Does US military training incubate coups in Africa? The jury is still out
Theodore McLauchlin & Lee J. M. Seymour
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 sceptical of the blanket claim that it does.