"Amid world-shaking crises in the Middle East, Europe and the Indo-Pacific, the news from Niger might seem unimportant. Yes, American troops are making an ignominious withdrawal as Russian forces sashay into the same Nigerien air base hosting U.S. personnel. And yes, until last July's coup Niger was a poster child for American democracy efforts in Africa and the foundation for U.S. counterterrorism strategy in the region. Today, the American-backed, democratically elected president is a prisoner in his official residence, and the coup leaders are working with Russia's Wagner Group.
How much does Niger really matter? Though large (about twice the size of Texas), it's landlocked and mostly desert. It has substantial uranium reserves and other minerals, including gold, but nothing that can't be found elsewhere. With roughly 26 million people and a gross domestic product of about $15 billion, it is one of the world's poorest and least developed countries. Since achieving nominal independence from France in 1960, Niger has lurched between ineffective intervals of civilian and military rule.
Let Vladimir Putin have it, most Americans would say if they thought about Niger at all. Under normal circumstances, U.S. secretaries of state wouldn't spend much time thinking about Niger or its neighbors. But these aren't normal times.
Russia's power move in Niger is part of a broader pattern. From Libya to South Africa, Mr. Putin is capitalizing on American and Western mistakes to acquire lucrative mineral resources, complicate Western security planning, and enhance the Kremlin's ability to evade sanctions.
Not since the British East India Co. built an empire from the ruins of Mughal power has a semiprivate mercenary company enjoyed as much success as the Wagner Group has in Africa. Wagner operatives have capitalized on widespread hatred of France and the inability of feeble Western-backed governments to deliver much in the way of security, prosperity or education. Their operatives have made fortunes in gold, diamonds and other minerals for themselves and their Kremlin patrons while delivering one humiliation after another to the West.
For Mr. Putin, the benefits of his Africa strategy are clear. Wagner's operations make billions of dollars. Some of that flows to the oligarch community around Mr. Putin, helping him keep his friends happy. Some of it underwrites the Ukraine conflict. And Wagner's links to mining operations and governments across Africa allow for lots of money laundering and sanctions evasion that further help Mr. Putin wage conflict.
Why has the West been so hapless? In part because this is a difficult part of the world to do business in. Most governments are weak, tribal loyalties matter more than formal institutions, borders are loose, and civil societies are fragmented. In addition, almost everyone in the region hates France, the former colonial power and traditionally the most active outside force there.
But it's also because the U.S. foreign-policy system has designated Africa policy as a kind of laboratory for human-rights activism and democracy promotion.
Until recently, Africa mattered little in the calculations of American business or the national-security bureaucracy. Compared with other regions of the world, Africa attracted relatively little American foreign investment, and its importance to American military planners paled before the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe.
The absence of competing voices in American policy debates gives development nongovernmental organizations, other activist groups and their governmental allies, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development, disproportionate power to shape policy for the region. That is unfortunate, because the Sahel is a place where the conditions for the sustainable rise of democratic societies largely don't exist. As a result, much American activity in the region consists of pursuing nebulous democracy and development objectives that we never reach.
Bad human-rights policy isn't merely futile. It can be murderous. Many of the region's problems can be traced to the West's intervention in the 2011 Libyan civil conflict -- the decision that unleashed a series of catastrophes that, one hopes, disturbs the slumber of the naive and arrogant human-rights crusaders who buffaloed Barack Obama into one of the most ill-considered steps of his presidency. This foolish act ushered in more than a decade of misery and conflict in Libya. It also sent cascades of weapons into the fragile Sahel while loosening the restraint that Moammar Gadhafi's regime, for all its faults, had imposed on jihadist groups.
Three decades of development aid, democracy promotion and human rights activism by Western diplomats and NGO staffers have culminated in the Wagner Group's conquests in Africa, just as 20-plus years of American social engineering failed to sideline the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Hope isn't a plan. Team Biden needs to rethink its Africa policy. Until the West absorbs the lessons of past failures, Wagner will continue to roll." [1]
Interesting. We, the Westerners, are repeating the same mistake. We arrive into societies that we don't have a clue how these societies function. We make some catastrophic mistakes. We are kicked out as a result. Again and again. Do you remember Ukraine?Population of Ukraine is also extremely poor. Every Ukrainian president and his entourage, including Mr. Zelensky and his friends help themself thanks to huge corruption. Parallels with Africa and Afghanistan is easy to see for everybody. Do we face catastrophe in Ukraine too?
1.Why Putin Seeks to Dominate Africa. Walter Russell Mead. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 14 May 2024: A.13.
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