Lawfare Archive: Much Ado About Coups with Naunihal Singh

The Lawfare Podcast

This episode from the Lawfare Archive explores the recent surge of military coups in West and Central Africa, examining their causes, consequences, and the evolving international

Key takeaways

• The rise of military coups in Africa is linked to democratic backsliding, regional instability, and increased jihadi violence.
• International anti-coup norms have weakened due to strategic foreign policy considerations, such as counterterrorism partnerships and great power competition.

Main topics

• Military coups in Africa (Gabon, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea)
• The strategic logic behind coup attempts

Notable quotes

We have had in Africa, we've had coups in Gabon, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. And the consequence of all this activity in countries that have jihadi violence has been an increase in violence.

Conclusion

The episode underscores that while coups in Africa are not new, their recent frequency and strategic implications highlight a broader erosion of democratic norms. Despite

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:10) and turn out Lawfare with an episode from the Lawfare Archive for August 23, 2026. On August 18, Zambia's president Hakaide Hichilema won re-election following a contentious election which included the temporary suspension of vote counting due to concerns about ballot theft and violence. Unlike Zambia, many African countries, especially in West and Central Africa, continue to experience democratic backsliding and frequent regime change, including through military coups. For today's archive, I chose an episode from September 13, 2023, in which Tyler McBrien spoke with Nanihal Singh about military coups in Africa and his book on the subject. They discussed what makes some countries more coup-prone than others, changes in international norms around coups, and the myth that if one country experiences a coup, its neighbors are more likely to as well. Speaker 2 (1:08) I'm Tyler McBrien, Managing Editor of Lawfare, and this is the Lawfare Podcast, September 13th, 2023. On August 30th, soldiers and high-ranking officers of the Armed Forces of Gabon seized control of government buildings and communication channels in the capital city of Libreville, detaining Gabon's President Ali Bongo and his residents, and declaring an end to the Bongo family's 56-year rule. It was a coup, one of nine in the last three years in West and Central Africa. including in Niger just one month prior. I spoke with Nanihal Singh, author of the book Seizing Power, The Strategic Logic of Military Coups, to discuss this spate of coups in the region, the origins of coups, what makes certain countries more coup-prone than others, and the rise and fall of anti-coup norms during and after the Cold War. We also dispelled several coup myths, including the myth of the coup contagion. It's the Lawfare Podcast, September 13th. Much ado about coups with Nanihal Singh. Speaker 2 (2:07) Now, Nanihal, I want to start with the lay of the land of sorts. As you very well know, coups are not a new phenomenon. So why would I be reaching out to you today to talk? Can you talk about where the most recent coups have been taking place and maybe some of the context behind them? Speaker 3 (2:26) Certainly. So the most recent coups which have occurred have been almost all in Africa. And it depends when you want to go back. The most recent coup in the world was in the country of Gabon, which has been stable ever since independence. In fact, it's only been ruled by one family. It is a relatively wealthy African country with oil and uranium and a very small population. And nobody was anticipating that they would have a coup. There was a coup there. Before that, recently, there was a coup in... Niger. And Niger is a very important country in terms of U.S. counterterrorism. There is a U.S. Air Force base in Agadez in the north of Niger, which was one of the most expensive Air Force projects in the world when it was built. And it provides what the military calls ISR coverage, which is to say unmanned drones flying over the Sahel. monitoring terrorist activity and other movements and activities across this large region. There was a coup in Chad, another country which is very important for U.S. counterterrorism. There what happened is the president died, and instead of the next president coming from the line of succession, it was his son who was sort of appointed by the military. There was a coup in Sudan where there had been a fragile transitional government which was supposed to be moving in a more democratic way. There had been a previous coup which happened in the context of a democratic revolution. And just when they were supposed to be fully handing over power to the civilians, there was a falling out between the two major military factions. And this is... resulted in a civil war in Sudan, which has led to more refugees than the war in Ukraine. And so the consequences of all of these incidents are pretty severe. As a matter of fact, we have had in Africa, we've had coups in Gabon, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. And the consequence of all this activity in countries that have jihadi violence has been an increase in violence. Some of these countries like Burkina Faso and Mali have turned towards the Wagner Group. There are important consequences for both security and foreign policy that are occurring as a result of these coups. Speaker 2 (5:19) I definitely want to dig into