America's Awkward History With Coups | Opinion

The United States' relationship with military coups is topsy-turvy. During the Cold War, Washington was often an enabler and plotter of coup attempts against governments seen as sympathetic to communism, allied to the Soviet Union, or just plain troublesome. In many cases, the U.S. supported coup regimes after they consolidated power. The list is too long to count: Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Greece in 1967, Chile in 1973, and El Salvador in 1979 to name a few. Washington's desire to hold fast to its reputation as a beacon of liberty and individual freedom was outweighed by its desire to contain the Soviets.

Future U.S. presidents would later go on to express regret that the U.S., the world's most powerful democracy, had a hand in sustaining some military regimes. In 1999, Bill Clinton apologized during a trip in Greece for aiding the generals who led that Mediterranean country for seven years.

Today, the U.S. is firmly against coups.

This week, when Niger's President Mohamed Bazoum was taken into custody by his own presidential guard, Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately called him to emphasize that the U.S. stood with the Nigerien people and condemned "this effort to seize power by force and overturn the constitutional order." U.S. law mandates the cutoff of funds and assistance to any country whose elected government is deposed by a military coup, and the law bars the release of those funds until the secretary of state certifies to Congress that democracy is restored. By the letter of the law, it would seem obvious that U.S. military, security, or economic aid to Niger will now be suspended after this week's developments.

Not so fast.

While the U.S. is rhetorically opposed to subversions of a country's legitimate government, particularly when the use of force is involved, the U.S. can also be wishy-washy in practice. Presidents have retained wiggle room to continue financial, military, and other support after a coup if doing so is deemed vital to the U.S. national security interest. In essence, lawyers in the executive branch have presented a different interpretation of what U.S. law does (and just as importantly, doesn't) require.

We saw this in action a decade ago, when the Egyptian military under army chief (now president) Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Mohamed Morsi after mass protests erupted against his one-year rule. U.S. officials found themselves in an awkward situation. By the strict letter of the law, the Obama administration should have declared the Egyptian military's actions a coup and suspended the hundreds of millions of dollars U.S. taxpayers shovel to Cairo every year until one of two things happened: Morsi was reinstalled or a new election took place.

Instead, Obama's lawyers put forth a novel legal interpretation—because the law doesn't explicitly state that the president needs to make a coup declaration in the first place, the U.S. could theoretically carry on as if nothing happened. As one Obama administration official told The New York Times weeks after Morsi was removed from office, "We will not say it was a coup, we will not say it was not a coup, we will just not say." While Obama did reduce military aid to Egypt, he changed tact two years later, arguing that a long-term freeze would plunge the Middle East and North Africa's most populous country into insecurity.

Egypt isn't the only test case. In 2006, when the Thai military overthrew the prime minister and revoked the constitution, the Bush administration cut off development assistance and military training programs but left law enforcement training and counterterrorism activities alone. In 2014, when another coup rocked Thailand, the Obama administration maintained a relationship with the Thai military—the next year, U.S. and Thai troops engaged in joint exercises together.

Burkina Faso, a small, poor country in West Africa now ruled by a junta, is another case study. One month after Burkinabe forces deposed President Roch Kaboré, Washington restricted $160 million in U.S. aid to the country. Yet at the same time, the Biden administration sought to maintain some relations with the new authorities, if only because local jihadist groups in Burkina Faso were overpowering the state. While U.S. aid restrictions would be respected, the State Department wrote months after the coup, "We will need to be strategic, and identify areas where we are allowed to engage, where doing so fits within our national security interests, and where it is justifiable given the government's progress towards a democratic transition."

The U.S. is likely to take a similar position in Niger, assuming the coup stands. Unlike Burkina Faso, the U.S. has approximately 1,100 troops stationed in the large, desert nation in the Sahara. An airfield in Niger's Agadez, which cost the U.S. more than $100 million to build, is now one of the U.S. military's central origin points for drone missions in Africa. The U.S. Air Force has allowed France to use another base near Niamey, the Nigerian capital, to conduct its own strikes against terrorist groups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. France has since pulled troops from Mali and Burkina Faso. While anything is possible, the White House ordering all troops and intelligence officials to withdraw from these Nigerien bases after investing so much into them confounds reason. Just as his predecessors have done in the past, we should expect Biden to find some legal justification to maintain operations in Niger regardless of who calls the shots.

The U.S. likes to think of itself as a global defender of democratic governance worldwide—the reality is far messier.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.