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Niger has been a base of international military operations for years as Islamic extremists have greatly expanded their reach in the Sahel. Those include Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria and Chad, but the more immediate threat comes from growing activity in Niger’s border areas with Mali and Burkina Faso from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the al-Qaida affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, known as JNIM.

Mali’s military junta last month ordered the 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission to leave, claiming they had failed in their mission. However, Wagner forces remain there, accused by watchdogs of human rights atrocities.

The United States in early 2021 said it had provided Niger with more than $500 million in military assistance and training programs since 2012, one of the largest such support programs in sub-Saharan Africa. The European Union earlier this year launched a 27 million-euro ($30 million) military training mission in Niger.

The U.S. has operated drones out of a base it constructed in Niger’s remote north as part of counterterrorism efforts in the vast Sahel. The fate of that base and other U.S. operational sites in the country after this week’s coup isn’t immediately known.

West Africa’s Sahel region has become one of the world’s deadliest regions for extremism. West Africa recorded over 1,800 extremist attacks in the first six months of this year, resulting in nearly 4,600 deaths, a top regional official told the United Nations Security Council this week.

Niger is one of the world’s poorest countries, struggling with climate change along with migrants from across West Africa trying to make their way across the Sahara en route toward Europe. It has received millions of euros of investment from the EU in its efforts to curb migration via smugglers.

The largest states in the world have the scale of empires but, Roberts suggests, they are a new breed. They are ‘superstates’, distinct from their neighbours ‘by expanse of territory, number and diversity of people, and social and economic complexity’. They aren’t quite empires and they aren’t all superpowers. Instead they represent a more recent development in a linear history: ‘The age of empires gave way to the age of states and next to the age of superstates.’

The main problem with the four superstate model is what to do about Russia. Roberts excludes what is territorially the biggest state in the world from his quadrumvirate because its population has collapsed and its economy is much smaller than that of the US, China or the EU. But India’s economy, too, is dwarfed by the others.

The EU has the dual distinction of being the only polity that is regularly referred to as a superstate and the only one that arguably shouldn’t be considered a state at all. Its economic power in the global system is undeniable, but in every other sense its power is much less certain. The EU’s formal structure, which seems to embody both postmodern technocratic management and premodern oligarchy, evades comparison

om Nairn argued that the EU suffers from a condition that also characterised the pre-First World War multinational empires: uneven development generates subtle forms of nationalist resistance which frustrate supranational designs. The EU has a fearsome border control agency, Frontex, but no central security apparatus. Can you have a superstate without an army, or rather an army of one’s own? The only centralised pan-European army is that of the United States, which has around a hundred thousand military personnel deployed across Europe.

The geographical division of the country remains an operative reality for alchemical electioneers, but talk of geographical divisions also serves as a convenient distraction from class divisions. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have talked of small government while increasing federal spending and the number of federal employees. But since the late 1970s they have succeeded in transferring trillions of dollars from the poor to the rich. One problem with calling the continental US a superstate is that it deliberately erases US overseas possessions – Guam, Puerto Rico etc. Another is that it distracts from the fact that so much of the energy of the US state apparatus is involved in its global posture.

Roberts stresses that empires need to justify themselves with a noble creed, both to propagandise to conquered peoples and to bolster the self-delusion of elite cadres. It’s easier to assert yourself if you’re convinced you’re bringing either civilisation or salvation.

All today’s superstates exhibit a resurgence of something like nationalism. China has Xi Jinping thought, India has Hindutva, US presidents will make America great again and the EU, according to Josep Borrell, is a garden surrounded by perilous jungle

Superstates or no, the five largest economies in the world are all either currently involved in a war, rearming, or making preparations.

In 2018, Tunisia signed an agreement to join the "Belt and Road" initiative, which was established by China in 2013. Bin Mabrouk went on to say: "After Algeria announced that it will join the group, we will also announce our intention to join BRICS." Alegria had earlier announced plans to join the BRICS group next year.

we never talk about going to war to preserve democracy when it is at risk in places like Hungary, Turkey, India, or Mexico. What makes Taiwan a special case? We need to ask ourselves whether that has to do with our predisposition to contain Chinese power more than it has to do with a careful assessment of U.S. national interests.

if all nations seek to have sufficient power that they cannot be bullied by global hegemons (and let’s be realistic, we’re the only global hegemon in this conversation at the moment), isn’t their desire to have military power consistent with the size of their country, their economy, and their national security interests what we should expect of them?

