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Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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