5 ms·

Burkina Faso: Another Coup Led by U.S.-Trained Soldier

45 points by jessaustin 5y ago

itchyjunk 5y ago
So is this being done on purpose? Just a coincidence? If former, why is USA so good at toppling governments? Or does this happen all the time done by all sorts of country? Hard to tell if it's selective bias or if USA is just good at this.
- gumby 5y ago
  The percentage of people trained who go on to stage coups is so tiny I think it’s hard to reach the conclusion the Intercept is making.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    That's not the interesting metric, though. In fact it is destined for nothing but un-informativity. What is interesting is, among all military members who are trained by foreign governments, how many of the US-trained ones go on to stage coups vs those trained by other nations? Along these lines, there is a very disturbing pattern.
    - gumby 5y ago
      Other countries that have the same policy (most notably France, Britain, and, historically, Prussia) have the same kind of record, and it still seems like a pittance, percentagewise. The US has a lot of (eroding) institutional infrastructure to reduce the chances of it happening at home, and throughout the republic some have expressed an interest or tried, most notably during the US civil war when about a third of the West Point graduate generals who fought were on the Confederate side. The the coup plot in 1933 the very general the plotters wanted to recruit blocked it. https://www.justsecurity.org/44479/tangled-history-confederate-generals-west-point-army-robert-e-lee/ https://www.justsecurity.org/44479/tangled-history-confedera...
- jessaustin 5y ago
  The idea is to sell more weapons manufactured by USA firms. Conflict in general is good for that, but conflict in which one or more of the combatants was trained and/or put in power by USA is even better. It's possible that other nations do this, and certainly some of the colonial European powers did in the past, but no one does it on the scale that we do.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    Of course also securing (typically extractive in this part of the world) business contracts, and doing so before other world powers (i.e., China) get there.
    - jessaustin 5y ago
      That Smedley Butler sort of arrangement was definitely the idea through the 1950s (and arguably was less disgusting than the racist murder that previously motivated the USA military on "the frontier" and in Philippines), but more recently the resource extraction firms are often simply outbid by the war firms. After all, Chevron has to spend most of its money getting oil out of the ground and into a gas pump. Raytheon, on the other hand, doesn't have to produce weapons that perform well by any measure, (...which may be why our military since 1946 hasn't been fit to shine the shoes of our military just before then?) so they have a lot more to dole out to politicians, media firms, and think tanks. It's not as though we got any valuable contracts from the mess we made of Libya.
- nextstep 5y ago
  The US has a very well-funded agency that specializes in coups. They’ve perfected this over almost 70 years of experience keeping the world safe for American business interests.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  The US is the best at toppling governments because of extensive practice, and it's status as the military hegemon.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pfisherman 5y ago
  He was trained by the USA. The objective of the training program is not disclosed. A reasonable guess would be that the objective of the training program was combating Islamic extremism / terrorism, as this aligns with US interests in the region. Either way the conclusion that this he was directed by the US is not supported by the facts in the article.
Reichhardt 5y ago
The history of these African nations has always been, and will forever be, rule by a strongman. Better that they are aligned with the West, than China.
- jwmhjwmh 5y ago
  I believe Burkina Faso did very well under Thomas Sankara, whether or not you want to call him a "strongman". He definitely was not aligned with the West. In fact, he had close relations with Cuba.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    Incidentally, Sankara met Blaise Compaoré, who orchestrated both the coup that brought Sankara to power and the one that murdered him, at a foreign military training facility. I can't help thinking that voting is a better way to select leaders. It's too bad we haven't invested in some sort of training in democracy.
    - jwmhjwmh 5y ago
      There were two other coups in the years leading up to Sankara's taking power, so I wouldn't say that the country was exactly in a stable state. I don't think the problem is the lack of training in democracy. I think the problem is the powerful forces opposed to democracy. When he assassinated Sankara, Blaise Compaoré represented the interests of imperialists.
- uoaei 5y ago
  Essentialism is a bit of a faux pas nowadays, FYI.
- salt-thrower 5y ago
  Correction: the history of the global south has long been, and will continue to be, instability and exploitation at the hands of the global north. Colonialism never ended.
trylfthsk 5y ago
What percentage of foreign military personnel have had some training by a US organization? From what I know, a huge number for myriad reasons. My guess is it's large enough that the odds a coup includes US-trained elements becomes a coin toss.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  In Africa? Not that much, actually. France for example is much more active than the US there. Many US foreign military training is also aimed specifically at organising coups. See for example the School of the Americas, now known as the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation". As Joseph P. Kennedy himself put it: > The U.S. Army School of the Americas is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
tablespoon 5y ago
The title is misleading. The first interpretations that came to my mind were that the soldier was American or part of come CIA-led coup plot, but neither of those interpretations are true. It turns out this guy is just a Burkinabé soldier (yes I had to look that up), who received military training from the US as part of a project to increase the capabilities of Burkina Faso's military. That's kind of like calling Kim Jong-Un a Swiss-trained dictator: technically true but misleading. The root situation seems to be that some African countries have coups, and the plotters sometimes have intersected with US military training. You could probably write a similar article with similar innuendo targeted European universities or all kind of other things, with about equal validity.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  That slighlty underselling it. First of all : "[...] trained by the CIA or something as part of a coup plot, but neither of those interpretations are true." There is nothing we know about him that is at all inconsistent with the profile of someone trained or goaded for a coup plot. They don't get directly named CIA training, they go to training facilities of the U.S. Army which coincidentally seem to produce a gigantic amount of notable figures in coups. Training by U.S. special forces is exactly the modus operandi of someone being prepared to orchestrate a coup, in fact, it's exactly what the School of the Americas nominally was. Secondly: "who received military training from the US as part of a project to increase the capabilities of Burkina Faso's military" is underselling it. He was part of an exceptional number of U.S. military training exercises, and seemed to received outsized attention as part of them. Beyond that, this is exactly how U.S. coup training works, it's always billed as projects to increase the capabilities of the domestic military. So is it 100% certain that he was being groomed for a coup by the US? No. The reason it's newsworthy is that he is just one out of multiple dozen people involved in coups that has received similar training regimens. It's one more case in a pattern, which makes it very newsworthy. Indeed, the article links this study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343317713557 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002234331771355..., which indicates that there is a statistically significant relationship between these kinds of training exercises and coups. So the title doesn't seem misleading to me at all.

