Trump's Sahel reset banks on 'sovereignty,' guns + minerals deals

Trump's Sahel reset banks on 'sovereignty,' guns + minerals deals

The State Department is conducting a new wave of outreach to three military-ruled Sahelian countries — Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. This outreach appears aimed at moving past concerns about democracy and restoring a kind of status quo ante in the U.S.-Sahel security relationship, combined with a blunter focus on critical minerals.Thematically and rhetorically, there is not much new here: administration officials conducted an earlier round of o…