US Exit From The World Health Organization Marks A New Era In Global Health Policy – Here’s What The US, And World, Will Lose

The U.S.-WHO collaboration has been critical in the country’s response to mpox, shown here, as well as Ebola, Marburg, flu and COVID-19. Uma Shankar sharma/Moment via Getty Images

BY JORDAN MILLER

TEACHING PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC

HEALTH, ARIZONA STATE UN IVERSITY

The U.S. departure from the World Health Organization became official in late January 2026, according to the Trump administration – a year after President Donald Trump signed an executive order on inauguration day of his second term declaring that he was doing so. He first stated his intention to do so during his first term in 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. severing its ties with the WHO will cause ripple effects that linger for years to come, with widespread implications for public health. The Conversation asked Jordan Miller, a public health professor at Arizona State University, to explain what the U.S. departure means in the short and long term.

Why is the US leaving the WHO?

The Trump administration says it’s unfair that the U.S. contributes more than other nations and cites this as the main reason for leaving. The White House’s official announcement gives the example of China, which – despite having a population three times the size of the U.S. – contributes 90% less than the U.S. does to the WHO.

The Trump administration has also claimed that the WHO’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic was botched and that it lacked accountability and transparency.

The WHO has pushed back on these claims, defending its pandemic response, which recommended masking and physical distancing.

The U.S. does provide a disproportionate amount of funding to the WHO. In 2023, for example, U.S. contributions almost tripled that of the European Commission’s and were roughly 50% more than the second highest donor, Germany. But health experts point out that preventing and responding quickly to public health challenges is far less expensive than dealing with those problems once they’ve taken root and spread.

However, the withdrawal process is complicated, despite the U.S. assertion that it is final. Most countries do not have the ability to withdraw, as that is the way the original agreement to join the WHO was designed. But the U.S. inserted a clause into its agreement with the WHO when it agreed to join, stipulating that the U.S. would have the ability to withdraw, as long as it provided a one-year notice and paid all remaining dues. Though the U.S. gave its notice when Trump took office a year ago, it still owes the WHO about US$260 million in fees for 2024-25. There are complicated questions of international law that remain.

What does US withdrawal from the WHO mean in the short term?

In short, the U.S. withdrawal weakens public health abroad and at home. The WHO’s priorities include stopping the spread of infectious diseases, stemming antimicrobial resistance, mitigating natural disasters, providing medication and health services to those who need it, and even preventing chronic diseases. So public health challenges, such as infectious diseases, have to be approached at scale because experience shows that coordination across borders is important for success.

The U.S. has been the largest single funder of the WHO, with contributions in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually over the past decade, so its withdrawal will have immediate operational impacts, limiting the WHO’s ability to continue established programs.

As a result of losing such a significant share of its funding, the WHO announced in a recent memo to staff that it plans to cut roughly 2,300 jobs – a quarter of its workforce – by summer 2026. It also plans to downsize 10 of its divisions to four.

In addition to a long history of funding, U.S. experts have worked closely with the WHO to address public health challenges. Successes stemming from this partnership include effectively responding to several Ebola outbreaks, addressing mpox around the world and the Marburg virus outbreak in Rwanda and Ethiopia. Both the Marburg and Ebola viruses have a 50% fatality rate, on average, so containing these diseases before they reached pandemic-level spread was critically important.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America issued a statement in January 2026 describing the move as “a shortsighted and misguided abandonment of our global health commitments,” noting that “global cooperation and communication are critical to keep our own citizens protected because germs do not respect borders.”

What are the longer-term impacts of US withdrawal?

By withdrawing from the WHO, the U.S. will no longer participate in the organization’s Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, which has been in operation since 1952. This will seriously compromise the U.S.’s ability to plan and manufacture vaccines to match the predicted flu strains for each coming year.

Annual flu vaccines for the U.S. and globally are developed a year in advance using data that is collected around the world and then analyzed by an international team of experts to predict which strains are likely to be most widespread in the next year. The WHO convenes expert panels twice per year and then makes recommendations on which flu strains to include in each year’s vaccine manufacturing formulation.

While manufacturers will likely still be able to obtain information regarding the WHO’s conclusions, the U.S. will not contribute data in the same way, and American experts will no longer have a role in the process of data analysis. This could lead to problematic differences between WHO recommendations and those coming from U.S. authorities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year in the U.S. millions of people get the flu, hundreds of thousands of Americans are hospitalized and tens of thousands die as a result of influenza. Diminishing the country’s ability to prepare in advance through flu shots will likely mean more hospitalizations and more deaths as a result of the flu.

This is just one example of many of how the U.S.’s departure will affect the country’s readiness to respond to disease threats.

Additionally, the reputational damage done by the U.S. departure cannot be overstated. The U.S. has developed its position as an international leader in public health over many decades as the largest developer and implementer of global health programs.

I believe surrendering this position will diminish the United States’ ability to influence public health strategies internationally, and that is important because global health affects health in the U.S. It will also make it harder to shape a multinational response in the event of another public health crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Public health and policy experts predict that China will use this opportunity to strengthen its position and its global influence, stepping into the power vacuum the U.S. creates by withdrawing. China has pledged an additional US$500 million in support of the WHO over the next five years.

As a member of the WHO, the United States has had ready access to a vast amount of data collected by the WHO and its members. While most data the WHO obtains is ultimately made available to the public, member nations have greater access to detailed information about collection methods and gain access sooner, as new threats are emerging.

Delays in access to data could hamstring the country’s ability to respond in the event of the next infectious disease outbreak.

Could the US return under a new president?

In short, yes. The WHO has clearly signaled its desire to continue to engage with the U.S., saying it “regrets the U.S. decision to withdraw” and hopes the U.S. will reconsider its decision to leave.

In the meantime, individual states have the opportunity to participate. In late January, California announced it will join the WHO’s Global Outbreak Alert & Response Network, which is open to a broader array of participants than just WHO member nations. California was also a founding member of the West Coast Health Alliance, which now includes 14 U.S. states that have agreed to work together to address public health challenges.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also launched an initiative designed to improve public health infrastructure and build trust. He enlisted national public health leaders for this effort, including former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention leaders Susan Monarez and Deb Houry, as well as Katelyn Jetelina, who became well known as Your Local Epidemiologist during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think we will continue to see innovative efforts like these emerging, as political and public health leaders work to fill the vacuum being created by the Trump administration’s disinvestment in public health.