45 points by jessaustin 5y ago

So is this being done on purpose? Just a coincidence? If former, why is USA so good at toppling governments? Or does this happen all the time done by all sorts of country? Hard to tell if it's selective bias or if USA is just good at this.

gumby 5y ago
The percentage of people trained who go on to stage coups is so tiny I think it’s hard to reach the conclusion the Intercept is making.
- uoaei 5y ago
  That's not the interesting metric, though. In fact it is destined for nothing but un-informativity. What is interesting is, among all military members who are trained by foreign governments, how many of the US-trained ones go on to stage coups vs those trained by other nations? Along these lines, there is a very disturbing pattern.
  - gumby 5y ago
    Other countries that have the same policy (most notably France, Britain, and, historically, Prussia) have the same kind of record, and it still seems like a pittance, percentagewise. The US has a lot of (eroding) institutional infrastructure to reduce the chances of it happening at home, and throughout the republic some have expressed an interest or tried, most notably during the US civil war when about a third of the West Point graduate generals who fought were on the Confederate side. The the coup plot in 1933 the very general the plotters wanted to recruit blocked it. https://www.justsecurity.org/44479/tangled-history-confederate-generals-west-point-army-robert-e-lee/ https://www.justsecurity.org/44479/tangled-history-confedera...
jessaustin 5y ago
The idea is to sell more weapons manufactured by USA firms. Conflict in general is good for that, but conflict in which one or more of the combatants was trained and/or put in power by USA is even better. It's possible that other nations do this, and certainly some of the colonial European powers did in the past, but no one does it on the scale that we do.
- uoaei 5y ago
  Of course also securing (typically extractive in this part of the world) business contracts, and doing so before other world powers (i.e., China) get there.
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    That Smedley Butler sort of arrangement was definitely the idea through the 1950s (and arguably was less disgusting than the racist murder that previously motivated the USA military on "the frontier" and in Philippines), but more recently the resource extraction firms are often simply outbid by the war firms. After all, Chevron has to spend most of its money getting oil out of the ground and into a gas pump. Raytheon, on the other hand, doesn't have to produce weapons that perform well by any measure, (...which may be why our military since 1946 hasn't been fit to shine the shoes of our military just before then?) so they have a lot more to dole out to politicians, media firms, and think tanks. It's not as though we got any valuable contracts from the mess we made of Libya.
nextstep 5y ago
The US has a very well-funded agency that specializes in coups. They’ve perfected this over almost 70 years of experience keeping the world safe for American business interests.
sudosysgen 5y ago
The US is the best at toppling governments because of extensive practice, and it's status as the military hegemon.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pfisherman 5y ago
He was trained by the USA. The objective of the training program is not disclosed. A reasonable guess would be that the objective of the training program was combating Islamic extremism / terrorism, as this aligns with US interests in the region. Either way the conclusion that this he was directed by the US is not supported by the facts in the article.

