The Race for Strategic Commodities in World War 3

Guest Post by Nick Giambruno

Air Base 201 is the world’s largest and most expensive drone base. It’s the Pentagon’s most strategic military asset in sub-Saharan Africa.

The US military built this enormous and remote base in Niger—one of the poorest countries in the world (average annual income of $631)—near the city of Agadez in the middle of the vast desert.

Officially, Air Base 201 is there for US military operations to fight “terrorism” in West and North Africa.

Unofficially, it’s there to block Russian and Chinese influence in a region with vast reserves of strategic commodities.

Unfortunately for Washington, the US is on the verge of losing its treasured drone base and, therefore, its geopolitical influence over the resource-rich region.

In July 2023, the military of Niger overthrew its leader, who was widely considered to be a stooge of the US and France, the former colonial power.

The coup in Niger was part of an accelerating trend. Western allies are falling like dominoes in Africa as the proxy wars of World War 3 heat up and the major powers scramble to secure strategic resources.

Since 2020, military coups have replaced pro-Western governments in Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Gabon, and Chad with neutral governments or regimes aligned with Russia and China.

A recent election in Senegal saw the unpopular leader—widely viewed as a French puppet—thrown out, though French troops are still present in the country for now.

Below is the geopolitical map of Africa as I see it.

World War 3 and Strategic Commodities

Total war between the world’s largest powers that reshuffled the international order defined the previous world wars.

However, with the advent of nuclear weapons, total war between the largest powers today—Russia, China, and the US—means a nuclear Armageddon where there are no winners and only losers.

That could still happen despite nobody wanting it, but it’s not the most likely outcome.

World War 3 is unlikely to be a direct kinetic war between the US, Russia, and China.

Instead, the conflict will play out on different levels—proxy wars, economic wars, financial wars, cyber wars, biological wars, deniable sabotage, and information wars.

In that sense, World War 3 is already well underway, even though most don’t recognize it. The recent wave of coups in Africa is part of this global conflict.

As I see it, World War 3 is a conflict between two geopolitical blocks.

The first block consists of the US and its allies who have hitched their wagons to the unipolar world order.

I’m reluctant to call this block “the West” because the people who control it have values antithetical to Western Civilization.

A more fitting label would be NATO & Friends.

The other block comprises Russia, China, and other countries favorable to a multipolar world order.

Let’s call them the BRICS+, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and other countries.

BRICS+ is not a perfect label, but it’s a decent representation of the countries favorable to the multipolar world order.

Some countries don’t fall decisively into one category. For example, Egypt is a major US ally and a member of the BRICS+. I’ve put these countries in a separate Non-Aligned category in the above map. They are prime arenas of competition for NATO & Friends and BRICS+.

In short, BRICS+ wants to transform the current world order from unipolar to multipolar and give themselves a bigger seat at the table in the process.

NATO & Friends want the unipolar status quo to prevail.

That’s World War 3, and it’s happening right now.

The recent wave of coups in Africa should be seen in this context.

There are only two reasons the major foreign powers would care about impoverished and isolated Niger: 1) Air Base 201 and 2) the uranium industry, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Recently, the US government sent a delegation of senior officials to meet with Niger’s new military government, who expressed their concern over Niger’s potential relationship with Russia.

Niger’s military government was not impressed. They thought the US officials had a condescending attitude as they demanded Niger return to “democracy” and dictated to them which countries they were allowed to have relations with.

Further, the US did not follow standard diplomatic protocol because Niger was not informed about the composition of the delegation, the date of its arrival, or its agenda.

Shortly after the meeting, the military government of Niger announced on national television “with immediate effect” the termination of its military cooperation agreement with the US government. It declared the US presence unconstitutional and not in the nation’s interest.

After intense negotiations failed to secure the US presence in the country, the Pentagon ordered the withdrawal of all military forces from Niger.

With the recent announcement, the US government has little choice but to abandon Air Base 201—unless it declares war on Niger—and, with it, the geopolitical influence over the region and its vast reserves of strategic commodities.

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