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What Franco’s Fascist Regime In Spain Can Teach Us About Today’s America

Gen. Francisco Franco, center, commander in the south, visits the headquarters of the northern front in Burgos, Spain, on Aug. 19, 1936, during the country’s civil war. Imagno/Getty Images

BY RACHELLE WILSON TOLLEMAR

ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF SPANISH,

UNIVERSITY OF ST. THOMAS

Minneapolis residents say they feel besieged under what some are calling a fascist occupation. Thousands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been swarming a city whose vast majority in 2024 did not vote for Donald Trump – or for a paramilitary roundup of its diverse population.

Tragically, two residents have been killed by federal agents. Consequently, social media is aflame with comparisons of Trump’s immigration enforcers to Hitler’s Gestapo.

While comparisons to Hitler’s fascist regime are becoming common, I’d argue that it may be even more fitting to compare the present moment to a less-remembered but longer-lasting fascist regime: that of Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain from 1936 until his death in 1975.

In 2016, critics warned that Trump’s campaign rhetoric was grounded in textbook fascism, exhibiting signs such as racism, sexism and misogyny, nationalism, propaganda and more. In return, critics were met with intense backlash, accused of being hysterical or overly dramatic.

Now, even normally sober voices are sounding the alarm that America may be falling to fascist rule.

As a scholar of Spanish culture, I, too, see troubling parallels between Franco’s Spain and Trump’s America.

Putting them side by side, I believe, provides insightful tools that are needed to understand the magnitude of what’s at risk today.

Franco’s rise and reign

The Falange party started off as a a small extremist party on the margins of Spanish society, a society deeply troubled with political and economic instability. The party primarily preached a radical nationalism, a highly exclusive way to be and act Spanish. Traditional gender roles, monolingualism and Catholicism rallied people by offering absolutist comfort during uncertain times. Quickly, the Falange grew in power and prevalence until, ultimately, it moved mainstream.

By 1936, the party had garnered enough support from the Catholic Church, the military, and wealthy landowners and businessmen that a sizable amount of the population accepted Gen. Francisco Franco’s coup d'etat: a military crusade of sorts that sought to stop the perceived anarchy of liberals living in godless cities. His slogan, “¡Una, Grande, Libre!,” or “one, great, free,” mobilized people who shared the Falange’s anxieties.

Like the Falange, MAGA, the wing of the U.S. Republican Party named after Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again,” repeatedly vilifies the left, who mostly live in cities, as godless anarchists who live like vermin.

Once in power, the Francoist regime commissioned a secret police force, the Political-Social Brigade – known as the BPS – to “clean up house.” The BPS was charged with suppressing or killing any political, social, cultural or linguistic dissidents.

Weakening resistance

Franco not only weaponized the military but also proverbially enlisted the Catholic Church. He colluded with the clergy to convince parishioners, especially women, of their divine duty to multiply, instill nationalist Catholic values in their children, and thus reproduce ideological replicas of both the state and the church. From the pulpit, homemakers were extolled as “ángeles del hogar” and “heroínas de la patria,” or “angels of the home” and “heroines of the homeland.”

Together, Franco and the church constructed consent for social restrictions, including outlawing or criminalizing abortion, contraception, divorce, work by women and other women’s rights, along with even tolerating uxoricide, or the killing of wives, for their perceived sexual transgressions.

Some scholars contend that the repealing of women’s reproductive rights is the first step away from a fully democratic society. For this reason and more, many are concerned about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The #tradwife social media trend involves far-right platforms echoing Francoist-style ideologies of submission, restriction, dependence and white male dominance. One of TikTok’s most popular tradwife influencers, for instance, posted that “there is no higher calling than being a wife and a mother for a woman.” She also questioned young women attending college and rebuked, on air, wives who deny their husbands sexual intimacy.

Weakening the economy

Economically, Franco implemented autarkic policies, a system of limited trade designed to isolate Spain and protect it from anti-Spanish influences. He utilized high tariffs, strict quotas, border controls and currency manipulation, effectively impoverishing the nation and vastly enriching himself and his cronies.

These policies flew under the motto “¡Arriba España!,” or “Up Spain.” They nearly immediately triggered more than a decade of suffering known as the “hunger years.” An estimated 200,000 Spaniards died from famine and disease.

Under the slogan “America First” – Trump’s mutable but aggressive tariff regime – the $1 billion or more in personal wealth he’s accumulated while in office, along with his repeated attempts to cut nutrition benefits in blue states and his administration’s anti-vaccine policies may appear to be disconnected. But together, they galvanize an autarkic strategy that threatens to debilitate the country’s health.

Weakening the mind

Franco’s dictatorship systematically purged, exiled and repressed the country’s intellectual class. Many were forced to emigrate. Those who stayed in the country, such as the artist Joan Miró, were forced to bury their messages deeply within symbols and metaphor to evade censorship.

Currently in the U.S., banned books, banned words and phrases, and the slashing of academic and research funding across disciplines are causing the U.S. to experience “brain drain,” an exodus of members of the nation’s highly educated and skilled classes.

Furthermore, Franco conjoined the church, the state and education into one. I am tracking analogous moves in the U.S. The conservative group Turning Point USA has an educational division whose goal is to ‘reclaim" K-12 curriculum with white Christian nationalism.

Ongoing legislation that mandates public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments similarly violates religious freedom guarantees ratified in the constitution.

Drawing comparisons

Trump has frequently expressed admiration for contemporary dictators and last week stated that “sometimes you need a dictator.”

It is true that his tactics do not perfectly mirror Francoism or any other past fascist regime. But the work of civil rights scholar Michelle Alexander reminds us that systems of control do not disappear. They morph, evolve and adapt to sneak into modern contexts in less detectable ways. I see fascism like this.

Consider some of the recent activities in Minneapolis, and ask how they would be described if they were taking place in any other country.

Unidentified masked individuals in unmarked cars are forcibly entering homes without judicial warrants. These agents are killing, shooting and roughing up people, sometimes while handcuffed. They are tear-gassing peaceful protesters, assaulting and killing legal observers, and throwing flash grenades at bystanders. They are disappearing people of color, including four Native Americans and a toddler as young as 2, shipping them off to detention centers where allegations of abuse, neglect, sexual assault and even homicide are now frequent.

Government officials have spun deceptive narratives, or worse, lied about the administration’s actions.

In the wake of the public and political backlash following the killing of Alex Pretti, Trump signaled he would reduce immigration enforcement operations] in Minneapolis, only to turn around and have Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth authorize the use of an old military base near St. Paul, suggesting potential escalation, not de-escalation. Saying one thing while doing the opposite is a classic fascist trick warned about in history and literature alike.

