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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***On July 26, 2023, a faction within Niger’s military overthrew the country’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, establishing a military junta under the leadership of General Abdourahmane “Omar” Tchiani. Tchiani and his supporters said that their military intervention was spurred by Niger’s “deteriorating security situation.” Countries around the world, including the United States, which relies on Niger for security cooperation, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), have condemned the coup, and the latter group threatened military intervention if Bazoum was not restored to power this week. That deadline has now passed with the junta still in charge. We asked four experts to tell us more about what happened in Niger and what the repercussions of this military coup could be.Read more below.Ebenezer Obadare Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies, Council on Foreign RelationsThe apparent success of the military takeover in Niger bodes ill for the Sahel and the rest of the African continent. Apart from putting democracy in abeyance, it more or less guarantees that the uranium-rich country will be added to the expanding sphere of the Kremlin-backed Wagner mercenary group. Western governments, especially France and the United States, are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they cannot afford to be seen to be giving financial and material backing to a military junta. At the same time, it will be difficult to walk away from longstanding investments in resistance to Islamist insurgency in the region.Brian Petit U.S. Army Colonel (Ret.) Former Commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces in NigerThe military-led