Is there something inherently wrong or dangerous about China seeking to challenge the United States economically, technologically, or politically? Isn’t that what all nations do? Don’t we believe in the inherent superiority of our system? Don’t we believe in the benefits of competition? (I thought that was fundamental to America’s national identity and values.)

until the start of the industrial revolution, China had the world’s largest economy and it is now resuming that role.

What really bothers us about China’s rise is that they are quite open about the fact that they want to challenge our influence in the world. We want to be No. 1. We don’t like being challenged.

we need to get over the idea that somehow the U.S.-China relationship is a zero-sum conflict, the way the U.S.-Soviet Union relationship was.

Our economies are intertwined. Over 70,000 U.S. companies are active in China. There is not a single major global issue we can resolve without cooperating with China. On many of them, our interests intersect. On some of them, they overlap.

even if our goal is to maximize our influence and our piece of the global economic pie, we need to carefully weigh whether a Cold War and ballooning military expenditures are the best way to balance our interests. It can be argued that overspending on defense has and will cost us influence and undercut the dynamism of our economy.

Being called out by the Chinese leader may have been uncomfortable for the U.S. But, as it happens, everything Xi said was true. The U.S. is actively seeking to contain China and impede its ability to develop key technologies.

We should believe in our hearts that our values and system serve the world better than theirs do and we should seek to persuade the world of that.

We have, I fear, entered a period in which the self-interested search of our defense establishment and our political classes for an international enemy are pushing us into misreading and mishandling the most important bilateral relationship in the world. We are applying old models and obsolescent frameworks to something new. We are mistaking our own bellicosity for strength. We are underestimating our strengths and our rival’s weaknesses. We are relying on reflex, when what we need is creativity.

Saudi Arabia accused Iran of sowing strife in its minority-Shiite communities, which have long complained of discrimination and neglect from authorities in Riyadh. A month after Nimr’s execution, the kingdom put 32 people on trial on charges of spying for Iran, including 30 Saudi Shiites. Fifteen were ultimately given death sentences.

Tensions reached new heights in 2019 after a wave of Houthi drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities, knocking out half of the kingdom’s oil output. At the time, U.S. officials said they believed the assault was launched from Iranian territory. Tehran denied involvement.

Yemen has enjoyed a rare reprieve from fighting since last April, when a United Nations-sponsored truce went into effect. Though the truce expired in October, the peace has largely held, and back-channel talks between the Houthis and the Saudis have resumed.Story continues below advertisementThese negotiations “are also a reflection of Saudi-Iranian rapprochement,” said Maysaa Shuja al-Deen, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies.

The Yemeni Embassy in Washington responded defiantly to Friday’s announcement, tweeting that “The rogue Iranian regime is still sending lethal weapons to the terrorist Houthi militia in Yemen, and the Yemeni embassy in Tehran is still occupied.”

The Houthis, meanwhile, appeared to approve of the agreement. “The region needs the restoration of normal relations between its countries, so that the Islamic nation can recover its security lost as a result of foreign interventions,” spokesman Mohamed Abdel Salam tweeted.

Iran and Saudi Arabia had been exploring a rapprochement since 2021, participating in talks hosted by Iraq and Oman.

“Facing a dead end in nuclear negotiations with the United States, and shunned by the European Union because of its arms exports to Russia … Iran has scored a major diplomatic victory,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

China’s well-publicized role in the deal was probably intended to send a message to major powers, including the United States, “that the hub for the Middle East is shifting,”

Beijing has largely avoided intervening politically in the Middle East, focusing instead on deepening economic ties. China is the largest importer of energy from the region, and “there is a lot of interest” among major players including Saudi Arabia and Iran in securing long-term access to Chinese markets

“China has truly arrived as a strategic actor in the Gulf,”