| Summary/Abstract |
The massive expansion and evolution of United States security cooperation under the auspices of the ‘war on terror’ remains overlooked in the counterterrorism and interventions literature. The Sahel provides a useful region in which to explore the constitutive effects of such cooperation and its evolution because the US has always pursued an ‘economy of force’ mission there. In this article, I focus mainly on the constitutive effects of US indirect military intervention in the Sahel after 9/11, and subsequent more direct military intervention following the outbreak of civil war in Mali. The indirect intervention by the United States to build the capacity of local forces in Mali, where jihadists were based, failed because of the dissonant relationship between the two countries. This led the United States to intervene more directly in the region, including through its cooperation with and support for French and Nigerien forces. The nature of this more direct military intervention was also informed by evolving US experiences working by, with and through partner forces in other parts of the world.
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