EU policy towards the sahel in the “post-West” era

Introduction

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2026, President Trump reiterated long-standing criticisms of NATO burden-sharing, framed Ukraine as a European rather than a transatlantic problem, and revived interest in acquiring Greenland (World Economic Forum, 2026). His subsequent comments on NATO’s role in Afghanistan further strained relations within the alliance (CBS News, 2026). Further comments about NATO in the context of the war against Iran have further undermined transatlantic relations. At the same time, Trump has emphasized his “very good relationship with President Xi and President Putin” (Asian News International, 2026).

Various scholars have written on the decline of the Liberal International Order primarily through the lenses of great-power rivalry, institutional contestation, and the rise of multipolarity (Acharya, 2018; Allison, 2017; Ikenberry, 2011; Posen, 2014). Much of this literature examines whether the post-Cold War order remains sustainable amid shifting geopolitical alignments, declining Western cohesion, and challenges posed by revisionist or non-Western powers. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and intensifying US-China competition have reinforced arguments that the international system is moving towards a more contested and multipolar configuration. Indeed, Timothy Garton Ash has described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a defining marker of a “post-West” international order (Boss, 2023).

Parallel debates concerning EU normative power, one important manifestation of wider pressures affecting the Western-led liberal international order, have highlighted the EU’s reliance on legitimacy, conditionality, and governance promotion as sources of external influence (Laïdi, 2008; Manners, 2006; Sjursen, 2006) as well as security, intervention, and stabilization (Bøås and Dunn, 2017; Charbonneau, 2016; Recchia and Tardy, 2021; Tull, 2020).

Scholarship on the Sahel has emphasized weak statehood, contested political legitimacy, African agency, and the complex interaction of security and development challenges in the Sahel (Bøås, 2025; Döring, 2025; Thurston, 2020; Villalón, 2021). It also engages critically with work highlighting how European engagement in the region has been dominated by security and counterterrorism concerns, often at the expense of peacebuilding, sovereignty, and nationhood (Bokeriya, 2023; Charbonneau, 2017). As recent EU assessments acknowledge, the hardline normative response to military coups has failed to preserve European influence and, in some cases, has accelerated strategic marginalization (EUISS, 2024). Finally, critical scholarship on the Sahel and North Africa has increasingly examined how external stabilization efforts, border securitization, and counterterrorism governance reshape local political orders while often reproducing instability, fragmented sovereignty and accusations of neo-colonialism (Frowd, 2018; López Lucia, 2017; Wilén, 2025; Cold-Ravnkilde et al., 2026).

However, these debates remain insufficiently connected. Existing studies of the liberal international order often focus on major-power dynamics and institutional contestation at the systemic level, while scholarship on the Sahel tends to examine security governance and regional instability in relative isolation from broader transformations in international order. Less attention has been paid to how local political crises and the diversification of external partnerships in the Sahel both reflect and reinforce the weakening of Western normative influence. This article bridges these different literatures by examining the Sahel as a strategically revealing case in which broader transformations in the liberal international order become visible through local political dynamics and external competition. This article asks: how do shifting patterns of external engagement in the Sahel illuminate broader transformations in the Western-dominated liberal international order? Drawing on process-tracing approaches to qualitative analysis (Bennett and Checkel, 2015: 3), the article examines how shifts in legitimacy, external alignment, and security governance contributed to the erosion of EU influence across successive crises in the Sahel.

The article identifies three interrelated causal mechanisms linking developments in the Sahel to broader pressures on the liberal international order. First, repeated security failures and inconsistent Western responses to crises undermined the perceived legitimacy of liberal intervention frameworks. Second, since 2021, military regimes in the Sahel increasingly leveraged alternative partnerships with Russia, China, Turkey, and the Gulf states to reduce dependence on European actors and resist conditionality tied to governance and human rights. Third, the emergence of a more crowded and transactional external environment weakened the EU’s ability to translate normative influence into political outcomes. Together, these mechanisms illustrate how contestation over sovereignty, legitimacy, and security governance contributes to the fragmentation of Western-led order structures in strategically vulnerable regions.

