Darrell Castle talks about the recent coup in Niger and why that change in a West African nation matters to America to the extent that Under Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, was dispatched to Niger to meet with the new rulers and lay down the law to them.

Transcription / Notes

A COUP IN NIGER AND WHY IT MATTERS

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 11th day of August in the year of our Lord 2023. I will be talking about the recent coup in Niger and why that change in a West African nation matters to America to the extent that Victoria Nuland, the mother of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, was dispatched to Niger to meet with the new rulers and lay down the law to them.

Niger is a former French colony in West Africa with a long history of coups, revolutions, military rule and just about every kind of government by strong men that one can imagine. The French have tried with their military to keep order in Niger just as they did in Mali just to the west of Niger. When the French ceded independence to their West African colonies, they physically left but remained close to whatever leader happened to be running things.

Power abhors a vacuum so when the French military was gone Al Qaeda, and ISIS moved in and threatened to completely take over the governments of both Mali and Niger. The French returned and began a war with the Islamic fighters threatening those countries. Both are desert countries populated by poor desperate people who live under the harshest and most close to the edge existence imaginable. The forces fighting for control of Niger and Mali want what they want, but the people just want to continue their lives in peace, which is a very old, seemingly never-ending story.

What France got from its many years in Niger was uranium, which it desperately needed to fuel its nuclear industry. France gets more electricity from nuclear than any other country in Europe and it has become a world leader in nuclear power and its development. Countries around the world who have some small amount of nuclear power often get their reactors from France and its nuclear engineers. That industry requires a great deal of uranium and France has no deposits of uranium but guess who does—that’s right Niger.

Mali, the next-door neighbor of Niger has a great deal of gold under its desert and France happens be one of the world’s leaders in gold on deposit. The battles between French Premier Charles De Gaulle, and US President Nixon over the value of gold and the exchange of US gold for French held US debt are legendary and led to some extent to the removal of the dollar’s link to gold in 1971. Natural resources are what Africa has to offer the West and so there is desperation to keep those resources from falling into Russian or Chinese hands or God forbid, remaining in African hands.

The other thing, and perhaps it is most important, is Africa’s vital role in the drive for world hegemony. China is very active in Africa and Washington is very interested in countering that activity. China comes with money and an offer to Africa of infrastructure and sustainable development in return for the right to trade favorably and for the option of Chinese influence over that of the West. It all seems like a poker game where the winner ultimately collects the biggest pile of chips.

The Chinese initiatives are all part of the belt and road project which I have talked about in previous reports. When or if, the multi-trillion-dollar belt and road is ultimately completed, all roads as they used to say in the Roman Empire, will lead to China. In China’s eyes the whole world will trade with China and will ship China resources so that Chinese goods can be manufactured and sold all over the world. China’s offer is quite simple. Sell me your oil, gold, uranium, diamonds, rare earth metals, and the other things you may have under your soil, and we will build roads and other infrastructure so that it ca...