Niger revokes military accord with the United States | Hacker News Reader

Niger revokes military accord with the United States

reuters.com

7 pointsokasaki11 comments

It seems totally plausible that this could have been triggered by the exact things that Niger said.

Just imagine being a national ruler or general and having high level US personnel show up with little notice or coordination and summoning you to a meeting without even bothering to say what it's about.

I'm sure there is a lot more to it than that, but it's easy to imagine that the final straw was just an instance of overt disrespect.

> "Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships capable of truly helping them fight against terrorism," Abdramane said

> "Also, the government of Niger forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation towards the Nigerien government and people," he added.

Pretty harsh. Wonder why they’re mad enough to essentially call a diplomatic delegation a bunch of pricks and bullies and kick them out..

> Abdramane said the status and presence of U.S. troops in Niger was illegal and violated constitutional and democratic rules because, according to the spokesperson, it was unilaterally imposed on the African nation in 2012.

> He said Niger was not aware of the number of U.S. civilian and military personnel on its soil or the amount of equipment deployed and, according to the agreement, the U.S. military had no obligation to respond to any request for help against militants.

Ah, ok. Standard stuff; America never wants partners, it wants deferential vassals.

Niger had a military coup removing their democratically elected government last year. They are now drawing closer to Russia. The old government was corrupt, but the us was pushing improvements.

the us isn't perfect, but in general we want partners who are not corrupt.

or corrupt and even murderous in a certain beneficial way...

Are you seriously suggesting that whatever breakdown in diplomacy happened here was due to a principled stance against corruption & dictatorship? Because off the top of my head we’ve supported

- Sukarno

- Pinochet

- Mohamed bin Zayed

- Mohammed bin Salman

- Ferdinand Marcos

- Pol Pot

- Every South Korean military dictator pretty much

But this time, this time it was just too much for us to bear?

Yes. Real geopolitics isn't a childish game of good and evil. It's weighing about a thousand different factors and picking the best in your favor. That is how this works. Pointing to contradiction is for fools to bicker over while the adults are making decisions on the world stage.

I think you’re responding to the wrong post? I said “America never wants partners, it wants deferential vassals.” The guy who said the US wants partners who aren’t corrupt is here

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39731001

No, I'm stating that this is a pricipaled stance for corruption by the current dictators who will benifit at the expense of the people. Nothing the US could do would allow them to remain, other than unlimited spport for corruption which we are unwilling for. the us is not perfect but us abuse is not at fault here.

i read the regular reports (weekly) from https://www.understandingwar.org/ where this situation has been in the news constantly.

You're reading a website published by ISW, founded by Kimberly Kagan (sister-in-law to Victoria Nuland and Robert Kagan). Please do not be under the impression that it's a neutral source of information.

Robert Kagan is a "leading advocate of liberal interventionism", and everything ISW publishes is colored with the intent to make US intervention appear to be a good idea (or at least not a bad idea). As you may be aware, that hasn't worked out very well for the U.S. or foreign nations the past 24 months. Which by the way is probably a major factor in Niger's decision to kick the U.S. out

The bias is obvious. However I can see through that far enough to conclude it is them not us. Again I'm not claiming the us is all good, only that our action are at fault only in that we are opposing things bad for the people of nigeria.

> The old government was corrupt, but the us was pushing improvements.

You mean like in Haiti ? Or Nicaragua ?

When US pushes for "improvements" there won't be any.

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