The Quincy Institute's Adam Weinstein, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Afghanistan, talks with "Youngblood" author and Iraq war veteran Matt Gallagher about the term "forever war" and why the foreign policy/national security establishment disdains its use — even though regular Americans know what it means, and why waging a generational war is ultimately unhealthy for the country.
The ceasefire in Gaza is not yet a week old, and Washington is already sending private U.S. security contractors to help operate checkpoints, a decision that one former military officer told RS is a “bad, bad idea.”
This will be the first time since 2003 that American security contractors have been in the strip. At that time, three private American contractors were killed by a roadside bomb while providing security for a diplomatic mission in Gaza.
Axios reports that two U.S. security companies will operate as part of a multi-national group, as laid out in the Gaza cease-fire deal, and Israel and Hamas have already approved them, as required by the deal.
The contractors will be inspecting vehicles that are moving into northern Gaza via the Netzarium corridor to ensure that no heavy weapons enter that part of the territory.
Israel had previously considered using security companies to distribute aid to Palestinians in Gaza last year as the Knesset was discussing banning the United Nations relief organization, UNRWA.
The Qatari government will likely fund the security forces. An Egyptian security company has also been selected for the mission. Safe Reach Solutions is one of the American companies providing security assistance and is credited with drawing up the plan. The other company, UG Solutions, is known for employing former soldiers from American and foreign special forces, according to Axios.
As part of the deal, these contractors will likely remain in Gaza during the first phase of the cease-fire, which is expected to last six weeks. Critics are already raising alarms about the potential safety issues.
“This is a bad, bad idea. This is a cauldron of angry people who are quite hostile towards Americans because most of the bombs that have fallen on Gazans have been U.S. provided,” said Lt Col. (retired) Daniel L. Davis.
“Gaza has been turned into a moonscape by Israeli Defense Forces actions, and thus any operation inside the Strip going forward should be IDF, not American,” Davis added. “The chances that angry Palestinians may target and kill Americans are uncomfortably high, in my view. Nothing good will come of this.”
As the year 2024 wound to a close, Niger’s junta leader, Brigade General Abdourahmane Tchiani, made accusations that France is using neighboring Nigeria as a staging ground to destabilize his country.
According to Tchiani, who came to power after overthrowing President Mohamed Bazoum in a military coup in July 2023, France offered money to Nigerian authorities “to establish a base in Borno State, with the sole aim of destabilizing our countries” — an apparent reference to other junta-led West African States, Mali and Burkina Faso, which recently split from ECOWAS.
The Nigerian government has refuted the allegation, describing it as false and baseless. It is not the first time Niger’s junta has made such accusations without offering concrete evidence. Nevertheless whether Tchiani was serious or merely uttering "hot air" to distract attention, the accusation exposes the tensions between the two countries at a time when they should be working together. Worse, it shows how suspicious the region is of Western powers and their interactions with ECOWAS and especially Nigeria.
Both Nigeria and Niger are close neighbors within the Lake Chad basin with historic and familial ties. Their mutual borders require joint patrol to ward off jihadist insurgency and banditry ravaging the local communities. It is for this reason that the spat has set off concerns in border communities prompting the Nigerian army to issue assurances earlier this month that the joint patrols would continue regardless of the row.
Together with Boko Haram, ISWAP (Islamic State–West Africa Province), and other widely-known jihadist groups, new security threats like Lakurawa have emerged in the last few years demonstrating the importance of regional cooperation. At the center of the row is an attack on the Niger-Benin crude oil pipeline in Gaya, Niger’s Dosso region on December 13 last year. The pipeline, a major economic asset for Niger which has large crude deposits, had been targeted in the past by anti-junta rebel groups.
Tension had been brewing between Nigeria and Niger since July 26, 2023 when Bazoum, the democratically-elected president of Niger, was overthrown in a coup by his presidential guards headed by Tchiani. Bazoum and his wife Hadiza remain in detention since then, despite global calls for their release.