these consequences that you mentioned. because they are immense. But first, I want to back up once more and just, you know, lay out some definitions on the table. In your understanding, and maybe in the sort of academic understanding, what is a coup? And how might that differ from perhaps a colloquial understanding or even a political understanding? I'm speaking, I think, specifically about the recent ado about the United States labeling the coup or non-coup in Niger a coup. So could you first just lay out the definition and then talk a bit about what's at stake when a coup is finally labeled a coup, at least from the United States' point of view? Speaker 3 (5:59) Certainly. So first off, I define a coup attempt as an explicit inaction involving some portion of the military, police, or security forces, it's usually the military, that's undertaken with the intent to overthrow the government. So this encompasses not only the obvious coup attempts, but also situations where there may have been a popular revolution going on at the same time. Protesters and demonstrators in the street, as long as the president is pushed out by military action. It excludes other cases as well. So if you've had an assassination or an invasion or something like that, it's still a coup. And the consequence of this here is that There are legal consequences for countries that have had coups. The United States, as part of Section 7008 of the State Department's Appropriation Act, says that we cannot give certain forms of aid to countries which have engaged in a coup. And that has consequences, particularly when these are countries which are close partners of the United States. So we did this in order to defend democracy and to make sure that countries that engaged in coups would have consequences and therefore there would be a deterrent effect towards coups. And we did all of this after the end of the Cold War when we realized it was very important to protect the norm of democracy. And since then, the problem is that there have been a number of other important foreign policy considerations which have come into mind. Countries like Egypt have had coups, but they are too politically important for us to sanction. Other countries have had coups, but they're security partners, and we don't necessarily want to identify what they've done as coups. The way it works... in the law actually is that we're only interested in a narrow subset of coups. We're interested in a coup where the military acts alone, so outside of the context of a popular revolution, and where the president is fully democratically elected. And so sometimes we've dodged and we've said, oh, the president wasn't really democratically elected, so we don't need to sanction the new government which comes into power as a result of the coup. But in general, there was an effort to create and protect this norm. And it was very effective. It was created not just by the U.S. Other Western countries acted to protect democracy. The United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and regional organizations like the OAU in Latin America. the African Union in Africa, they all acted to try to make it clear that there would be penalties for countries that engaged in coup making. And they were able to reduce the number of coup attempts significantly. Coup attempts really went down considerably in parts of the world like Latin America. And in Africa, where they continued, they were still depressed. And so it's clear that this attempt to protect the norm worked. But the problem is it's costly. Anytime you have sanctions, they have to be things that hurt both parties because otherwise you would have been doing the thing already. And so these sanctions are things that cause pain to the United States and to the countries imposing the sanctions. They don't want to do it. And because they don't want to do it, sometimes they find ways to wriggle out. And as a result, the norm has been successfully weakened. or successively weakened over time. The norm is no longer as strong as it once was. And I understand this. Look, foreign policy is about making choices. So there was a war on terror. It continues to this day. You're recording me on September 11th, 22 years after the towers were hit. And we became very concerned with counter-terror. And we developed partnerships with countries and we didn't want those partnerships to be disrupted, even if there was a coup in those countries. We have important strategic relationships with countries like Egypt. And that strategic relationship is one we want to preserve no matter who is in power in Egypt. And now there is great power competition. And so we are concerned about losing out influence with respect to to Russia and China and all of these considerations then reduce the amount of seriousness with which we can prosecute sort of a vigorous defense of democracy and democratic norms. You Speaker 2 (11:00) bring up a good point about norms and it actually has complicated my next question. You published an article in the Journal of Democracy in October of last year and there was a subsection that you titled The Rise and Fall of Anti-Coup Norms. So I wanted to ask you about whether this seeming uptick perhaps in coups is because of a weakening anti-coup norm or thinking about the answer to your last question, is it just part of a trend of just the weakening of norms of democracy in general or are those two so inextricably linked that when you speak of one, you invariably speak of the other? Speaker 3 (11:39) I do think they're linked. If you look at