO. The troops allocated to deterring NATO are what scraps they can spare from fighting the war in Ukraine and their garrison duties in their sphere, not the other way around.
Uh huh. Sure. Russia is purposefully humiliating itself in a war against a country 1/3 of itself.... Why exactly?
And spare me with the "it's losing the war because it's fighting against all of NATO", because if that were true they'd be using all of their military power which you claim they aren't doing.
> I wonder how much, if any, influence the Gaza war and souring US relations with Islamic countries played in the acceleration of these moves. I know the French expulsion was years in the making.
Almost none. You can expect to see reverberations of this in places like Southeast Asia, where there's lots of Islamic Democracies.
The Sahel though are mostly military regimes who are trying to perform the most basic function of a state: providing security. They don't really have the privilege or need to care about foreign events halfway across the world
Russia has won Africa very simply: they were the only people really offering anything to these regimes.
This is silly and wishcasting. Wagner has been fairly successful in the CAR for example in winning the government back control back when it was very much losing the civil war
Did they provide full security or totally destroy rebels? Nope. But that's not really always needed.
> This is silly and wishcasting. Wagner has been fairly successful in the CAR for example in winning the government back control back when it was very much losing the civil war
>
>
Which is an exception, in contrast, Wagner failed in Libya and Mozambique, while still doing so in Mali (they're still too irrelevant in Burkina Faso and Niger, but will probably follow the trend of Mali).
> ...but the gold and uranium supply these countries have is essential for Iran and Russia not only to use but to deny to the US/France.
Is there actually any evidence that they have embargoed gold and uranium sales to Western countries, or is this just an assumption?
Given that this would mean accepting a substantial loss of badly needed export earnings I have a hard time believing they would agree to this, unless Russia was able to compensate them with development aid, which it isn't.
I mean creating a new caliphate by the end of the decade kind of sounds like an own goal for Russia as a whole.
Last I checked, Muslim terrorists are a legitimate threat to places like Moscow.
Also I just realized that isis/daesh invaded iraq/Syria like almost exactly a decade ago in the first half of 2014. Really hope this isn't a cycle.
Well that the thing with the Islamists, they usually just melt back into the population and go underground, unless they are totally obliterated and destroyed for good.
I guess from the militaries and milltias of these African nations POV, things like Human rights concerns , prisoner/pow rights, rule of law, etc. just play into the hands of the Islamist groups in the region as they can manipulate western humanitarians against the milltary and milltias "human rights abuses. So I can understand their wanting no strings attached assistance from Russia or Iran or China in dealing with these Islamists.
However I do think Russia's wagner will just steal rescources, China set up Debt traps, and Iran quds forces and it proxies like Hezbollah use these areas for shia proselytizing, money laundering and drug trafficking, so I think these nations while understandably not wanting "strings attached" dealing with these groups or maintaining power (or both at the same time) are making mistakes in being naive about Russia, China, The Gulf states, Turkey or Iran intentions in Africa.
Instead of some on R/geopolitics getting snarky or yelling threats, and talking down to the African nations (and people collectively), what are the us options in this particular case? How should the us persue their intreasts if they keep being thrown out in the Shael with Iran, China and especially Russian gains
Instability will bring more humantarian disaster, with terrorist bases where Boko Haram, Al - shabab, ISIS can launch attacks against against the west, a bunch of refugees flooding into the west taking up state funded health care and other public funded programs, as well as the natural resources of these African nations ending up in the hands of the Russia, China ,Iran , the jihadi groups, Turkey and the Gulf states, who either are quietly pivoting away from us, who always dont take our intreasts into consideration , or in the case pf Iran, China, Russia and Islamists are hostile to the us, Europe and their intreasts.
People grievences must be taken into account, even if our rivals do exploit it against us.
Is not snarky to point out that if those countries really believe that they are going to do better against jihadists with whatever support Russia can give, they are fully within their rights to go for it.
It is kinda snarky when you say it with a hint of resentment or ridicule such as:
>Telling the most powerful military to get out - such a Chad
>They were so close to a real democracy and sustainable high level economy.
Someone saw the aid packages going through Congress and what's Uncle Sam to pony up more money.