The world has seen these tactics before. History shows the precedent and then supplies the bad ending. Comparing past Francoism to present Trumpism connects the past to the present and warns us about what could come.

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Trump’s Framing Of Nigeria Insurgency As A War On Christians Risks Undermining Interfaith Peacebuilding

AILI MARI TRIPP

VILAS RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF

POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY

OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

Nigeria “must do more to protect Christians,” a senior U.S. State Department official demanded on Jan. 22, 2026, during a high-level security meeting in the African nation’s capital, Abuja.

The comment followed an attack just days earlier in which more than 160 worshipers were kidnapped from three churches in Nigeria’s northern Kaduna state.

The security meeting came a month after the United States, in cooperation with the Nigerian government, launched an airstrike from a U.S. Navy ship in the Gulf of Guinea on the northwest Sokoto state. During the Christmas Day incident, 16 Tomahawk missiles costing around US$32 million hit several locations the U.S. claimed were being used by extremist groups.

There were no verifiable casualties, although the strike did send a signal that the U.S. administration is willing to take military action when it is deemed necessary. President Donald Trump heralded the attack a “Christmas present” to Christians and later warned that there would be more strikes if the killings of Christians continued.

As a scholar of African politics, I know that calling the insurgency in Nigeria a persecution of Christians – as the U.S. administration has repeatedly done – is simplistic and ill-informed. Yes, Christians have been killed and kidnapped as part of the prolonged terrorism campaign by Boko Haram and other extremist groups. But so too have other groups in the country, including Muslims. Moreover, the religious identity of the victims masks other motives of the militant groups involved.

I recently carried out interviews in Maiduguri, Borno State – the epicenter of Boko Haram activities in northeast Nigeria – as part of research into interfaith efforts to counter threats from Islamic extremists. For many of those interviewed, the insurgency and violence have often served to unite Nigerians with different religious identities against a common enemy: the groups making their life a misery. The danger of Trump’s narrative of this being a war on Christians is that it could undermine such efforts to build cross-community trust.

A complex conflict

Since 2009 there have been 54,000 deaths related to the violence in Nigeria and the surrounding Lake Chad region, according to independent violence monitor ACLED.

The Christmas airstrike by the U.S. was in northwest Nigeria, targeting a small group of Lakurawa militants. But 85% of all incidents related to Islamic fighters in 2025 were in northeast Nigeria, according to ACLED.

Northern Nigeria is primarily populated by Muslims, in contrast to the whole of the country, whose 240 million people are split roughly 56%-43% between Muslims and Christians.

Many of those killed and abducted in the insurgency in the north have been Christian. But the exclusive focus on Christians by the U.S. administration overlooks the complex realities behind the violence in Nigeria, which incorporates not just extremist groups but also farmer-herder tensions, land and water disputes exacerbated by climate change, ethnic rivalries, poverty and organized criminal gangs referred to as “bandits.”

Boko Haram, which regards the Nigerian state as its main target, has killed both Christians and Muslims, as has the Ansaru, an al-Qaida affiliate. The Islamic State – West Africa Province, another major insurgency group, targets state forces and Christians.

While the most recent high-profile attacks have been on churches, Boko Haram also targets markets, mosques and homes. They are opportunistic attacks that don’t discriminate between Muslims and Christians.

To be sure, the Nigerian government’s response to the insurgency has been inadequate. But again, the reasons are complex and the result of a confluence of factors, including corruption in the security sector, negligence and the difficulty of targeting groups that employ guerrilla tactics outside of government control, which make them especially elusive. Political factors may also be at play, since elements within the Nigerian government may be complicit with northern politicians backing some of the land-grabbing and kidnapping bandits.

Even with these barriers, some progress has been made. According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, Boko Haram attacks have declined by 50% since 2014-2016, when they were most active, although rates have been increasing again since 2023.

Interfaith efforts

The Nigerian government itself has welcomed assistance from the U.S. targeting insurgents, but with the proviso that Nigeria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected.

The concern is that military action on the part of the U.S. under the guise of protecting Christians in Nigeria could make matters worse. It risks exacerbating tensions within the country and giving credence to those in Nigeria and abroad who focus only on the killing of Christians for their own narrow purposes.

At the same time, it could undermine the efforts of civil society organizations and women’s associations, in particular, that have worked hard to build interfaith trust between Muslims and Christians to tackle the insurgency threat.

Some of these organizations, such as the Women of Faith Peacebuilding Network, have been at the forefront of the fight against militant groups. An interfaith movement founded in 2011, it now comprises over 10,000 Christian and Muslim women. It carries out vocational training and promotes interfaith dialogue and strategies to reduce conflict.

Following the abduction of over 300 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Chibok, Borno State, in 2014, a coalition of women’s rights organizations – comprising both Christian and Muslim members – mobilized to protest the kidnappings.

The Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria, or FOMWAN, is another organization that is actively engaged in interfaith initiatives nationwide. In a January 2024 interview, a FOMWAN member based in Maiduguri told me that the Boko Haram crisis has united women across religious divides more than ever before.

Maryam, whose name I have changed along with other interviewees to protect their identity, explained: “FOMWAN has been in existence for many years before the insurgency. And in our activities we had been teaching our Muslim women religious tolerance in Borno. But the insurgency has made us put more efforts into making sure there is religious tolerance among Muslims and Christians.”

A Christian evangelist preacher, Mary, told me that working together had significantly reduced the mutual fear and mistrust between Muslims and Christians. Before the rise of Boko Haram, interfaith collaboration between the two groups was low. But today, she noted, it is far higher.

“We came to understand that this set of people doing this killing are neither Christian nor Muslim. They’re working for selfish interests, not for religious interests. We now strategize and come together to work as one. The key issue to (the conflict) is poverty. The only solution is for us is to speak with one voice. That’s the only way for us to survive.”

‘Each other’s keeper’

The U.S. administration would, I believe, do well to listen to the voices of these Christian and Muslim peacebuilders in northern Nigeria who live with the daily threat of violence.

Their lived experience has informed an approach to Nigeria’s insurgency based on shared purpose that cuts across religious divides.

In the words of activist Mama Pro, when asked why she was so keen to build interfaith bridges in Northern Nigeria: “We are always each other’s keeper.”

