Radio War Nerd EP #391 — Niger Coup, or "Disdain For Democracy"

What did ECOWAS stand for? (Joke version?)

One of the reasons that France has been able to largely avoid higher inflation rates over the past couple years has been its use of nuclear power. Le Monde had a useful story recently regarding the French reliance on Niger for its uranium: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/08/04/how-dependent-is-france-on-niger-s-uranium_6080772_8.html. e.g. it looks about 20% of the uranium supply for France comes from Niger.

About that garbage plate... since you can't really copyright the garbage plate, maybe you could start your own Radio War Nerd official food... The technical plate?

Dennis Miller probably tries to pick up a grad student at an NYU bar with a jokey callback to an early Kenji Mizoguchi film and, failing that, will see if she's amenable to "questions" about what really went on at Auschwitz.

Dennis Miller once made a Boutros Boutros-Ghali reference on MNF that was so terrible that my friends and I do an imitation of it to this day.

Good discussion as usual.

Britain hears a country hates the French and thinks what wonderful friends it will find when it gets there, alas they are denied. Maybe one day Britain will find a friend but for now they'll just have to wait for maybe a pat on the head by America. It's hard to find friends when you've invaded etc. so many people.

I would really like to see a poll of Americans asking whether they would prefer the current civilian government to remain in power, or instead have our beautiful handsome generals (as Trump calls them) take power in a junta and shoot the entirety of the Congress, every state governor, and the president and vice president.

yeah it's so funny how important that 'democracy' label is, like that Vietnam doc on Netflix where they talk about all the shitty things South Vietnam's government was doing like imprisoning and torturing people, and then the narrator goes "But, they were FREE" and that makes it all better. You can stand outside impotently shouting into a loudspeaker and the cops won't kill you on sight, because your efforts are already useless wasted energy, so that's freedom.

I thought Rwanda and Burundi were former Belgian colonies - transferred from Germany after WW1? Also, Randolph Churchill once sued a newspaper over being called a hack. He won but Private Eye finally settled the issue by referring to all journalists hacks.

Thanks guys! Gonna have to listen to this one a couple times

Complex geography, diverse groups, almost non-existent infrastructure, endemic poverty and US-EU interests. The prefect location for a successful COIN operation.

oh my god listen to this then listen to the nyt podcast on niger that came out on the same day. amazing double feature.

re the Chinese debt trap diplomacy myth would that be worthy of an episode? I feel like you all have done similar types of episodes on the NED. Yannis varofaukis might be a good guest on that given that he goes on podcasts and is an economist who seems to have a lot of experience with debt trap diplomacy. Maybe Michael Hudson who also writes a lot about IMF loans and contrasts those with the belt and road initiative https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=59720

can anyone recommend a good biography of Muammar Gaddafi? preferably focusing on his regional political influence rather than his quirky personal life

Scots Irish means Ulster Scots

Democracy fetishization is so that the NGOs can go in and only support pro-west resource extraction political parties. USAID democracy projects never dump money on political parties that aren't pro west.

Been waiting for this one. Can’t wait to dive in.

Liberals like Vaush are pushing for war with Niger because of "muh Russia".