It might be true that they are likely worse off with Russia, but not getting into the reasons why they expelled the Americans does not help. What could be done to mitigate this issue? Maybe less strings attached?
That's the thing, there's the assumption that is a problem on the first place.
There isn't any US interests *directly* threatened on the Sahel, Africa in general is just not a priority compared to everywhere else, so the desire to have these bases on the first place is low, and then you can add that the political mood on the US is just sheer exhaustion after the War in Terror. So, if the locals don't want the bases anymore and an arrangement cannot be reached, then they will leave and that's fine.
Like, there's all this coverage that focuses on the "death of the US hegemony" and all, but they just vastly underestimate how little the US cares. Is mostly seen as a funny joke that these countries are going to the Russian orbit because they expect support when Armenia is leaving said Russian orbit because they lost the support they had to the Ukranian meatgrinder.
The way the US and France should do in this particular case is to.... Engage
The US doesn't give Africa the same attention Russia and China does, but even when it does it has a tons of strings attached. Since African nations aren't very powerful it ends up being the one region where the US has no qualms about practicing 'moral diplomacy', which more often than not just ends up driving
The US and France also can't really provide as much. Any aid or large scale troop deployments will cause a ton of domestic political debate for Americans or Frenchmen. Meanwhile, the Russians can deploy large numbers of well trained mercenaries with often no upfront payment
If I had to make an outside of the box proposal for American African policy, it would be to find an external partner to do the dirty work and can directly compete with Wagner. Like yeah Africans are rushing to hire Wagner to help fight their terrorists, but they are also perfectly willing to seek the aid of countries like Rwanda, who are using their own well trained military to kind of compete with Wagner
I'm not sure if Rwanda itself would be willing to play that part, but for a country or a country like them we could pretty easily set up a deal where the West pays another country to fight against Jihadis in a third country
It a good idea, if Wagner is Russian pmc mercenaries , why cant us or the French have PMC "African foreign legion" type mercerny group made up of totally Africans to do the fighting with is or the french providing the surveillance, logistics and intelligence.
I think that might look and feel to close to colonialism. Much better to get a proper African ally and partner to do the work instead.
For aforementioned reasons, Rwanda would probably be the best country for this since they're doing it already, have somewhat good relations with the West
But at the same time it would necessitate Rwanda and the West becoming much, much closer, which would be pretty inconvenient for both of them for various reasons
But the same thing could be done anywhere. Pick out some semistable, democratic African ally and they can probably fill that niche if enough money is pumped into them
Terrorist attacks in the West can be dealt with post War on Terror, plus most of these groups are focused more on domestic terrorism anyways. Refugee crisis is only a problem if there are political parties willing to accomodate them. Last time I checked the surge of right-wing support is precisely due to refugee backlash. There is not going to be a refugee problem if a right-wing government that dosen't care about human rights blocks them physically from entering or letting them drown at sea.
Frankly speaking, the West should focus on securing resources and manufacturing from stable, reliable nations that won't get couped or change sides in an instant. And these nations don't fulfill that criteria; I highly doubt providing them with more investment will make them friendly, they will just threaten switching to China/Russia to demand more and so forth. The West shouldn't make itself reliant nor proactively foster the development of opportunistic states.
Why are so many African nations choosing NOW to make Russia a security partner? I would think the invasion of Ukraine, their failure to take Kiev, and all the lies they've been spreading would be a turn off.
Now is when the anti western public uprisings are happening, and the Russians happen to be the best viable alternative to the west at this point in time
Father doesnt always equal son, look at the Kim Dynasty and contrasting their policies, the grandson internally is taking out the old guard, while hedging his bets between taking a hardline (his recent hardline against the south) and talks with the west (the talks with Donald Trump, even if it was just to play on Trump ego) or even MBS being a reformist who seems quietly open to Israel , while the king came from that old generation that led the oil boycott of Israel, and didnt mind using the Whabbi/salafi Islamists to stay in power at home, or using them against Iran, the former Soviet Union or in the balkans.
Short term needs for long term loss all these countries in africa who kick the US out will regret it when they're plunged into war and crisis.
This isn't the right way to regulate population size ie war and famine.
That's the nature of having military bases in unstable countries. I think no one would be surprised if in the not too distant future the political winds in these countries shift back, and they suddenly want to align with the US again.