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Rebirth Of The Madman Theory? Unpredictability Isn’t What It Was When It Comes To Foreign Policy

President Richard Nixon is closely associated with the ‘madman theory.’ Bettmann/Getty Images

BY ANDREW LATHAM

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,

MACALLESTER COLLEGE

Tariffs are on, until they are not. Military force is an option … and then it’s off the table.

Erratic behavior and unpredictability is having a moment in foreign policy circles. In the White House and elsewhere, it is seemingly being viewed as a strategic asset rather than a weakness.

But it is far from a new strategy. Wild threats, sudden policy reversals and intentionally confusing language have long been used to keep adversaries off balance and gain leverage.

In fact, the concept has its own name in international relations: “madman theory.” As outlined by Cold War strategists Daniel Ellsberg and Thomas Schelling, it holds that projecting a readiness to take extreme action can shape an opponent’s calculations by heightening fears of escalation.

While the theory was meant to be explanatory, in the sense that observers used it to explain apparently irrational behavior, it has sometimes been used in a prescriptive way, as an approach consciously adopted by leaders.

The 3 conditions for madman success

The madman theory has historical roots going back to Machiavelli, but it is most closely associated with Richard Nixon, who, as incoming president, reportedly used the term to explain his approach to trying to force North Vietnam’s surrender in the Vietnam War.

Historians see evidence of the theory’s limited applicability in episodes such as Nixon’s 1969 placing of the U.S. military on nuclear alert, which appeared to have reinforced Soviet caution even if it did not bring about an end of the Vietnam War.

The theory was more applicable in Nixon’s era because of three background conditions that were in place.

The first was information scarcity. During the Cold War, signals traveled more slowly than they do today and through narrow channels. Messages were filtered by professional diplomats, intelligence analysts and military officers.

Ambiguity could be sustained. A country’s leader could appear possibly unhinged without being instantly decoded, contextualized or publicly dissected. “Madman” signaling depended on this controlled opacity.

The second condition was a stable adversary with a shared notion of risk. Nixon’s gambit worked, when it worked at all, because Soviet leaders were deeply conservative risk managers operating inside a rigid hierarchy. They feared miscalculation because they believed it could lead to the Soviet Union’s fall — or at least their fall within it.

The third condition was credibility built through restraint elsewhere. The madman pose only works if it is exceptional. Nixon appeared dangerous to adversaries precisely because the American system normally appeared controlled. His apparent erratic behavior was exceptional in a context of bureaucratic orderliness.

But the world of those three conditions is gone.

Threats today are tweeted, clipped, reframed, leaked, mocked and talked about in real time. Unpredictability doesn’t have time to breathe public fear into existence. Rather, it can devolve into noise.

And nations such as Iran, Russia and China operate in a world they already regard as unstable and unjust. Volatility does not frighten them; it is the environment they expect. In such conditions, apparent irrationality can invite probing, hedging or reciprocal escalation.

Meanwhile, erratic behavior is no longer exceptional or unexpected.

Many a madman would struggle today

Unpredictability only works if it’s strategic rather than designed on the fly. Trump has blustered, contradicted himself publicly, ramped-up rhetorically and then backed down, mostly without receiving obvious concessions.

The more this happens, the more predictability he creates about unpredictability.

And once unpredictability becomes expected, it loses its coercive force.

This dynamic is evident in Trump’s handling of both Iran and Greenland. In the Iranian case, pressure — including military strikes — has been applied without clearly defining where escalation would end.

With Greenland, coercive threats aimed at an ally only strained NATO without producing compliance.

In neither instance did unpredictability translate into durable leverage. Instead, it generated uncertainty about objectives and limits.

A bigger problem for any leader wishing to adopt a madman strategy is that today’s international order and media ecosystem are more inured to volatility. Threats no longer freeze opponents into caution.

Friendly nations hedge their bets. For example, faced with U.S. threats over tariffs, India strengthened ties with China.

Meanwhile, enemies test boundaries. Russia, for example, has treated Trump’s ambiguous signaling on Ukraine as little more than a green-light for it to continue its campaign to conquer the Donbas region.

Does the madman have a future?

There are still limited circumstances in which ambiguity can serve a strategic purpose.

Limited uncertainty about specific responses can reinforce deterrence by keeping adversaries cautious. U.S. strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan, for example, leaves it unclear whether Washington would intervene militarily in the case of an attack by Beijing, discouraging the locking of any side into automatic escalation.

That part of the madman approach remains effective. But what no longer works is volatility untethered from clear objectives and visible limits.

The madman theory was built for a rigid, rule-bound world. It is least effective precisely where today’s politics feels most chaotic.

This article is part of a series explaining foreign policy terms commonly used but rarely explained.

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‘I Saw The Horrors’: How Australian Journalists Bore Witness To The Holocaust

The day after Kristallnacht, Berlin, November 1938. Public doman, via Wikimedia Commons

BY FAY ANDERSON

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM 

STUDIES, MONASH U NIVERSITY

In the dying days of World War II, startling news about “horror camps” in Germany began to emerge, as Western war correspondents accompanied British and American forces advancing towards Berlin. During the liberation of the camps, soldiers and journalists, including 15 Australian journalists and two artists, encountered thousands of dead. Some victims were in locked rail cars; others were piled in mounds or tossed into pits. Traumatised survivors wandered about the camps, while those too weak to walk remained in stifling huts as their Nazi captors fled.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is the anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camp on January 27 1945. It is timely, as we commemorate, to reflect on what was known and believed at the time.

As living memory of the Holocaust fades, we need to continue to strive for an accurate reckoning of what took place and account for how it was reported. This obligation is perhaps all the more compelling in the wake of Israel’s relentless and remorseless destruction of Gaza in response to Hamas’ horrific attacks on October 7 2023, which has complicated and perhaps clouded cultural memory of the Holocaust.

Understanding how the press covered the Holocaust illuminates the role of journalism and its contemporary importance. It is not only about looking back.

The Australian press offers a unique dimension to our understanding of the Holocaust. It reveals things about journalism’s complicated engagement with the Nazi’s campaign of extermination, the political and cultural context of the 1930s and 1940s, the comforting myth that emerged after the war that the press “did not know”, and how the Holocaust has influenced modern journalism.

Personal stories were treated as credible. The idea of objectivity was challenged. The importance of visual evidence became widely accepted.

The pre-war coverage

The Australian press coverage of the Third Reich in the 1930s is strikingly reminiscent of how authoritarian figures are characterised today. Hitler was underestimated. He was an object of press fascination and the butt of bemused ridicule.

