Will There Be A 'Global Epidemic' Of Coups In 2022?

Sudan's Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan speaks during a press conference after the military took power in the country. AFP  

Washington Post: There was an ‘epidemic’ of coups in 2021. The new year hasn’t cured the political turmoil. 

Last year saw a rash of coups d'état across the world, from West Africa to Southeast Asia. But the reverberations of 2021 political takeovers are continuing into the new year in Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere. On Sunday, just two months after being reinstated by military leaders, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok announced his resignation. 

“I tried as much as I could to avoid our country from sliding into disaster,” he said in an address to the nation. 

Hamdok’s short-lived return to office dashed many hopes that Sudan’s coup leaders could turn toward democracy. The former United Nations official had become prime minister in August 2019 following the fall of longtime authoritarian ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir in April of that year. He had been charged with leading the country’s transition to post-Bashir elections this year. Instead, amid increasingly fractious relations with Sudan’s powerful military, he was ousted on Oct. 25, 2021, and placed under house arrest.  

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WNU Editor: Coups have definitely returned to Africa .... 2021, the year military coups returned to the stage in Africa (Al Jazeera).

The New Great Game Between The World's Major Powers Is Shifting To The Seas

U.S. Navy (Photo by Mass Communication Spc. 2nd Class Logan C. Kellums) 

Geoffrey F. Gresh, War On The Rocks: The New Great Game At Sea 

Last month, India included Australia in its annual Malabar naval exercise for the first time since 2007. The exercise was held in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea and also included the United States and Japan, which only joined as a permanent member in 2015. Australia’s newly announced inclusion represents the growing concerns about China’s maritime rise across Eurasia, from the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean to East Asia and the Arctic. Malabar comes in juxtaposition to the annual exercise China hosts with Russia entitled Joint Sea. Since 2012, Russia and China have conducted the Joint Sea naval exercises as a way to bolster their relationship, while also gaining a greater understanding of their respective naval technologies and platforms. For the first several years, the Joint Sea drills primarily took place across East Asia, including the Yellow Sea, Sea of Japan, East China Sea, and South China Sea. But for the last several years, the two countries have expanded their exercises first to the Mediterranean in 2015 and then to the Baltic in 2017. 

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WNU Editor: The U.S. response has been to initiate its own massive shipbuilding program regardless of the cost .... Navy's New Controversial Shipbuilding Plan Raids Air Force And Army's Piggy Banks (Warzone/The Drive).