Since 2021, successive coups in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger, alongside the dismantling of France’s military footprint, have accelerated a broader reconfiguration of external influence in the region. By August 2022, France had completed its withdrawal from Mali, followed by Burkina Faso in early 2023, reflecting both deteriorating local legitimacy and a strategic reorientation toward high-intensity inter-state conflict in Europe (Schofield 2022; Schwikoski, 2023). Military regimes have increasingly diversified their external partnerships beyond traditional Western actors, deepening ties with Russia, China, Turkey, and Gulf states. The formation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) further reflects shifting regional alignments centred on regime security, sovereignty, and resistance to external conditionality, often in tension with ECOWAS and Western partners. The Sahel has therefore emerged as a strategically revealing case in which questions of legitimacy, intervention, and geopolitical competition intersect.

While some interpret these developments as evidence of a definitive “post-West” moment, recent calls by European leaders for greater defence solidarity suggest a more contested trajectory. With NATO member defence spending rising to 5% of GDP (NATO, 2025) and following articulations of values-based realism from various EU (University of Tartu, 2024) and allied states (Prime Minister of Canada, 2026), the trajectory of EU policy towards the Sahel could shift substantially.

The article does not seek statistical generalization from the Sahel to the international system as a whole. Instead, it employs analytical generalization, using developments in the region to explore broader transformations affecting the liberal international order. The analysis draws on semi-structured interviews conducted between 2023 and 2025 with regional analysts, supplemented by NGO reports, UN documents, think tank publications, and secondary academic literature. The article proceeds by examining the evolving roles of Russia, China and other external stakeholders in the Sahel, before assessing the implications for EU engagement with weak states, military regimes, and civil society. A conclusion outlines the overall contribution of the article to the literature.

Russia’s evolving role in the Sahel

Wagner expanded into Africa from 2018 with Kremlin backing, offering regime security assistance in exchange for strategic and economic concessions. Wagner’s involvement in Central African Republic (CAR) quickly morphed into a personal security detail for the CAR president and a permanent advisory staff for the CAR defense ministry, and through a web of companies, Prigozhin appeared to be a beneficiary of a three-year gold prospecting license and an additional one-year gold and diamond prospecting license from the CAR Ministry of Mines (Atlantic Council, 2023). This replicated the same offer (gold prospecting for security) that Wagner took to Sudan in 2017.

Wagner’s presence in Mali expanded rapidly from 2021. Along with its activities in CAR, Russian military intelligence is accused of fomenting anti-Western opinions in Mali by some U.S. analysts (Atlantic Council, 2023). Wagner has also stood accused of being implicated in human rights abuses, alongside Malian armed forces, such as the extrajudicial killings of 500 people in Moura in 2022 (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, 2023). The UN Security Council condemned Mali’s military rulers in June 2022 for using mercenaries (i.e. Wagner) that had committed such human rights violations. On 25 February 2023, Ivan Aleksandrovitch Maslov, head of Wagner Group in Mali, was sanctioned by the UK (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, 2023) and EU (EU Sanctions Tracker 2023), and then by the US in May 2023 (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2023). Although the war in Ukraine caused most of Wagner’s best units to leave Syria, Libya and various African countries (Tokmajyan 2023), France’s withdrawal from Burkina Faso in January 2023, made it an apparently easy security vacuum to fill by Wagner (Munshi et al. 2023). It was not straightforward though, and the Wagner deployment was limited and short-term, before moving back to Ukraine.

The new entity, by avoiding internal political competition in Russia, and stepping in where France has withdrawn, can now be confident of a potentially long-term transactional relationship with autocratic regimes in Africa. By September 2023, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger had signed defense agreements with Russia, and CAR was negotiating over a Russian military base (Minde 2024). Russia’s presence in Africa has expanded considerably in recent years. Although the figures are rather opaque, there are estimated to be 2000-6000 Russian forces (including Wagner/Africa Corps) across the continent, with around 1000 in Mali alone. ¹ As a unity state actor, motivated by great power rivalry, status and economic resources, Russia stood combat-ready, and with little associated colonial baggage, in the wake of the military coups in the Sahel and was available to intervene to support them.

The range and depth of relations (minus general trade with Africa in which Russia features very low) is reflected in African voting patterns in the UN concerning the war in Ukraine (Caprile and Pichon 2024, 3-5). It has been reinforced by anti-French sentiment and opinions among some African leaders who assert that double standards exist when comparing the European response to the war in Ukraine and their overall approach to international law in the Middle East and Africa (Obadare 2022). Close relations with Russia are also reflected in the number of African heads of state or heads of government who attended the Russia-Africa summit in Sochi in 2019 (Obadare 2022) and again in St Petersburg in 2023.

