History, that grim reaper of empires, has just delivered another sharp cut in Ouagadougou. Burkina Faso, the land of upright men, has officially severed diplomatic relations with France. The news lands with the thud of a guillotine blade, and one cannot help but see the ghosts of 1789 dancing in the hot Sahel wind. Emmanuel Macron’s grandeur has collapsed into yet another unceremonious expulsion from West Africa, a region that once knelt to the tricolour. Now the flag of Faso Danfani flies alone. And what does the United Kingdom do? It reaffirms its commitment to Commonwealth alliances. Predictable. Boring. Utterly Victorian in its reflexive clinging to a myth of global relevance. One empire watches its last threads unravel in the Sahel; the other polishes its teacups and pretends the sun has not set.
Let us not mince words. France’s humiliation in the Sahel is the direct consequence of a post-colonial arrogance that refused to die. For decades, Paris treated the region as its private hunting ground, a source of uranium and compliant dictators. The so-called Françafrique system was a masterpiece of neo-colonial extraction. But the junta in Ouagadougou, like its comrades in Bamako and Niamey, has finally read the script. They have decided that French ‘protection’ is merely French exploitation dressed in military fatigues. The severance of ties is not a diplomatic tantrum. It is a declaration of independence, a statement that the age of the white man’s burden is finally over. France, now reduced to a sulking spectator, can do little more than issue petulant statements.
And then there is Britain. In the face of this tectonic shift, the Foreign Office in London dusts off its favourite catchphrase: ‘reaffirming commitment to Commonwealth alliances.’ This is the rhetorical equivalent of playing a brass band on the Titanic. The Commonwealth is a glorified book club, a soft-power fantasy that allows British politicians to pretend they still command a global network. But what does it actually mean to reaffirm commitment? Does it mean sending trade delegations to countries that increasingly despise Western lecturing? Does it mean modernising the carceral nightmare of the Chagos Islands? No. It means nothing. It is a verbal crutch for a nation that cannot bear to admit its place in the world has shrunk to the size of a small archipelago off Europe.
Let me draw a historical parallel, as is my wont. This whole affair reeks of the late Roman Empire, when frontier provinces like Gaul began to detach themselves from an impotent centre. The Franks didn’t ask Rome’s permission to exist. They simply stopped paying tribute and swore different oaths. Today’s Sahel is doing precisely that, rejecting the suzerainty of a declining European power. And what does Rome’s eternal rival, the Eastern Empire of Constantinople, do? It issues proclamations about its eternal alliance with the ghost of Byzantium. That is the United Kingdom today, a sad echo of a grandeur that expired somewhere between Suez and the Brexit vote.
I am not naive. I do not romanticise the juntas of the Sahel. They are military rulers, often brutally illiberal. But they have understood something that chancelleries in Paris and London refuse to grasp: sovereignty is not negotiable. The people of Burkina Faso, however imperfect their government, have chosen to cast off the French yoke. That act alone is a victory for self-determination in a world that has spent centuries denying it to Africans. The UK’s response, a limp and cautious we-stand-by-our-allies, reveals a deep intellectual decadence. We no longer have a grand strategy. We have a recycling bin of clichés.
So let France nurse its wounded pride. Let Britain polish its Commonwealth medals. Meanwhile, the Sahel will continue to burn and rebuild, indifferent to the hand-wringing of two former empires that cannot accept their own twilight. The lesson is old, but it bears repeating: no empire lasts forever. The only question is whether you go with dignity or delusion. For now, I see only the latter, on both sides of the Channel.
