India, Sept. 19 -- Over the past five years, military juntas of the Sahel - a biogeographical region of Africa that has acquired a political character - have pursued sovereigntist security politics (the framing used to justify their break from Western partnerships). Since 2020, juntas have seized power in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso (The Alliance of Sahel States), each arguing that expelling Western forces and turning to Moscow would achieve what a decade of French-led counterterrorism had not. By most metrics, this experiment has failed. The Sahel exhibits a level of insecurity unmatched since jihadist insurgency proliferated after the collapse of the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya and the 2012 Mali War.

The sovereignty-for-security ...