Is US Military Training In Africa Helping Tp Spawn Coups?

CCO Public Domain

Lee J. M. Seymour and Theodore McLauchlin, Phys.org/The Conversation: Does U.S. military training incubate coups in Africa? The jury is still out

Military officers overthrew Mali's government in a coup d'état on August 18, 2020. Among the more worrying aspects of the coup is the fact that a number of the officers involved had received foreign training, most notably from the United States.

In fact, this was the second time in eight years that US-trained officers in Mali had launched a coup. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one civilian government to a coup launched by foreign-trained officers may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.

For many commentators with a strong sense of déjà vu, events in Mali reinforce suspicions of a link between US training and coups d'état.

But does US foreign military training provoke coups d'état? The short answer is we don't know. Until we know more, we should be skeptical of the blanket claim that it does.

Initial evidence, much cited by journalists, suggests a link.

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WNU Editor: US training of foreign soldiers is a huge part of US foreign policy and it is big .... Between 1999 and 2016, US programs involved 2.4 million trainees in programs that cost over $20 billion. The possibility that there could be some soldiers who received US military training being involved in a coup should surprise no one.

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