On 8 December 2024, the Assad regime was finally toppled in Syria. Whilst President Putin hosts deposed President Assad and his family in Moscow, Russia is set to lose most of its influence over Syria, including its bases on the Mediterranean Sea. This potentially held dire consequences for Sahelian perspectives on Russia as a reliable ally, similar to the impact that chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 had on opinions in the Global South about U.S. interventions after the Global War on Terror. Despite this setback, Russia continues to expand its footprint in Africa based on President Putin’s ‘total support’ for Africa in combating terrorism and extremism (Terren et al., 2025). This will provide Russian state allied groups new opportunities to build security cooperation and advance other Russian strategic objectives. U.S.-Russia relations during the second Trump presidency will remain crucial in determining whether and how Russia will continue to pursue its interests unhindered. Already, President Putin is able to benefit from President Trump’s interest in bringing the Ukraine war to a close on what appears to be favourable terms to Russia, and to sideline key allies in Europe. Russia is also positioning itself in the wider Sahel through providing educational opportunities to the children of Sahelian elites, the standardization of payment structures for high-value minerals, and accessing airports and other military infrastructure. Materials and diplomatic support are key for Russia to continuing to fight in Ukraine. Russia’s appeal to many Sahelian states therefore stems not only from military utility but from its ability to provide regime support without liberal conditionality, thereby directly challenging the EU’s normative model of external engagement.

How China interacts with Mali and the wider Sahel region

The Sahel, along with other parts of Africa, continue to be important to China for political, economic, and security reasons. This includes infrastructure works such as ports, railways, and highways that connect Sahelian countries, (although to a far lower degree than many other parts of Africa). The Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) has served to extend Chinese soft power: as a base for fighting Covid-19, opening new prospects for collaboration such as trade and investment, poverty reduction and entrepreneurship, promoting green development, and upholding equality and justice. In 2018, President Xi Jinping announced $60 billion in aid, investment, and loans for Africa and the African Union (AU) through FOCAC (Marsh, 2018). This was followed up in 2021 with a focus on private sector engagement, offering greater economic potential for Chinese entities to impact the Sahel, but ultimately limiting the direct nature of its influence and decreasing its role as a direct financer (Ze Yu, 2022).

In line with China’s role as a responsible international power, Beijing deployed a large detachment of personnel, including combat forces, as part of UN MINUSMA peacekeeping forces to Mali to address the country’s civil war. Its key interests were training its personnel to operate in a hostile environment, gaining experience of working with other UN contingents in a French-speaking country, testing new military equipment, improving relations with local populations, strengthening cooperation with local militaries, and better communicating the value of China’s role in UN peacekeeping to Chinese citizens (Cabestan, 2018). Chinese focus has continued to center on securing shipping lanes and supply chains which affect the success of the BRI rollout. It has led to an emphasis on more overt military-to-military relations. China has expanded its network of defense attaches in Africa, whilst arms sales increased by 55% between 2012 and 2017 (Vines and Wallace, 2023).

China and Russia abstained from the French-drafted resolution passed in June 2022 that extended the mandate of MINUSMA to June 30, 2023, with a ceiling of 13,289 military personnel and 1920 international police (Lederer, 2022). China is a leading trade partner of Mali along with Senegal, France, and Côte d'Ivoire, but up to the demise of MINUSMA and within the new more uncertain security landscape there were questions about how China can manage its burgeoning economic relations alongside the security imperative.

China is also Niger’s third largest military partner, following France and the US. However, its influence is felt mainly through weapons sales and military training. In recognition of China’s growing weight in international affairs, Chad broke its relations with Taiwan and recognized the People’s Republic of China in 2006, whilst Burkina Faso established relations with China as recently as 2018. Chinese revenues have been vital to security efforts, including the work of the G5 Sahel Joint Force ² and the Multinational Joint Task Force mandated to end the Boko Haram insurgency. ³ China is also a large investor in Mauritania, covering industries such as manufacturing as well as infrastructure.

Despite China not appearing to challenge Western security influence in Africa, its growing (and overlapping) spheres of influence in the Middle East and Africa show that it is capable of constructing foundations for an alternative world order (Murphy, 2022). This extends beyond Africa, to include China’s influence on African diplomatic support for a multitude of other issues relevant to Russia and China’s strategic interests, and their “no limits” partnership, such as the war in Ukraine. ⁴ Russia and China are both interested in de-dollarization, in the context of extensive Western sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, and China’s focus on the Yuan over the US dollar to increase its economic influence and attractiveness in the Global South. But mainly China continues to play an important role vis-à-vis Western states by being used as a point of leverage by Sahelian states in negotiations due to its unconditional approach. There are signs therefore, that various Sahelian regimes are becoming more confident in their ability to balance with China in their pursuit of regime survival, political legitimacy, economic and security benefits.