Throughout the decade, the Australian press published accurate accounts of Hitler’s brand of racial hatred and aggression. It reported his venomous antisemitism and intimidation, the Nuremberg Laws and expropriation decrees, the exodus of Jews and their status as refugees, the infamous pogrom on November 9 and 10 1938 known as Kristallnacht, and the proliferation of concentration camps, a reality in Nazi Germany since 1933.

And yet the coverage was inconsistent, entirely dependent on the will of editors. Widespread coverage did not necessarily translate into empathy or protest.

This was the era of the Immigration Restriction Act – the “White Australia Policy”. A narrow sense of what constituted an Australian national identity informed a discriminatory immigration program predicated on exclusion. The political, cultural and racial values underpinning Australian society complicated the nation’s response to Jewish persecution.

Australia’s discriminatory legislation was hardly unique, but the ambivalent pre-war treatment of Jewish victimisation reflected entrenched anxieties about race. The dehumanising language that has infected current debates about refugees and “border control” in Australia has its antecedents in the 1930s and 1940s.

Jewish refugees were conceived as a problem and a threat. Jewish migrants, particularly those from Eastern Europe, were regarded as clannish and overly “political” (either covertly communist or innately Zionist) and simply not “white” enough. Sections of the national press staunchly defended the national immigration policy, echoing entrenched grievances and pandering to xenophobia. Other editors frequently echoed the pervasive political belief that Jewish refugees and all non-white migrants threatened social cohesion.

In response to the tumultuous events in Germany, several news editors began to campaign (with qualifications) for a relaxation of the restrictive immigration policy. But other publications continued to defend the restrictions, calling on the government to “halt unrestricted Jewish influx”.

Accounts of Nazi terror

Unlike the racial policies and persecution of the 1930s, the mass extermination of the Jews during the war was not committed openly. Despite the secrecy and military priorities, the Australian press published fragmented but frequent wire accounts of “Nazi terror”. Deportations, enforced slavery, executions, ghettos and the establishment of concentration and extermination camps all featured in the press.

The number of articles in Australian daily newspapers recording the killing of Jews increased dramatically in the second half of 1942, after the London-based Polish government-in-exile released a shocking report they had received from the Bund, the Jewish Socialist Labor Party in Warsaw. The report documented the slaughter of 700,000 Jews and stated that “mass extermination” had begun.

The frequency of such articles revealed an editorial willingness to focus on the Jewish plight, despite the fierce competition for news space as the war against the Japanese intensified. Some news outlets, including small regional mastheads, diligently published extensive and accurate coverage of the persecution of Jews throughout the war.

Other publications, however, failed to maintain continuous coverage, despite the agonising enormity of events. Relying for the most part on wire accounts rather than journalists’ eyewitness reports, the news did not always generate sustained interest.

Godfrey Blunden, an Australian war correspondent accredited with Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, was based in the Soviet Union for 16 months. He insisted that his reports on the murder of the Jews in Russia be read and believed.

Blunden suspected there was a resistance to acknowledging what was happening, within the newspaper industry and the wider public. But if the Australian public in Sydney and Melbourne paid close attention, the evidence of the Jewish fate was unambiguous.

Liberation reports

On 22 July 1944, Soviet forces reached Majdanek near Lublin, Poland. The Soviets had invited a phalanx of journalists and photographers, including James Aldridge, a journalist with the Melbourne Herald, to witness the liberation. It was another six months before Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated.

It is striking that, while the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau has taken on an epochal significance, the event was not regarded as especially significant at the time. The absence of Western journalists and the resistance to acknowledging the Soviet role in the liberation meant that most major newspapers provided only vague details. Many reports were buried in the inner recesses of newspapers or not published at all, suggesting to the public that the revelations were not of central significance and possibly unreliable.

By late April 1945, however, the revelations of the “Final Solution” were no longer deemed secondary by Australian news organisations. Western war correspondents and photographers descended on the newly liberated concentration camps and the newspapers published their harrowing dispatches. The News in Adelaide published Ronald Monson’s searing report under the headline “I saw the Horrors of Belsen camp”.

What can the reporting of the liberation of the camps tell us about the Australian press? The overwhelming preoccupation in the eyewitness accounts was the insistence that the testimony had to be both believed and remembered, and that their role provided moral clarity. It was also apparent that these first-hand accounts by Western journalists were privileged and accepted.

Historians have tended to focus on the impact and representational ramifications of the visual coverage of the concentration camp horrors. But the textual reports were crucial and would have a lasting influence. In Australia, it ushered a new style of journalism: personal and intimate, subjective and emotional. Journalists did not just relate news of the camps; they became central to the story as first-person narrators, eyewitnesses to a vast and terrible crime against humanity.

Another dimension of the reports was the journalists’ self-awareness in recognising the limitations of their professional craft. Although they were cognisant of the Nazi extermination campaign, most had not viewed the physical evidence. They were forced to process their trauma as they gathered information. Reporting difficulties were compounded by a male-dominated work culture that extolled stoicism and emotional detachment.

Objectivity, the cherished principle of reporting practice, was challenged by the camps. Here is the noted war reporter Osmar White (best known for his vivid rendering of Australia’s military campaign in New Guinea), after visiting Buchenwald and moving among its “living dead”:


I cannot now, or ever will be able to write objectively about what I have seen. One cannot observe war for three and a half years as a newspaperman and remain either a sentimentalist or be super sensitive of spectacles of human suffering. Yet what I saw today moved me to physical illness.

Journalists accepted and at times embraced the Australian brand of journalistic swagger. But their humbling experience of the camps encouraged a gentler, more empathetic form of reporting, one that allowed the survivors’ humanity to emerge.

Other accounts, however, seemed to revel in the horror and reduce the victims to anonymous caricatures. The immense linguistic and representational challenge of communicating a crime as big as the Holocaust was one thing; the tendency to minimise, distort and even deny the known facts was another.

In Australia, there is evidence that some news outlets recognised the camps as the terrible consummation of an incremental anti-Jewish policy. Yet doubts about the revelations of the Nazis’ extermination campaign persisted. Brian Penton, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, was moved to issue a damning editorial in April 1945, headlined “You Must Believe It Now!”. Significantly, some newspapers presented the graphic concentration camp photographs as the ultimate proof of the Nazi atrocity, though photographs of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau would not be published in Australian newspapers until the Nuremberg trials began in November 1945.