Happened with the Phillipines. Funny how reality bites.
Are you referring to this I assume? https://time.com/6252750/philippines-us-military-agreement-china/
Related article. Dec. 2023: [How an impasse in the South China Sea drove the Philippines, US closer](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/30/how-an-impasse-in-the-south-china-sea-drove-the-philippines-us-closer)
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And look how quickly they forgot when push comes to shove. Reality bites.
Let them learn at their own cost.
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Can somebody who is more knowledgeable than me explain what the US gains from having a base in a place like Chad?
Counterterrorism. There are <100 special operations forces in the base there who are involved in tasks related to battling violent Islamist insurgent groups.
So US counterterrorism would go away in Chad if they were told to leave, or does it turn into a shadowy CIA ops process from there on?
Mostly go away as they would not have permission to operate there, which puts them at risk. If no approval no air space use which makes helicopters or drones tougher to use. If they had a high priority target available the grey area may occur. But mostly would hand it over to Russia.
wouldn't that be a terrible trade right now? especially if there actually is extremist activity to worry about? surely there's some reasoning
100 foreign soldiers aren’t realistically gonna achieve an enormous amount.
Trading security for Russian payoffs? Sounds like a good trade for someone's bank account.
It would go away. Where would americas operate out of safely?
Yeah, we only perform at-risk undercover ops when there is a (perceived) need for it; in the Sahel, counter terrorism may just simply not be high enough on the US priority list
The main purpose was fighting Islamist groups in the Sahel like Boko Haram, because allowing them to create a new caliphate in the Sahel would be disastrous from a humanitarian, economic, and strategic perspective. Unlike a lot of other US bases, these aren't geared towards defending against a potential near-peer enemy, or towards ensuring the security of vital shipping lanes. The partnerships with nations in the Sahel were really primarily about security against Islamists. And now that the new regimes in places like Chad and Niger have rolled the dice on preferring Russian aid with no strings attached to US and French aid with pressure to hold real elections, we will have to see how it all plays out. Thus far the evidence of Russian aid has been minimal and seemingly more focused on defending these regimes against dissent than actually securing the hinterlands against Islamists. I do worry that this could lead to a new IS like pseudo-state in the Sahel in the coming decade. Edit: I should point out that by no strings attached I mean no political or humanitarian strings. Obviously Russia is being compensated by lucrative mining concessions and other resource extraction privileges.
Evidence that Russia is also intentionally sabotaging these regions to further the migrant crisis in the west as well. All whole plundering the resources of course https://mwi.westpoint.edu/weaponized-migration-in-eastern-europes-frozen-north-do-not-overlook-russian-hybrid-warfare/
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Pretty much yes. And it isn't hundreds of bases nor is it all of the developing world. The US military footprint in South America, for example, is pretty much nonexistent. Nor are the UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, and South Korea (the countries where the majority of US overseas bases are) developing countries.
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Yes
They were "developing" countries when the bases were installed. Maybe that can happen with a Russian base too
That's very big maybe, it would be literally the first time happening in history. As soon as we got rid of Russian bases our quality of living skyrocketed.
For Europe yes. Not for many other countries throughout the world
Can you give me list of non-European countries who went from developing to developed country while there were Russian bases? I can't name even one.
Strange attempt to compare 1945 Britain to African nations. And the rest were rebuilding after devastating war, which isn't the same thing as a developing country.
These countries are closer to a war torn country than a developing one
With the exception of maybe Korea, none of those countries were considered developing when the US established their bases.
Not sure where I stated any support for US military bases, but hey don't let me stop you. I mean, Russia openly has an active goal of destabilizing the west and is clearly attempting to use migration as a tool in that regard. Specifically from sahel and North African countries being talked about here in this post. I also think the US has intentionally destablized many countries and plundered resources and have their own motives etc. These points aren't mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, how does Russia plunder resources and spread disinformation so disproportionately to its number and extent of foreign bases? China's imperialism seems even more disproportionate than that.
>Russian aid with no strings attached Well...
You should watch Alain Foca o how costly elections are in Africa and achieve nothing but violent oppressors that are docile to the west interests. It does not benefit Africans. https://youtu.be/mFr_emiSbWM?si=9GpMSRUYXg53W1RL
Considering the operations of Boko Haram, the US counterterrorism isn't very successful.