Despite bilateral agreements and dialogue with increasingly important groupings such as the BRICS, China’s Sahelian policy can be considered separate from Moscow’s approach and reflective of a slump in the Chinese economy, highlighting a potential opportunity to be part of, at least tacitly, new EU stabilization policies aimed at the Sahel. China’s expanding role demonstrates how infrastructure finance and non-interference can operate as alternative sources of legitimacy and influence in contexts where Western security-led approaches have lost credibility.

Other external stakeholders

Operationalising EU engagement with weak states, military regimes and civil society

The European Union possesses a broad, if uneven, set of instruments for engagement in Africa, including security assistance mechanisms such as Capacity Building for Security and Development (CBSD), the EU Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), and the European Peace Facility (EPF). Through Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions, the EU has expanded its remit to include counterterrorism, border management, and the containment of irregular migration. In principle, the EPF could be rebalanced further towards the Sahel (Droin and Dolbaia, 2023), though this remains constrained by competing demands arising from the war in Ukraine and divergent threat perceptions among member states.

The EU’s 2021 Sahel Strategy marked an attempt to move beyond a narrow counterterrorism paradigm towards a more people-centred approach, emphasising governance, accountability, sustainable development, and cross-border challenges (European Parliament, 2024; Montanaro, 2022). In practice, however, this shift proved insufficient to prevent successive military coups, growing authoritarianism, and increasingly hostile public attitudes towards Western actors. The gap between stated objectives and political realities on the ground has limited the EU’s ability to translate normative commitments into influence. While the European Parliament has called for expanded civilian CSDP missions, reinforced maritime coordination in the Gulf of Guinea, and improved oversight mechanisms (European Parliament, 2024), implementation has remained partial and uneven.

Despite a lack of consensus among member states, the EU continues to face structural pressures to remain engaged in West Africa. Persistent insecurity, people trafficking, and cocaine flows from the region pose long-term risks to European internal security, while worsening economic conditions and demographic pressures sustain irregular migration dynamics (Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2023). In this context, the EU’s scope for action lies less in ambitious transformation than in selective, pragmatic engagement focused on resilience, harm reduction, and the protection of core interests.

At the regional level, analysts have argued for a recalibration away from force-first approaches toward strengthening local capacities for conflict management and political transition, while avoiding external competition over mediation roles (Devermont, 2019; Marangio, 2024). Apolitical cooperation in areas such as climate adaptation, water management, health, and education may offer fewer immediate returns but has proven more sustainable than overt security assistance in contexts where military regimes seek regime survival rather than reform (Hall, 2025). NATO’s limited defence capacity-building engagement in countries such as Mauritania, and the August 2024 security agreement between Niger and Nigeria facilitating Niger’s return to the Multinational Joint Task Force against Boko Haram (Eboh, 2024), illustrate incremental cooperation rather than a coherent regional security architecture.

At the national level, a more realistic EU approach would involve cautious, conditional engagement with de facto authorities, prioritising civilian protection, basic service delivery, and support for civil society rather than comprehensive security sector reform. Communication channels with military regimes, while politically sensitive, are necessary to sustain humanitarian access and prevent further institutional collapse. In Mali and Burkina Faso, a return to elements of the Algiers Peace Agreement remains unlikely in the short term but continues to provide a reference point for decentralisation and political accommodation. In Niger, ECOWAS-led mediation retains greater legitimacy than EU-driven initiatives (Marangio, 2024).

The International Crisis Group has recommended that the EU limit security cooperation largely to military-to-military channels, while expanding non-military engagement focused on dialogue with marginalised communities, protection of displaced populations, and the provision of basic services (International Crisis Group, 2024). Longer-term investments in education, agriculture, and climate resilience—aligned with governments and local actors willing to engage on human rights—are more likely to yield incremental gains than attempts to rapidly restore liberal governance. The UNDP’s Sahel Offer launched in 2021, mobilising $3.6 billion for governance, energy, and youth initiatives, illustrates the scale of resources required to produce even modest stabilising effects (UNDP, 2021).

Addressing the interconnected security, development, and political challenges of the Sahel therefore requires a prioritisation of feasibility over ambition. Three areas stand out.

First, as one diplomat involved in the 2011 NATO intervention has observed, Libya represents a “legacy issue” that external actors cannot afford to disengage from entirely.