While in power, Bazoum had been a loyal ally of Niger’s former colonial power, France, so his removal represented a blow to French interests in the country. Since he took power, General Tchiani has broken ties with France, prompting the former colonial power to withdraw its 1,500 troops from the country in December 2023.
The junta has subsequently sought military support from Moscow in its fight against decades-long jihadist insurgency, following on the heels of Mali and Burkina Faso juntas. In April last year, the first set of about 100 Russian advisers arrived in Niamey along with air defense systems.
Niamey’s grouse with Nigeria’s government stems primarily from the role its resident, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has played since the July 26 coup in his capacity as the chairman of the regional bloc, ECOWAS. Eager to earn his stripes as a strong leader amid a regional crisis, Tinubu had been instrumental in securing a strong ECOWAS reprimand of the coup.
Under Tinubu’s leadership, the bloc also imposed a no fly zone and closed borders amid other crippling economic sanctions slapped on Niger after initially threatening to invade the country unless the junta reinstated Bazoum.
Intended to halt the string of coups plaguing the region in recent times, ECOWAS’s tough line achieved the opposite — hardening the juntas who saw the regional body as an attack dog of French and American imperialism punishing their citizens for defending their sovereignty.
In July 2023, Niger, alongside Mali and Burkina Faso, split from ECOWAS to form a mutual defense pact called the Alliance of Sahel States.
Part of a general trend, the coup in Niger occurred in the context of the growing unpopularity of France among its former colonies who accuse the Elysee Palace of meddling in their internal affairs despite granting them formal independence since 1960. For example, several countries have followed on the heels of the Alliance of Sahel States in expelling French troops, the latest being Ivory Coast and Senegal.
Right now, France has lost over 80 percent of its military presence in the region with only a few troops left in Gabon and Djibouti.
Alongside his tough stance against the coup, the Nigerian president’s recent cozy relationship with France makes him an easy target in the highly polarized environment that has developed within the region since the July 26 coup. Last November, Tinubu, embarked on a widely-publicized state visit to the Palais de l'Élysée, the first of any Nigerian leader in three decades.
Apparently signaling a shift in France Africa strategy towards strengthening relations with Anglophone countries, the visit has added to the growing suspicion among AES member states of a Western plot to destabilize them using Nigeria as a launch pad.
It is instructive that the diplomatic row was taking place ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Niger is a uranium-rich country in West Africa — holding at least 5 percent of global uranium mining output. The country, one of the region’s poorest in GDP terms, is also a crucial transit hub for Europe-bound migrants. Furthermore, Niger was an important base for U.S. counterterrorism operations because of its vantage location. This ended by April last year when U..S troops were evicted by the junta from two military bases, Air Base 101 in Niamey and Air Base 201 in Agadez, where they had been running drone operations for counterterrorism surveillance since 2019.
It is not clear whether the new Trump administration will be able to negotiate with any African state within the region to host a U.S. military base considering the prevailing sentiment. The loss of this vital facility means that for the next foreseeable period, the U.S. may have to rely on its bases in Italy and Djibouti for counter surveillance operations — an unfortunate downgrade in strategic advantage in the region.
President Donald Trump has caused quite a stir in the media in recent months with his bold statements on a diplomatic solution to the military conflict in and around Ukraine. One of his moves in this direction at the beginning of December was a phone call with Kazakhstan’s president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev asking the latter for his opinion on the issue.
The fact that Trump would pick up the phone to talk to Tokayev suggests that Kazakhstan could play a role as an actor in the search for a diplomatic solution in Ukraine. Furthermore, it underscores Central Asia’s potential to shape the peace and security architecture in Eurasia and beyond. In view of the aspirations of the new Trump administration, it is likely that U.S. policy towards Central Asia may be in line for an upgrade.
In the past, Central Asia has tended to be perceived internationally as a troublemaker because of its security problems: the threat of Islamic extremism, domestic instability and recurrent political and social clashes, water and environmental issues as well as border conflicts among Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Despite various incidents, recent years have shown that Central Asia could well turn into a stabilizing factor, an independent security actor and a middle power in international politics.