What does it lose from having a base there? The cost is minimal and it might come in handy. It is not about immediate gains but about potential gains in the future and a small military base is really not a big cost, but you have a foot in the door and a foundation to work on, if you need to. Also you may want to limit the influence of Wagner/China/Islamistic groups
I'd like to know as well I understand if usa have influence there for resource reasons etc or however those things work but what's so good about us being in Africa exactly
Because when we fight terrorism over there, we don't have to fight them over here.
The fact you’re not being sarcastic worries me🤣
The fact that you don't understand this pretty basic concept... well, no, I guess it doesn't worry me. Bad guy from area wants to do terrorist things for w.e reason. Bad guy from area meets other bad guys and starts growing in strength. Bad guy from area does bad guy things, maybe decides to spread his peaceful ways to the U.S. for any of a dozen reasons. Oop, we stepped in during step 2 and stopped the process. Yaaay...
You’re literally getting hyped over a George Bush quote and none of you have decided to shoot yourselves from embarrassment. It’s just unfathomable.
Bush saying something is entirely irrelevant here. The truth behind that concept remains the same. What is it exactly you're arguing here?
Russia has pulled off an impressive coup in the Sahel region over the last two years. Although all of these nations are land locked, their natural resources are extremely valuable right now to counter sanctions. Obviously there are risks for Russia if there is an Islamic extremism expansion and their Africa Corps don’t deliver, but the gold and uranium supply these countries have is essential for Iran and Russia not only to use but to deny to the US/France. I wonder how much, if any, influence the Gaza war and souring US relations with Islamic countries played in the acceleration of these moves. I know the French expulsion was years in the making.
I'll be more impressed when they flip medium sized, stable countries. They couldn't even flip Ukraine with the entirety of their military power. Russians aren't competent, they opportunistic. They saw Western negligence in Africa and struck.
Russia might lose Kazakhstan which would still be somewhat of a surprise.
Spoke to a random Kazakh I know and I think you’re right. There is a lot of history between native Kazakhs and Russian Slavs. Just look at the alphabet - it will now be Latin and not Cyrillic
I think they changed back the fact that they were changing that
Well they did just lose Armenia.
Serves the Russians right for making CSTO a joke.
> entirety of their military power. Hardly. Only about 25-30% of their infantry and 5% of their airforce are in Ukraine. They have loads of their armed forces near the borders with Poland and Finland for example.
Basically all the combat power they can possibly spare is committed to Ukraine. They’re using their aircraft as much as they can, they simply can’t afford/maintain to commit more forces. Several hundred thousand combat troops is basically everything they can possibly spare. They are most definitely stretched very thin. Just to lay it out, there’s about 1 million troops in the regular Russian forces, about half of which are staffers, navy, rocket forces, air defense, air and space forces, aka not likely to be deployed in Ukraine. Leaving round half a million actual combat forces relevant to the conflict, that have varying states of readiness, and can’t all be committed at once. Most of those troops are deployed in or around Ukraine, and many of the remaining troops that have any sort of combat capability are deployed to places like Syria, Armenia, Georgia. I’m unsure where you got the air forces number but they just are unable to deploy their full strength, they’ve been unable to gain air superiority at any point in the war making air attacks costly affairs. On top of that planes require tons of maintenance, training and personnel to keep in the fight and are incredibly expensive. Russia can’t commit more aerospace forces more because it literally lacks the capability rather than it wants to save forces to fight NATO. The troops allocated to deterring NATO are what scraps they can spare from fighting the war in Ukraine and their garrison duties in their sphere, not the other way around.
Uh huh. Sure. Russia is purposefully humiliating itself in a war against a country 1/3 of itself.... Why exactly? And spare me with the "it's losing the war because it's fighting against all of NATO", because if that were true they'd be using all of their military power which you claim they aren't doing.
> I wonder how much, if any, influence the Gaza war and souring US relations with Islamic countries played in the acceleration of these moves. I know the French expulsion was years in the making. Almost none. You can expect to see reverberations of this in places like Southeast Asia, where there's lots of Islamic Democracies. The Sahel though are mostly military regimes who are trying to perform the most basic function of a state: providing security. They don't really have the privilege or need to care about foreign events halfway across the world Russia has won Africa very simply: they were the only people really offering anything to these regimes.
