Economic Community of West African States activates military forces for possible intervention in Niger

This commenter on r/geopolitics seems very knowledgeable - it's an in depth answer to the question "Is a large interstate conflict in Niger likely?"

No, most definitely not. The only one who has actually even threatened intervention in Niger is the West African regional group ECOWAS, which is mostly an economic union, but which has been known to send out occasional military interventions, although that usually just means Nigeria doing so, or Senegal threatening to one time when dealing with a very small nation entirely within its borders.

Within ECOWAS, considering most of the bloc is extraordinarily remote from Niger, a country very interior to Africa and within some of Africa's more difficult terrain (the Sahel), the only country that even theoretically could have the capability to make a conflict in Niger happen is Nigeria, as it neighbors Niger. But even aside what another poster here points out (Nigeria's current political situation isn't amenable to any sort of action against Niger), Nigeria's military has been struggling from years of action against Boko Haram and other, local conflicts within Nigeria, many of which it in fact still has to deal with, and is in practice not likely super capable of launching a full-scale invasion of Niger, at least without causing Nigeria fatal issues.

As for other countries... as previously mentioned, the rest of ECOWAS basically can't reach Niger. The US has almost entirely checked out of the Sahel, and isn't anywhere near militarily close enough with Nigeria to join them were they to somehow invade. France has LOTS of interests in Niger, but has just pulled out a bunch of roots in the Sahel due to the huge amounts of costs its Mali intervention was causing it, and probably isn't about to bust a second one which is an outright invasion. Russia has other things to deal with, to say the least.

Chad is right next door and would maybe want to get involved were this thing that won't happen to happen, as it does make a business of positioning itself as a military intervention partner in the Sahel. This would concern Algeria a lot, but they haven't yet actually intervened, and I doubt they would here if they haven't so far. Mali and Burkina Faso have said they would intervene if Niger were invaded.

In the very worst case, I think we would see something along the lines of Chad, Nigeria v. Niger and whatever of Mali and Burkina Faso could actually join, with various sponsors aligning either way but not getting directly involved. But we won't see that case, because Nigeria both cannot and will not actually invade. All of the talk of invading and threats of alliances, etc, is politics. It is all creating stakes, making threats to try to get the new regime to back down because of Niger's position, etc, but it's REALLY never going to happen.

Niger is one of Africa's poorest countries for the reason that it is almost entirely within the Sahara, and what isn't within the Sahara barely isn't within the Sahara, but is still barely-not-Sahara enough to have almost all of the population. This leads to a conflict of different peoples and lifestyles and, but this also applies to every country around it - Sahelan or Sahelan-adjacent African countries have huge trouble reaching the more arid, sparse parts of their own countries, let alone sending militaries across huge stretches of continent to have a massive war in a country that is just like the most remote parts of their countries but more. The money isn't there, the military isn't there, the will isn't there, the infrastructure isn't there, the local relationships aren't there.

Here's another article on the same story https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/10/ecowas-summit-begins-in-nigeria-as-niger-coup-leaders-remain-defiant