A U.S. Exit from Niger Would Be No Catastrophe

S ometime last week, senior State Department official Mollie Phee and General Michael Langley, commander of U.S. Africa Command, flew to the Nigerien capital of Niamey for a meeting with the military-led government there. U.S.–Niger relations were in the doldrums since July, when the Nigerien military arrested the president, suspended the constitution, and took over the state. The session was ostensibly meant to see whether those ties could be restored for the benefit of both countries.

The meeting didn’t go well. Days after the U.S. delegation left, the junta’s spokesman announced that the previous security deals Niger inked with the United States were null and void. While the Nigeriens didn’t order the roughly 650 U.S. troops to leave the country, they called the U.S. military presence there “illegal,” which suggests that it may be only a matter of time before President Biden orders all Americans to depart. The Biden administration would like to avoid this; on Monday, March 18, the Pentagon and State Department insisted that U.S. officials were working their diplomatic magic to get a better understanding of how Niger’s latest announcement means will impact America’s force presence in this poor, arid country in Africa’s Sahel region.

The U.S. obviously doesn’t want to pack up and board the C-130s to greener pastures. The U.S., after all, constructed a $110 million drone base in Agadez to monitor jihadist groups operating in the Sahel and West Africa, a yearslong project that at the time was trumpeted as a key node in Washington’s counterterrorism apparatus. The Biden administration has done everything within the law to retain a security relationship with the junta, even though this same group of military officers (some of whom were trained by the U.S. military) overthrew its democratic government and put its president, Mohamed Bazoum, under house arrest. It took the State Department more than two months to explicitly declare that the July coup was in fact a coup.

U.S. officials hoped they could convince Niger’s military to return power to civilians—eventually. Washington’s partners in West Africa felt the same way. The Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS) wasted no time shutting their borders with Niger, cutting off electricity supplies and banning banking services, betting that a tight economic squeeze on one of the world’s poorest countries would compel the junta to at the very least schedule elections. But the strategy didn’t work. ECOWAS unilaterally lifted those sanctions last month, citing the humanitarian impacts of sanctions.

If the Nigeriens don’t suddenly change their tune, the U.S. military will have to redeploy. The U.S. foreign policy establishment will, predictably, freak out. The terrorism hawks will argue that Niger will soon go the way of Mali and Burkina Faso, which have been inundated and overrun by terrorists. China hawks will use a U.S. withdrawal from Niger as an opportunity to reiterate a claim they’ve made repeatedly over the past decade: Africa is fast becoming a Chinese colony. Russia hawks, coincidentally, will make much the same argument.

Everybody ought to take a deep breath.

First, let’s not kid ourselves: There is a significant and growing terrorism problem in Africa. The U.S. State Department’s 2022 Country Report on Terrorism finds that of the ten nations with the most terrorist attacks in 2022, four (DRC-Congo, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and Somalia) reside in Africa. According to the Pentagon-affiliated Africa Center for Strategic Studies, half of the terrorism deaths that occurred in Africa last year took place in the Sahel. The Islamic State and al-Qaeda now view Africa, not the Middle East or South Asia, as its main base of operations. One can reasonably expect to see more terrorist activity in Niger with less U.S. eyes in the sky.

But it’s not like the U.S. didn’t think this entire situation through. The Biden administration reportedly greenlit exploratory talks with Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Benin, three West African coastal states that could serve as alternative locations for U.S. drone operations in the event the junta in Niger booted all U.S. troops out of the country. While the status of those talks is unclear, it wouldn’t be a surprise if one of those states agreed to allow a U.S. military or intelligence presence on their soil. These countries have an even greater interest in mitigating terrorist activity in West Africa than the U.S. does.

It must also be said that focusing on terrorism numbers is a bit misleading. While thousands of terrorist attacks occurred in Africa last year, the vast majority of those targets were local, non-U.S. targets. Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Niger are all fighting Islamist-led insurgencies to various degrees, and those insurgencies are using terrorist attacks to strike at government security forces and civilians alike. In essence, the numbers are high because there are wars going on. When al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates in the Sahel aren’t fighting each other for power, recruits, and territory, they’re fighting local governments. Viewed this way, the U.S. isn’t necessarily engaging in counterterrorism as much as it is engaging in counterinsurgency in support of highly fragile states with significant political and social problems—none of which are solved by a U.S. military presence.

The China and Russia angles are over-the-top as well. Again, some facts need to be stated outright: Beijing has made huge economic and political inroads on the African continent over the past two decades. In 2022, the House Foreign Affairs Committee reported that over 10,000 Chinese firms were operating in Africa, and $160 billion in loans have been written by Chinese financiers between 2000 and 2020. African governments also appreciate China’s propensity to call out Washington’s foreign-policy hypocrisy. China’s trade with Africa hit $282 billion in 2022, nearly four times what the U.S. traded that same year.

Russia, meanwhile, has successfully used the Wagner Group, which has since been demobilized in favor of a new Russian-led Africa Corps, to spread Russian influence in Mali, the Central African Republic, and other states that are poor and destabilized and host a number of internal conflicts. The probability of Niger throwing its lot in with Moscow after a U.S. withdrawal is high.

But does any of this matter for U.S. grand strategy? It’s a worthwhile question to ask. China is a preferred economic partner for many African states now, but can they count on the Chinese to implement infrastructure deals and investment initiatives over the long term? The quality of China’s projects has been poor, leaving some African governments with a mountain of debt. And Beijing is notorious for making huge, multibillion-dollar agreements, only to slow-roll execution as the months and years go by. If you don’t believe me, just ask Iran, whose 25-year cooperation agreement with China was more fanfare than anything.

Russia, too, has little to offer Africa. The Russian economy is hardly an attractive export destination, and African governments need to be cognizant that deeper economic relations with Moscow will likely have consequences for their ties in the West. Although Russian president Vladimir Putin talks a big game about the so-called Global South, the only tangible contribution he has given Africa is thousands of mercenary thugs who protect highly unpopular heads of state, prey on Africa’s natural resources, and pretend to fight terrorism in the countryside. Russia’s power comes as much from our own imaginations as it does from its real capability.

At the time of writing, the U.S. military is still in Niger. You can bet the Pentagon will do whatever it can to stay. But rest assured: A U.S. withdrawal, if it comes to that, won’t result in Armageddon.