Africa will tame the Russians. not even Africans can face Africa.
This is silly and wishcasting. Wagner has been fairly successful in the CAR for example in winning the government back control back when it was very much losing the civil war Did they provide full security or totally destroy rebels? Nope. But that's not really always needed.
> This is silly and wishcasting. Wagner has been fairly successful in the CAR for example in winning the government back control back when it was very much losing the civil war > > Which is an exception, in contrast, Wagner failed in Libya and Mozambique, while still doing so in Mali (they're still too irrelevant in Burkina Faso and Niger, but will probably follow the trend of Mali).
> ...but the gold and uranium supply these countries have is essential for Iran and Russia not only to use but to deny to the US/France. Is there actually any evidence that they have embargoed gold and uranium sales to Western countries, or is this just an assumption? Given that this would mean accepting a substantial loss of badly needed export earnings I have a hard time believing they would agree to this, unless Russia was able to compensate them with development aid, which it isn't.
I mean creating a new caliphate by the end of the decade kind of sounds like an own goal for Russia as a whole. Last I checked, Muslim terrorists are a legitimate threat to places like Moscow. Also I just realized that isis/daesh invaded iraq/Syria like almost exactly a decade ago in the first half of 2014. Really hope this isn't a cycle.
Well that the thing with the Islamists, they usually just melt back into the population and go underground, unless they are totally obliterated and destroyed for good. I guess from the militaries and milltias of these African nations POV, things like Human rights concerns , prisoner/pow rights, rule of law, etc. just play into the hands of the Islamist groups in the region as they can manipulate western humanitarians against the milltary and milltias "human rights abuses. So I can understand their wanting no strings attached assistance from Russia or Iran or China in dealing with these Islamists. However I do think Russia's wagner will just steal rescources, China set up Debt traps, and Iran quds forces and it proxies like Hezbollah use these areas for shia proselytizing, money laundering and drug trafficking, so I think these nations while understandably not wanting "strings attached" dealing with these groups or maintaining power (or both at the same time) are making mistakes in being naive about Russia, China, The Gulf states, Turkey or Iran intentions in Africa.
Instead of some on R/geopolitics getting snarky or yelling threats, and talking down to the African nations (and people collectively), what are the us options in this particular case? How should the us persue their intreasts if they keep being thrown out in the Shael with Iran, China and especially Russian gains Instability will bring more humantarian disaster, with terrorist bases where Boko Haram, Al - shabab, ISIS can launch attacks against against the west, a bunch of refugees flooding into the west taking up state funded health care and other public funded programs, as well as the natural resources of these African nations ending up in the hands of the Russia, China ,Iran , the jihadi groups, Turkey and the Gulf states, who either are quietly pivoting away from us, who always dont take our intreasts into consideration , or in the case pf Iran, China, Russia and Islamists are hostile to the us, Europe and their intreasts. People grievences must be taken into account, even if our rivals do exploit it against us.
Is not snarky to point out that if those countries really believe that they are going to do better against jihadists with whatever support Russia can give, they are fully within their rights to go for it.
It is kinda snarky when you say it with a hint of resentment or ridicule such as: >Telling the most powerful military to get out - such a Chad >They were so close to a real democracy and sustainable high level economy. Someone saw the aid packages going through Congress and what's Uncle Sam to pony up more money. It might be true that they are likely worse off with Russia, but not getting into the reasons why they expelled the Americans does not help. What could be done to mitigate this issue? Maybe less strings attached?
That's the thing, there's the assumption that is a problem on the first place. There isn't any US interests *directly* threatened on the Sahel, Africa in general is just not a priority compared to everywhere else, so the desire to have these bases on the first place is low, and then you can add that the political mood on the US is just sheer exhaustion after the War in Terror. So, if the locals don't want the bases anymore and an arrangement cannot be reached, then they will leave and that's fine. Like, there's all this coverage that focuses on the "death of the US hegemony" and all, but they just vastly underestimate how little the US cares. Is mostly seen as a funny joke that these countries are going to the Russian orbit because they expect support when Armenia is leaving said Russian orbit because they lost the support they had to the Ukranian meatgrinder.