For all the prejudices and insecurities that infiltrated the national reckoning with the Holocaust, the Australian coverage compares favourably to that of the British and American press. In Australia, there was not a pervasive tendency to universalise or conflate the Jewish plight with other populations – a tendency that negated the fact that Jews were systematically targeted.

Postwar coverage

Australian coverage of the Holocaust was marked by numerous examples of tenacious reporting and courageous editorial commitment to publishing the truth. But it was also marred by degrees of editorial indifference, denial and disbelief, and the selective and self-serving exercise of memory.

The most disturbing example was the myth, propagated by some Australian newspapers at the time, that the annihilation of European Jewry was something of a surprise. The press were inconsistent for most of the war in their treatment of the genocide. Arguably a greater failure was the coverage of the victims after their liberation from the camps.

The treatment of the revelations in Australia varied according to the editors. Some, like Brian Penton, published frequent accounts on the brutalities committed against Jews. Others treated these as isolated incidents, burying such reports or, worse still, omitting the Jewish experience entirely. The evidence and memories were distorted in the postwar debates in Australia about Jewish migration.

Jewish persecution did not cease with the end of the war, nor did the survivors’ suffering end with their liberation. Unfortunately, the robustness of the Australian coverage of the long ordeal did not extend to its aftermath. The documented atrocities quickly faded from public consciousness. The survivors’ stories and faces seemed paradoxically to be confined to the moment of their liberation.

The sensational war trials refocused attention on the Jewish plight, but were quickly forgotten and overtaken by other events. News practices and priorities, which relegated the Holocaust to old news, diminished the Jewish fate and diluted public sympathy.

This, in turn, influenced attitudes to Jewish refugees at the very time the federal Labor government was launching Australia’s postwar immigration program. The partial obfuscation of Jews as the key targets of the Nazi regime was useful to those who sought to exclude Jewish migrants. Widespread resistance to acknowledging the extent of their mistreatment led to the revival of antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, uncomfortably redolent of Nazi sentiment.

Access and reporting

Nonetheless, as the years passed, the liberation of the concentration camps became one of the defining memories of the war for the journalists themselves. Holocaust consciousness and the journalists’ pride in their role as witnesses to the truly calamitous events had taken hold by the 1970s. There was also a growing acknowledgement of the Jewish people’s immense contribution to Australia.

Tragically, International Holocaust Remembrance Day this year will be marked in Australia in the wake of the horrifying Bondi Beach massacre, and amid increased and emboldened antisemitism and online disinformation.

The Holocaust had a profound influence on Australian journalism and, more specifically, the coverage of genocide. But in one way, it did not change reporting. The representation of crisis and conflict in the media continues to be determined by who does the seeing and who does the telling. More importantly, it is shaped by the political agendas of editors and media owners, and by politics itself.

If journalists are silenced or denied access, and if press organisations refuse to cover a story (or if they provide a skewed rendering), humanitarian crises become a secondary story at best. This is seen most recently and starkly in Gaza today, with Israel’s tight control of the conflict’s narrative by limiting entry into Gaza itself, preventing independent journalism and regaling journalists with carefully curated versions of events.

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Why The Shooting Of Alex Pretti In Minneapolis Is So Significant – Expert Q&A

A woman holds a sign reading ‘Stop ICE terror now!’ at a memorial for Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 25. Craig Lassig / EPA

BY MARK SHANAHAN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL

ENGAGEMENT, UNIVERSITY OF SURRDEY

Federal immigration agents in the city of Minneapolis are accused of having wrestled a 37-year-old intensive care nurse called Alex Pretti to the ground and then shooting him dead. The killing took place just over a mile from where another American citizen, Renee Good, was allegedly fatally shot by federal agents weeks earlier.

The latest incident prompted angry protests from people in Minneapolis who want the immigration enforcement operation in their city to end. We spoke to Mark Shanahan, an associate professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey, to address several key issues.

Why has sending in federal immigration agents caused such trouble in Minnesota?

Since returning to the White House in January 2025, the national guard has been deployed to several US cities to quell what have generally been Donald Trump-inflated crises, with illegal migration among the most prominent. However, in December, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump did not have authority for such deployments.

So, since then we have seen federal agents with US Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement taking the battle largely to minorities in cities with Democratic party leadership as part of the president’s violent attack on illegal immigration, a situation he has described as “the greatest invasion in history”.

Minneapolis is a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-led state. The governor is Tim Walz who ran for vice-president on the Kamala Harris ticket against Trump in the 2024 election. Walz has faced allegations, which he denies, of overlooking alleged widespread fraud in the financing of public safety net programmes, supposedly involving segments of the Somali-American community.

While most of these allegations have been refuted, they gave Trump reason to send in federal agents. This has ramped up tensions between state officials and the administration, causing brutal and unnecessary deaths in the community and pitting ordinary Minnesotans against federal government officials.

How does the situation in Minnesota reflect the second amendment right to bear arms?

It’s a reversal of virtually all of the second amendment debates that have been seen in recent years. The second amendment was introduced to the US constitution in 1791 through the Bill of Rights due to a deep mistrust of centralised military power and a desire to ensure that the newly formed federal government could not disarm the populace.

The founding fathers envisaged a “natural right of resistance and self-preservation”. Trump’s actions in sending in armed federal agents to conduct enforcement operations in various states appear to fulfil the founding fathers’ concerns.

The agents are trampling all over not only citizens’ second amendment right to bear arms (officials seemingly connected Pretti’s killing to him carrying a weapon) but also their first amendment right to freedom of assembly.

How have the fatal shootings affected Trump’s popularity?

Trump’s popularity is on the decline. His failure to deliver on the economic promises outlined in his election campaign, scatter-gun approach to international relations and the widening gulf between rhetoric and achievement have all damaged his standing in the polls.

In a CNN poll published on January 16, almost six in ten respondents described Trump’s first year back in office as a failure with the president focused on the wrong priorities.

And what support he does have is ebbing rapidly as federal immigration agents appear out of control, targeting many more documented citizens than illegal migrants, spreading fear and operating as if they are above the law.

With what looks like high levels of gaslighting coming from Homeland Security officials, voters are turning against the increasing autocracy of this administration, believing in the evidence widespread across the media rather than highly contentious statements from Trump’s lieutenants.

Is it unusual for former presidents to speak out the way Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have?

It certainly is. There is a longstanding tradition in the US of, and implicit agreement among, former presidents to avoid public criticism of the incumbent. Such reticence to speak is generally a sign of respect for the office and an acknowledgement of the unique and difficult challenges of the presidency.

