Washington, DC — Washington’s latest diplomatic overtures to the three junta-led Sahelian states send the wrong message about U.S. tolerance of bad behavior in the region.
The first indications that the Trump White House was seeking to restore relations with the three Alliance of Sahel States countries emerged last December when U.S. Africa Command's (AFRICOM) deputy head, General John Brennan, dropped a hint that the United States was exploring "targeted, limited intelligence sharing" with them as part of a "more aggressive" AFRICOM focus on regional security.
Last week, any lingering doubts as to the seriousness of the newfangled rapprochement were laid to rest following the State Department's announcement that Nick Checker, head of its Bureau of African Affairs, was on his way to Mali "to convey the United States' respect for Mali's sovereignty and desire to chart a new course in the bilateral relationship and move past policy missteps." While the statement did not explain what those "missteps" were, it did make clear that the United States was also looking forward to "cooperating and consulting with other governments in the region, including Burkina Faso and Niger, on shared security and economic interests."
The détente between Washington and the three junta-led countries marks a remarkable volte-face on the part of all parties. Since their accession to power at various times between 2020 and 2023, the leaders of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, respectively, have achieved collective notoriety for their uninhibited display of hostility toward Western countries, either adjudged to be implicated in "neocolonial" conspiracy against, or actively conniving in the "imperialist" subjugation of, hapless African countries.
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Burkinabé leader Ibrahim Traoré is the undoubted conductor of this orchestra of historical victimhood. The United States, for its part, has been mostly content to give the three countries a wide berth. During the Biden presidency, Washington largely adhered to longstanding U.S. legislation prohibiting aid to "any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by a military coup d'état or decree." At the same time, the State Department seems to have been leery of alienating the Economic Community of West African States, the regional body that the three countries had dramatically exited last year after it insisted on a speedy transition to civil rule.
Yet, insofar as all rapprochement is born of pragmatic calculation, this one is no different. Behind the façade of anti-Western declamation, strains have crept into the vaunted partnership between the three renegade juntas and Moscow. While the latter has supported its trio of allies with contingents of Africa Corps (formerly Wagner Group) mercenaries, its military needs in Ukraine have naturally superseded its commitment to its West African partners. Moscow has also drawn flak for its apparent involvement in counterterrorism operations in which innocent civilians seem to have been targeted.
Regardless, the campaign against various Islamist groups (the ostensible reason the three countries had jettisoned Paris for Moscow ab initio) seems not to have gone according to plan. Not only are the terror groups expanding their footprint across the Sahel, they are "increasingly spreading south and infiltrating countries such as Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo…"
Last week's Islamic State attack on Niger's main international airport in Niamey, during which the militants reportedly "set off explosions and roamed freely among passenger planes," is the latest indication of their growing strength.
On the whole, it would seem that the Sahelian countries' outreach to Washington was dictated by a real fear of being overrun by a concert of armed militants increasingly emboldened by their successes in the field. The anti-imperial rhetoric can wait.
In turn, the United States seems to take the threat of Islamism and the potential for regional destabilization seriously, especially if the Trump administration's new National Security Strategy (NSS) [PDF] is any indication. The NSS expresses U.S. wariness of "resurgent Islamist terrorist activity in parts of Africa while avoiding any long-term American presence or commitments." To that extent, the United States can plead that it is following its new NSS to the letter, while simultaneously exploiting a rare opportunity to shore up a beleaguered group of African countries against advancing terrorism.
While this is all very well, one is still left wondering, and particularly in light of the demonstrated desperation of the three countries, why the United States cannot use the occasion to, first, demand immediate action on the regimes' flagrant and systematic human rights violations and, second, echo ECOWAS's longstanding demand regarding a speedy return to civil rule. In the specific case of Niger, the administration could have demanded the immediate release of President Mohamed Bazoum, illegally detained in the presidential palace with his wife since the July 2023 military takeover in the country. If its misjudgment rankles, it is because this is something that the administration could have done easily had it put its mind to it.
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That all this originates from a conscious, if deeply misguided, decision to abstain from democracy promotion, something that U.S. policy toward Africa has historically—even if imperfectly—championed, makes it all the more disheartening. Senior Advisor for Africa Massad Boulos's statement last year that, "democracy is always appreciated, but our policy is not to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.
People are free to choose whatever system is appropriate for them," was a tragic milestone that will no doubt come back to haunt Washington. It is a sad day when the United States has to resort to the same language of "sovereignty" and "noninterference" long favored by many an African scoundrel to justify a policy shift that ultimately places it on the same pedestal as China and Russia in the region.
In the final analysis, it would seem that, not for the first time, the Trump White House has elected to sacrifice principle on the altar of economic calculation, in this case the pursuit of critical minerals like lithium and uranium and other resources. It may wake up one day to discover that there are more things in diplomacy than are dreamt of in its economic philosophy.