Second, the vacuum created by France’s withdrawal has underscored the absence of a viable substitute security framework. Rapid coalition-building is politically constrained, particularly given transatlantic tensions and the prioritisation of Ukraine. Nevertheless, selective coordination between the EU, the United States, NATO, the African Union, and ECOWAS—focused on intelligence sharing, border management, and counter-trafficking rather than counterinsurgency—offers a more realistic pathway than attempts to rebuild large-scale missions. The termination of EUCAP Niger in September 2024 illustrates the limits of EU presence, but recent Nigeria–Niger cooperation highlights the potential of regionally anchored arrangements.

Third, economic engagement remains one of the few areas where external actors retain leverage. Rather than comprehensive development strategies, the EU could support modular, coalition-based initiatives involving actors such as Morocco, Turkey, China, and Gulf states, particularly in infrastructure, logistics, and port management. Projects such as the Trans-Sahara Highway—financed by a mix of African, Arab, and multilateral development banks—suggest how connectivity and trade facilitation can contribute indirectly to stability (OPEC Fund, 2021). While joint policing and border cooperation cannot eradicate trafficking or insurgency, they can reduce its most destabilising effects when embedded in broader regional coordination.

Overall, EU engagement in the Sahel is unlikely to reverse current trajectories in the short term. A more realistic objective is to mitigate spillover risks, preserve channels of influence, and support incremental forms of resilience. In doing so, the EU must balance normative commitments with geopolitical constraints, recognising that influence in the Sahel will increasingly depend on pragmatic partnerships rather than liberal transformation.

Conclusion

This article has contributed to debates on the liberal international order by demonstrating how transformations in global order are not driven solely by major-power rivalry, but are also negotiated and reproduced through local crises and external competition in peripheral conflict zones. The Sahel illustrates how declining Western legitimacy, contested sovereignty, and the diversification of external partnerships can erode the EU’s normative and strategic influence even where substantial security and development resources have been deployed. In doing so, the article also contributes to scholarship on EU normative power and security governance by showing how military regimes and local actors increasingly leverage multipolar competition to resist external conditionality and expand their strategic autonomy. The Sahel therefore represents not simply a regional security crisis, but also a key site through which broader pressures on the Western-dominated liberal international order can be observed.

The article has argued that developments in the Sahel constitute a further marker of the emerging “post-West” era, in which Western actors exercise only limited leverage over entrenched insecurity, deteriorating socioeconomic conditions, and governance outcomes. While the Sahel cannot be treated as representative of all regional dynamics within the international system, it provides an important case through which shifts in legitimacy, external intervention, and geopolitical competition become visible. The argument is not that the liberal international order is collapsing in a comprehensive sense, but rather that its normative and political authority has become increasingly contested in strategically fragile regions.

Within this context, a more explicit EU commitment to values-based realism offers a plausible pathway for re-engagement. Rather than pursuing vague and ambitious state-building or rapid political transformation – approaches that have undermined previous Western interventions - the EU can more effectively deploy its existing instruments by coordinating selectively with non-EU actors active in the region and by doing so, can partially compensate for declining US engagement. Such an approach recognises the crowded security landscape of the Sahel, where multiple external and local actors pursue overlapping and often competing agendas with limited resources, and accepts that European influence will depend increasingly on pragmatism, flexibility, and partnership rather than leadership.

Given the region’s geographic scale, political fragmentation, and potential for further escalation and contagion, more durable mechanisms are required to sustain local resilience and extend basic norms of security and welfare. Additional targeted support for primary healthcare, education - including teacher pay and retention - and food security and local agriculture, represent areas in which external assistance can produce tangible effects without reinforcing regime insecurity or provoking a nationalist backlash. Working through local NGOs, civil society organisations, and other trusted intermediaries allows European actors to rebuild limited credibility while avoiding the symbolic and political costs associated with direct engagement with military regimes.

Approached in this manner, EU engagement in the Sahel is less about reversing current trajectories than about mitigating their most destabilizing and long-term consequences. By grounding support in local initiatives, coordinating with regional and extra-regional partners - thereby avoiding narratives easily framed as neo-colonial by adversarial actors - the EU can reduce spillover risks linked to illicit trafficking, armed mobilisation, and lawlessness. Over time, this strategy may place the EU in a stronger position to expand its engagement as political and security conditions evolve, thereby avoiding a fully consolidated “post-West” outcome while acknowledging the broader rebalancing underway in the international system.