Strategic Prudence in the Sahel under the Arizona Government
(2026) Belgium Abroad - Reconciling Domestic Governance with International Commitments — ISBN: [978-2-39061-695-5], 45-55, published
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- Over the past decade, the Sahel has emerged as one of the most emblematic theatres of contemporary international insecurity. It concentrates a set of interlocking dynamics that have become central to the current international system: chronic state fragility, the diffusion of transnational armed violence, mounting environmental and climate pressures, intensified competition among external actors, and the gradual erosion of multilateral crisis-management frameworks that once structured international responses to instability. For European states—and particularly for medium-sized powers—the Sahel has thus become a profoundly ambivalent space of engagement. While it continues to be framed in strategic documents and policy statements as a region of high security relevance, it is simultaneously perceived as a theatre characterised by escalating costs, operational risks, and acute political sensitivity. The gap between declared priorities and the increasingly contested outcomes of intervention has contributed to growing uncertainty about the desirability and sustainability of continued engagement. It is against this backdrop that this article examines Belgium’s posture towards the Sahel one year after the formation of the Arizona government. At first glance, Belgium appears largely absent from the strategic debate surrounding the region: no articulated doctrine has emerged, no major operational initiative has been launched, and no explicit political repositioning has been publicly announced. The Sahel does not feature prominently in official discourse, nor does it occupy a visible place in Belgium’s contemporary foreign and defence policy agenda. Rather than interpreting this apparent absence as a sign of indifference or policy failure, this article advances the hypothesis that it reflects a posture of strategic prudence. Understood as a deliberate choice of restraint, limited visibility, and reliance on multilateral frameworks, strategic prudence may represent a calculated response to an environment marked by profound uncertainty, contested legitimacy, and diminishing returns on external intervention.
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Liegeois, M. (2026). Strategic Prudence in the Sahel under the Arizona Government. In Edouard Xia et Marion Jacques (ed.), Belgium Abroad - Reconciling Domestic Governance with International Commitments (pp. 45-55). Presses universitaires de Louvain. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/279529