But Trump 2.0 is no normal presidency. The 47th president’s style is both combative and retributive, and there seems to be an increasing feeling of it being out of step with the desires and best interest of the country he leads.

Trump’s march to autocracy creates crises where he regards himself as the hero the country needs to overcome its ills. His predecessors take a different view.

Whether it’s Obama calling out the assault on core American values or Clinton’s condemnation of the “horrible scenes” in Minneapolis as “unacceptable” and avoidable, Democrat past presidents have not held back. Notably, the only living previous Republican president, George W. Bush, has so far kept his own counsel.

What can be done to prevent further violence?

Most simply, Trump could end the deployment of federal immigration agents to Minneapolis and refrain from similar actions in the future. He is clearly looking for an off-ramp and sending his “border czar”, Tom Homan, to Minneapolis to direct operations could be the first step to de-escalation. But Trump abhors being called out as wrong and, at least beyond Minneapolis, is far more likely to double down on the immigration enforcement activities.

Realistically, the most likely de-escalator is Congress showing some teeth and refusing to fund further federal immigration enforcement activity. Democrats could force another government shutdown over the issue, and need just a handful of Republicans to flip in order to refuse to sanction a 2026 budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

At a public level, the greater the scrutiny of immigration enforcement agencies, the closer the fact-checking of official statements and the more cohesive the opposition to Trump’s deportation policy, the greater the chance of effectively opposing it.

It is midterm year – and the greater the public pressure, the more likely Republican legislators are to cleave away from the Trump line. While he currently controls the levers of power, that control remains fragile. Even Trump may soon realise that overt, violent, coercive autocracy is not a vote winner.

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‘We Want You Wrrested Because We Said So’ – How ICE’s Policy On Raiding Whatever Homes It Wants Violates A Basic Constitutional Right, According To A Former Federal Judge

Teyana Gibson Brown, wife of Liberian immigrant Garrison Gibson, reacts after a federal immigration officer arrested her husband in a warrantless raid in Minneapolis, Jan. 11, 2026, in what a judge later ruled was a violation of Gibson’s Fourth Amendment rights. AP Photo/John Locher

BY JOHN E. JONES III

PRESIDENT, DICKINSON COLLEGE

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents continued to use aggressive and sometimes violent methods to make arrests in its mass deportation campaign, including breaking down doors in Minneapolis homes, a bombshell report from the Associated Press on Jan. 21, 2026, said that an internal ICE memo – acquired via a whistleblower – asserted that immigration officers could enter a home without a judge’s warrant. That policy, the report said, constituted “a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.”

Those limits have long been found in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed Dickinson College President John E. Jones III, a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002, for a primer on the Fourth Amendment, and what the changes in the ICE memo mean.

Okay, I’m going to read the Fourth Amendment – and then you’re going to explain it to us, please! Here goes:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Can you help us understand what that means?

Since the beginning of the republic, it has been uncontested that in order to invade someone’s home, you need to have a warrant that was considered, and signed off on, by a judicial officer. This mandate is right within the Fourth Amendment; it is a core protection.

In addition to that, through jurisprudence that has evolved since the adoption of the Fourth Amendment, it is settled law that it applies to everyone. That would include noncitizens as well.

What I see in this directive that ICE put out, apparently quite some time ago and somewhat secretly, is something that, to my mind, turns the Fourth Amendment on its head.

What does the Fourth Amendment aim to protect someone from?

In the context of the ICE search, it means that a person’s home, as they say, really is their castle. Historically, it was meant to remedy something that was true in England, where the colonists came from, which was that the king or those empowered by the king could invade people’s homes at will. The Fourth Amendment was meant to establish a sort of zone of privacy for people, so that their papers, their property, their persons would be safe from intrusion without cause.

So it’s essentially a protection against abuse of the government’s power.

That’s precisely what it is.

Has the accepted interpretation of the Fourth Amendment changed over the centuries?

It hasn’t. But Fourth Amendment law has evolved because the framers, for example, didn’t envision that there would be cellphones. They couldn’t understand or anticipate that there would be things like cellphones and electronic surveillance. All those modalities have come into the sphere of Fourth Amendment protection. The law has evolved in a way that actually has made Fourth Amendment protections greater and more wide-ranging, simply because of technology and other developments such as the use of automobiles and other means of transportation. So there are greater protected zones of privacy than just a person’s home.

ICE says it only needs an administrative warrant, not a judicial warrant, to enter a home and arrest someone. Can you briefly describe the difference and what it means in this situation?

It’s absolutely central to the question here. In this context, an administrative warrant is nothing more than the folks at ICE headquarters writing something up and directing their agents to go arrest somebody. That’s all. It’s a piece of paper that says ‘We want you arrested because we said so.’ At bottom that’s what an administrative warrant is, and of course it hasn’t been approved by a judge.

This authorized use of administrative warrants to circumvent the Fourth Amendment flies in the face of their limited use prior to the ICE directive.

A judicially approved warrant, on the other hand, has by definition been reviewed by a judge. In this case, it would be either a U.S. magistrate judge or U.S. district judge. That means that it would have to be supported by probable cause to enter someone’s residence to arrest them.

So the key distinction is that there’s a neutral arbiter. In this case, a federal judge who evaluates whether or not there’s sufficient cause to – as is stated clearly in the Fourth Amendment – be empowered to enter someone’s home. An administrative warrant has no such protection. It is not much more than a piece of paper generated in a self-serving way by ICE, free of review to substantiate what is stated in it.

Have there been other kinds of situations, historically, where the government has successfully proposed working around the Fourth Amendment?

There are a few, such as consent searches and exigent circumstances where someone is in danger or evidence is about to be destroyed. But generally it’s really the opposite and cases point to greater protections. For example, in the 1960s the Supreme Court had to confront warrantless wiretapping; it was very difficult for judges in that age who were not tech-savvy to apply the Fourth Amendment to this technology, and they struggled to find a remedy when there was no actual intrusion into a structure. In the end, the court found that intrusion was not necessary and that people’s expectation of privacy included their phone conversations. This of course has been extended to various other means of technology including GPS tracking and cellphone use generally.

What’s the direction this could go in at this point?

What I fear here – and I think ICE probably knows this – is that more often than not, a person who may not have legal standing to be in the country, notwithstanding the fact that there was a Fourth Amendment violation by ICE, may ultimately be out of luck. You could say that the arrest was illegal, and you go back to square one, but at the same time you’ve apprehended the person. So I’m struggling to figure out how you remedy this.