First and foremost, regional cooperation has intensified and relations between countries have improved. The border demarcation between Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan was officially completed in early 2023, and Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan reached an agreement on disputed territories at the end of 2024. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which have been competing for political and economic supremacy in the region for decades, signed an alliance agreement in 2022. A tandem of these two economically most dynamic and populous countries is fundamental for regional cooperation and security.
Finally, the first meeting of the secretaries of the security councils of the Central Asian countries took place last year. By peacefully resolving inherited or emerging conflicts and pooling the potential of each country, the region is becoming a stronger and more influential actor on the international stage in the process of reshaping the global peace and security architecture.
The C5+1 (the five Central Asian states plus the U.S.) foreign policy format established at the highest level since January 2022 is another step in that direction. Whether at a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, or Russian President Vladimir Putin, the leaders of the five Central Asian states (including Turkmenistan, which has long taken an isolationist approach) sat around the same table — a development that is extremely promising.
The region’s external assertiveness had already begun with the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan. While the countries of Central Asia were once a bridgehead for Western operations in Afghanistan, they are now largely on their own to deal with the challenges that remain.
It was during Trump's first presidency that the current United States Strategy for Central Asia 2019-2025 was formulated. It is defined as building a more stable and prosperous Central Asia that is free to pursue political, economic, and security interests with a variety of partners on its own terms and that is connected to global markets. It is noteworthy the U.S. strategy coincides with the region's aspiration for greater strategic autonomy, which is characteristic of emerging middle powers.
In practice, the C5+1 format at the level of foreign ministers, as envisaged in the strategy, was raised to the level of heads of state by Trump's successor, Joe Biden, when he met with the leaders of five Central Asian states in New York in 2023. The newly established B5+1 format — the private sector-led counterpart to the C5+1 — facilitates public-private dialog to promote greater economic partnership between the U.S. and Central Asia.
However, since the U.S., whether governed by Republicans or Democrats, seeks to reduce its dependence on China, it is highly likely that cooperation in the area of strategic resources will be of interest for Trump's interaction with the region. In that context, the dialogue with Central Asia on critical minerals, established in 2023, is of utmost significance. China is the most important source of imports for many of the minerals identified by the U.S. government as strategic, such as lithium, cobalt or nickel. Strategic resources and the long-standing energy cooperation are thus potential key areas of relations between the new Trump administration and Central Asia.
An update of the Central Asia Strategy will be necessary in the light of at least two major developments. First, the growing importance and need for further development of the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor (TCTR), also known as the Middle Corridor, which runs across the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, bypassing Russia, and is intended for the transport of industrial goods and fossil energy to Europe. The U.S. and EU recently agreed on a partnership to strengthen the Middle Corridor.
Second, the 2019-2025 strategy was essentially focused on Afghanistan. Since the U.S. withdrawal in 2021, the U.S. has not recognized either the Taliban or any other organization as the government of Afghanistan, making the Central Asian states all the more important as a link in monitoring developments in Afghanistan and coordinating the continued relocation of U.S.-Afghan allies. In both cases, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan — rising middle powers and strategic partners of the U.S. in the region — are likely to play a role.
The geography of Central Asia at the intersection of the interests of Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and the West means that a single country, even one as large and economically relatively powerful as Kazakhstan, is unlikely to effectively maintain the maneuverability of a middle power in the long run.
Rather, the five countries in the region are best placed to pursue their interests when acting as a group with a regional agenda. This is what Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have been trying to do since 2022 in particular.
Having this in mind, it is logical for the Trump administration to pursue a deal-driven approach that would accommodate foreign policy pragmatism shown by the Central Asian countries. The new U.S. administration would be well advised to take advantage of the increased interaction among Central Asian states, as well as within their widespread network of strategic partnerships and alliances, that includes Russia, China, Turkey and the Arab world, by engaging on energy, connectivity and security to the benefit of all actors involved.
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