Ten members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) have expressed their readiness to use military intervention to resolve the logjam in Niger Republic in the event that diplomacy fails, noting that failure to take decisive actions would be perceived as a major weakness of the regional economic bloc, information available on Nigerian Defence Headquarters Twitter handle has shown.
This was the outcome of a meeting attended by defence chiefs and diplomats from Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo, Liberia, Ghana, Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cape Varde, Benin and Senegal. Mali, Niger, Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Burkina Faso did not attend the meeting.
This is as France, Italy, Spain, Germany and the United States have commenced the evacuation of their citizens from Niger Republic following anti-French protests in Niamey, the country’s capital.
“We are now at a crossroads. The failure of ECOWAS to act on Niger will be the decisive event that lay bare the weakness of the regional bloc’s system of collective security. It will show that coup d’etats can be carried out with impunity if backed by other dictatorships,” Nigerian Defence Headquarters stated.
“ECOWAS’ weak response to recent coup d’etats paved the way for what is now a belt of dictatorships that stretches all the way from Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali and now Niger. They plotters gained the perception that ECOWAS is weak and could be challenged.
“Failure of the regional bloc to respond militarily gave them the perception that they can push ECOWAS further without ramifications. The latest coup in Niger has fundamentally changed the region. A new cold war between democratic states and military juntas with the latter directly challenging the regional bloc. Audaciously declaring that an ECOWAS attack on Niger is an attack on Guinea, Mali and Burkina Faso, requiring a full retaliatory response. In order words, WAR.
”It will come as a surprise to many that ECOWAS will not yield to pressure. 10 ECOWAS defence chiefs met in Abuja today to deliberate on possible military action as the 7 Days deadline giving by ECOWAS to the Junta to leave the stage and hand over power approaches,” it said.
Russia, one of the members of the permanent Security Council of the United Nations, has expressed its disapproval for use of military force in Niger Republic, regarding the country as the new front of Cold War between the global superpowers.
Russia Today (RT) in a recent article acknowledged the changing geopolitical environment, which is dictated by competition between the US and its allies on one hand, and Russia and China on the other hand, with the emerging scenario providing options to poor countries across the world to choose from.
“The world has changed, though. The war-on-terror context is over, and instead we now live in a geopolitical environment dictated by sharp competition between powerful countries – primarily the US and its allies against rivals such as China and Russia. This environment means that African states now have other ‘options’ to choose from for assistance, which allows them to maximise their own political autonomy and space rather than fulfilling the ideological conditions of another. For example, African states reportedly increasingly use the Wagner Group for security rather than Western assistance, while China’s Belt and Road initiative also means African states can no longer be exploited by organisations such as the IMF,” RT noted.
“In these circumstances, with militaries being the strongest political actors in unstable countries such as Niger, the opportunity arises for them to seize power and be protected from Western predation, because in this international system, the US can no longer conduct direct unilateral military interventions. This has seen governments and militaries take advantage of an anti-French backlash across West Africa and use it to begin driving out the presence of the former colonial masters. In just the space of a year, the French army has been expelled from Mali and Burkina Faso. Niger is presumably next. However, the risk of a French-backed civil war does remain,” it said.