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Militarising The Sahel Will Not Defeat Terrorism

BY AYODELE S. OWOLABI

ASSOCIATE LECTURER  IN INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS, AT LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES

UNIVERSITY

After launching what he called “a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS [ISIL] terrorist scum” in northwest Nigeria on December 25, United States President Donald Trump promised “many more”, reaffirming his stance that the US “will not allow radical Islamic terrorism to prosper”. The strikes occurred less than a week after the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES) commissioned a joint military force comprising a 5,000-strong contingent, presented as a symbol of collective self-reliance and security autonomy, in a concerted effort to combat terrorist groups in its member states. They also followed moves by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to establish an ambitious plan announced in August 2025 to activate a 260,000-strong joint counterterrorism force, backed by a proposed $2.5bn annual budget for logistics and front-line support.

While these developments may be presented by their proponents as decisive steps against terrorism, there is little evidence that militarised escalation alone can defeat armed groups in the Sahel. Instead, they signal an accelerating militarisation of the region. Not only does this fuel emerging geopolitical tensions in West Africa, but it also, more importantly, edges the Sahel towards interstate armed conflict, posing far graver risks to regional peace and stability.

A friendship turned sour

Until 2021, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations in the Sahel were governed by a loosely coordinated, non-hierarchical security architecture built around diplomatic and military collaboration among regional and extra-regional actors. This architecture brought together ECOWAS, the European Union, the United Nations, the African Union, external powers such as the US and France, as well as regional powers such as Algeria and Nigeria, with ECOWAS playing a central coordinating role.

A typical example was the 2013 African-led International Support Mission to Mali, organised by ECOWAS in collaboration with the AU, UN and France to confront Tuareg rebels and allied armed groups in northern Mali. More prominent was the EU-financed G5 Sahel counterterrorism force, which brought together African and European troops and operated between 2017 and 2023. While these arrangements were often marked by tension, competition and uneven outcomes, they functioned within a shared security framework that limited direct confrontation between states.

This balance was disrupted after the 2023 coup in Niger. By threatening the use of force to restore constitutional order, ECOWAS crossed a political threshold that transformed its role from intermediary to perceived adversary in the eyes of the Nigerien junta. That threat was widely interpreted as an act of aggression, and it proved catalytic. In response, Niger’s military rulers, alongside their counterparts in Mali and Burkina Faso, moved to establish the Alliance of Sahel States as a deliberate effort to reclaim security autonomy, dismantle the existing multilateral security regime and sever ties with longstanding partners including ECOWAS, the EU, the US and France.

Notably, the AES institutionalises a mutual defence pact that codifies this break with the previous multilateral security order by explicitly framing ECOWAS and its Western partners as threats to the sovereignty and national security of its member states. Beyond deepening the rift between former allies, this posture signals a dangerous shift towards the securitisation of neighbouring states, raising the spectre of interstate conflict in West Africa, a phenomenon largely absent since the 1990s.

Emerging geopolitical tensions

In severing security ties with the West, the AES have pivoted towards Russia as a principal security partner to counterbalance decades of US and European influence in West Africa, signalling a deepening but still evolving security partnership with Moscow. While these strategic choices reflect an emerging self-help posture with new preferences for non-conventional allies, they are also intensifying geopolitical tensions across the region.

Nigeria’s military role in countering an attempted coup in neighbouring Benin was praised as a major win for ECOWAS. But when a Nigerian Air Force C-130 aircraft made an emergency landing in Burkina Faso two days later, the AES interpreted this as a violation of its airspace and sovereignty, authorising its air force to neutralise any aircraft involved in further violations. Tensions were heightened by reports that France had provided Nigeria with surveillance and intelligence support during the Benin intervention, fuelling apprehension about France’s potential re-entry into the AES security landscape. With Nigeria now willing to extend security cooperation with the US following the Christmas Day strikes, the stakes have risen further for the AES. Although aimed at militants operating in northwest Nigeria, the strikes appear calculated to bolster US strategic legitimacy as a counterterrorism actor in the region, potentially opening the door to further operations in Nigeria’s northeast, where ISWAP and Boko Haram remain active.

Given Nigeria’s influence within ECOWAS, this emerging security partnership with the US is likely to shape the operational capacity of the proposed 260,000-strong ECOWAS force. This does not bode well for the AES, which is intent on insulating its member states from Western security influence in the name of sovereignty. Because ECOWAS forces would be deployed in member states at the epicentre of terrorist violence, many combat engagements would take place in locations adjacent to AES territories. With AES troops also operating in these areas, military clashes between the two sides become increasingly likely, particularly given the region’s porous borders and fluid combat environments. Given that the Christmas Day strikes reportedly hit unintended targets, the risk that future air strikes by a US-backed ECOWAS could spill into AES territory cannot be dismissed. For deterrence, the AES may seek to leverage Russia’s military backing, evoking echoes of Cold War-era security brinkmanship.

Implications for regional stability

Without reconciliation between the AES and ECOWAS, two major risks loom for regional peace and stability. First, rising geopolitical tensions could draw AES and ECOWAS member states into direct interstate military confrontations, potentially plunging West Africa into a regional war. Such a conflict would serve neither side’s counterterrorism objectives. Beyond devastating the region, it would create space for armed groups to expand their operations amid fractured and distracted security responses. Second, the standoff risks turning West Africa into a new theatre for global power rivalry, with a Russia-backed AES on one side and a US and France-backed ECOWAS on the other. In the context of an emerging New Cold War, the use of veto power by these global actors at the UN Security Council could further complicate conflict resolution, with profoundly destabilising consequences for the region.

The AES and ECOWAS now face a stark choice: to revive Cold War-style bloc politics in West Africa while the region slides towards chaos, or to negotiate a security sub-coalition that prioritises human security alongside national sovereignty. Regardless of how the AES views ECOWAS, the burden lies with the latter to manage the unintended consequences of escalating tensions. While there are few indications that the AES is willing to cooperate directly with a West-backed ECOWAS on counterterrorism, ECOWAS could pursue diplomatic engagement to negotiate a concept of operations that guarantees respect for AES sovereignty. As Africa’s most experienced regional security organisation, ECOWAS possesses the diplomatic capacity to do so. For progress to be made, Francophone ECOWAS member states should take the lead in these efforts, while Nigeria exercises its influence more discreetly. Whether ECOWAS can reclaim ownership of its security agenda and define the terms of external engagement will shape not only West Africa’s future, but that of the continent as a whole.

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