As Russia's Sahel project stumbles, some U.S. policymakers want to rush back into the region and compete with Moscow. Frederic Wehrey and Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writing in Foreign Affairs, argue that Washington should do the opposite - exercise restraint and let Russia bear the full costs of its own failures.
The authors invoke a maxim attributed to Napoleon: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." As "Hvylya" reports, the scholars argue that Moscow's biggest error was assuming heavily militarized solutions could work in the Sahel without addressing the political and socioeconomic drivers of instability. For Russia, the consequences arrived quickly because of its "brute-force tactics, limited military footprint, and Balkanizing approach to regional security."
Wehrey and Weiss warn specifically against the approach the Trump administration appears to be taking. A senior envoy visited the region in February, and the State Department said the trip reflected a "desire to chart a new course in the bilateral relationship and move past policy missteps." The Carnegie scholars see this as potentially counterproductive - especially if it links U.S. security assistance to concessions on gold, uranium or lithium in a manner that mirrors how the Kremlin has operated.
A purely transactional approach, they argue, would reward the juntas' extractive bargaining strategy and entrench the corruption and misgovernance fueling the very jihadi violence Washington wants to eradicate. It would also ignore congressionally mandated restrictions on aiding governments that came to power through coups, further tarnishing U.S. credibility with African citizens who overwhelmingly prefer democracy over military rule.
Instead of competing with Russia on its terms, Wehrey and Weiss recommend that Washington play to its traditional strengths: supporting cross-border intelligence sharing, quiet mediation between the Sahelian juntas and the remaining 12 ECOWAS members, and reinforcing the security and governance capacities of coastal West African states such as Benin, Ghana and Nigeria. The goal, they write, should be to prevent a spillover of the Sahel's violence and construct a firewall against Moscow's influence - recognizing that Russia has been strongest in conflict-wracked, coup-affected contexts where fragility gives it an opening.