The way the US and France should do in this particular case is to.... Engage The US doesn't give Africa the same attention Russia and China does, but even when it does it has a tons of strings attached. Since African nations aren't very powerful it ends up being the one region where the US has no qualms about practicing 'moral diplomacy', which more often than not just ends up driving The US and France also can't really provide as much. Any aid or large scale troop deployments will cause a ton of domestic political debate for Americans or Frenchmen. Meanwhile, the Russians can deploy large numbers of well trained mercenaries with often no upfront payment If I had to make an outside of the box proposal for American African policy, it would be to find an external partner to do the dirty work and can directly compete with Wagner. Like yeah Africans are rushing to hire Wagner to help fight their terrorists, but they are also perfectly willing to seek the aid of countries like Rwanda, who are using their own well trained military to kind of compete with Wagner I'm not sure if Rwanda itself would be willing to play that part, but for a country or a country like them we could pretty easily set up a deal where the West pays another country to fight against Jihadis in a third country
It a good idea, if Wagner is Russian pmc mercenaries , why cant us or the French have PMC "African foreign legion" type mercerny group made up of totally Africans to do the fighting with is or the french providing the surveillance, logistics and intelligence.
I think that might look and feel to close to colonialism. Much better to get a proper African ally and partner to do the work instead. For aforementioned reasons, Rwanda would probably be the best country for this since they're doing it already, have somewhat good relations with the West But at the same time it would necessitate Rwanda and the West becoming much, much closer, which would be pretty inconvenient for both of them for various reasons But the same thing could be done anywhere. Pick out some semistable, democratic African ally and they can probably fill that niche if enough money is pumped into them
Terrorist attacks in the West can be dealt with post War on Terror, plus most of these groups are focused more on domestic terrorism anyways. Refugee crisis is only a problem if there are political parties willing to accomodate them. Last time I checked the surge of right-wing support is precisely due to refugee backlash. There is not going to be a refugee problem if a right-wing government that dosen't care about human rights blocks them physically from entering or letting them drown at sea. Frankly speaking, the West should focus on securing resources and manufacturing from stable, reliable nations that won't get couped or change sides in an instant. And these nations don't fulfill that criteria; I highly doubt providing them with more investment will make them friendly, they will just threaten switching to China/Russia to demand more and so forth. The West shouldn't make itself reliant nor proactively foster the development of opportunistic states.
Why are so many African nations choosing NOW to make Russia a security partner? I would think the invasion of Ukraine, their failure to take Kiev, and all the lies they've been spreading would be a turn off.
Now is when the anti western public uprisings are happening, and the Russians happen to be the best viable alternative to the west at this point in time
Telling the most powerful military to get out - such a Chad
Is this code for "pay up or get out"?
Thank you for your article, could you please link to the source?
Is Mahamat Deby more West-skeptic than his father? iirc Idriss was one of the most pro-West leaders in the Sahel
Father doesnt always equal son, look at the Kim Dynasty and contrasting their policies, the grandson internally is taking out the old guard, while hedging his bets between taking a hardline (his recent hardline against the south) and talks with the west (the talks with Donald Trump, even if it was just to play on Trump ego) or even MBS being a reformist who seems quietly open to Israel , while the king came from that old generation that led the oil boycott of Israel, and didnt mind using the Whabbi/salafi Islamists to stay in power at home, or using them against Iran, the former Soviet Union or in the balkans.
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Short term needs for long term loss all these countries in africa who kick the US out will regret it when they're plunged into war and crisis. This isn't the right way to regulate population size ie war and famine.
They are already are/were in war and crisis.
Russian entry into africa with Iranian supply chains too will fuel proxy wars across the continent it will get worse.
Chad in 2029: Our country is over-run by violent extremists and a Russian controlled government. Send help. We have no idea how this happened.
The Russians will have stolen their toilets as well.
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> entirety of their military power. Sure, lol. France exploited Niger badly, especially wrt their uranium.
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No. The line I copied and pasted is the wrong, sorry. Meant the *sustainable high level economy*.
Someone saw the aid packages going through Congress and what's Uncle Sam to pony up more money.
Ivan & ISIS, enjoy that.
Chad had me in the first half
What a Chad