Reichhardt 5y ago

The history of these African nations has always been, and will forever be, rule by a strongman. Better that they are aligned with the West, than China.

jwmhjwmh 5y ago
I believe Burkina Faso did very well under Thomas Sankara, whether or not you want to call him a "strongman". He definitely was not aligned with the West. In fact, he had close relations with Cuba.
- jessaustin 5y ago
  Incidentally, Sankara met Blaise Compaoré, who orchestrated both the coup that brought Sankara to power and the one that murdered him, at a foreign military training facility. I can't help thinking that voting is a better way to select leaders. It's too bad we haven't invested in some sort of training in democracy.
  - jwmhjwmh 5y ago
    There were two other coups in the years leading up to Sankara's taking power, so I wouldn't say that the country was exactly in a stable state. I don't think the problem is the lack of training in democracy. I think the problem is the powerful forces opposed to democracy. When he assassinated Sankara, Blaise Compaoré represented the interests of imperialists.
uoaei 5y ago
Essentialism is a bit of a faux pas nowadays, FYI.
salt-thrower 5y ago
Correction: the history of the global south has long been, and will continue to be, instability and exploitation at the hands of the global north. Colonialism never ended.

trylfthsk 5y ago

What percentage of foreign military personnel have had some training by a US organization? From what I know, a huge number for myriad reasons. My guess is it's large enough that the odds a coup includes US-trained elements becomes a coin toss.

sudosysgen 5y ago
In Africa? Not that much, actually. France for example is much more active than the US there. Many US foreign military training is also aimed specifically at organising coups. See for example the School of the Americas, now known as the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation". As Joseph P. Kennedy himself put it: > The U.S. Army School of the Americas is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

tablespoon 5y ago

The title is misleading. The first interpretations that came to my mind were that the soldier was American or part of come CIA-led coup plot, but neither of those interpretations are true. It turns out this guy is just a Burkinabé soldier (yes I had to look that up), who received military training from the US as part of a project to increase the capabilities of Burkina Faso's military. That's kind of like calling Kim Jong-Un a Swiss-trained dictator: technically true but misleading. The root situation seems to be that some African countries have coups, and the plotters sometimes have intersected with US military training. You could probably write a similar article with similar innuendo targeted European universities or all kind of other things, with about equal validity.

sudosysgen 5y ago
That slighlty underselling it. First of all : "[...] trained by the CIA or something as part of a coup plot, but neither of those interpretations are true." There is nothing we know about him that is at all inconsistent with the profile of someone trained or goaded for a coup plot. They don't get directly named CIA training, they go to training facilities of the U.S. Army which coincidentally seem to produce a gigantic amount of notable figures in coups. Training by U.S. special forces is exactly the modus operandi of someone being prepared to orchestrate a coup, in fact, it's exactly what the School of the Americas nominally was. Secondly: "who received military training from the US as part of a project to increase the capabilities of Burkina Faso's military" is underselling it. He was part of an exceptional number of U.S. military training exercises, and seemed to received outsized attention as part of them. Beyond that, this is exactly how U.S. coup training works, it's always billed as projects to increase the capabilities of the domestic military. So is it 100% certain that he was being groomed for a coup by the US? No. The reason it's newsworthy is that he is just one out of multiple dozen people involved in coups that has received similar training regimens. It's one more case in a pattern, which makes it very newsworthy. Indeed, the article links this study: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0022343317713557 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002234331771355..., which indicates that there is a statistically significant relationship between these kinds of training exercises and coups. So the title doesn't seem misleading to me at all.