The military takeover in Guinea Bissau on 26 November 2025 marks more than another shift in power within a country long troubled by political instability. It signals an important turning point in West African geopolitics. The event highlights the failure of the liberal peace framework promoted by Western governments and exposes the growing attraction of alternative regional security models. This analysis explores how internal governance weaknesses, fragile regional institutions, and intensifying global competition have converged to produce the current crisis.
The coup reveals the limits of democracy driven mainly by elections while leaving deeper structural problems unresolved. These include the expansion of a narco economy that has penetrated political and security institutions and undermined state legitimacy. As Western influence declines, regional bodies struggle to maintain credibility and external actors pursue their own strategic agendas. Guinea Bissau has thus become a symbol of the wider realignment shaping West Africa’s security environment.
The patterns of instability
Understanding the significance of the 2025 coup requires placing Guinea Bissau within the broader patterns of political unrest that have marked post colonial West Africa. The country gained independence in 1974 after a long armed struggle against Portugal, a moment that raised hopes across Lusophone Africa. These hopes soon faded as political instability took hold. The 1980 coup set the tone for decades of repeated military involvement in politics. Weak state institutions and chronic economic difficulties created long term conditions for recurring crises.
The latest coup reflects trends seen elsewhere in the region, especially across the Sahel. In Mali, Colonel Assimi Goïta took power in 2021, repeatedly promised elections, but continued to delay them while retaining military dominance. In April 2025 political parties were effectively banned. Burkina Faso went through two coups in 2022, led by junior officers who blamed the government for failing to contain jihadist violence. These developments illustrate a wider regional problem in which elections have not delivered security or improved living conditions. Military leaders have used this failure to justify their interventions through appeals to public frustration.
Guinea Bissau’s particular vulnerability is linked to what analysts call the coup belt. Countries that have experienced successful coups are more likely to face repeated ones. The 2025 takeover is the fourth since independence, with several failed attempts in between. Each coup reinforces the idea that the military is a legitimate political actor, weakening civilian authority and reducing institutional limits on armed forces. This creates a cycle in which political instability becomes embedded in the state’s structure.
The regional architecture: Crisis of governance
Ecowas: Diminished leverage and credibility
Ecowas now faces a serious challenge to its relevance and authority in responding to the Guinea Bissau coup. Its traditional tools of action, which include diplomatic condemnation, selective sanctions, and warnings of possible military intervention, have become far less effective in the region’s changing strategic environment. The organisation’s earlier achievements in promoting democratic norms have been weakened by several recent developments.
Its deterrent capacity has been reduced since Ecowas failed to reverse the 2023 Niger coup despite strong initial rhetoric. Military led governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea have also formed a counter group that openly opposed any Ecowas intervention in Niger and declared that such action would be treated as a declaration of war. Internal democratic weaknesses in certain member states have further undermined the organisation’s moral basis for enforcing constitutional standards.
The response to the Guinea Bissau crisis reflects an Ecowas caught between its stated commitment to democratic order and the reality of declining regional influence. The organisation issued its expected condemnation, but its ability to secure a return to constitutional rule now appears seriously limited. The experience in Niger has created a precedent in which firm statements eventually gave way to a more pragmatic acceptance of military rule.
The African Union: Conceptual limitations
The African Union faces similar obstacles in addressing the Guinea Bissau takeover. Its existing framework for responding to unconstitutional changes of government lacks the nuance needed to understand the varied governance failures that create openings for military actors. Contemporary analysis points out that the AU’s current model treats all coups with the same standard response, even when the political and social contexts differ sharply and public perceptions of legitimacy vary.
A deeper problem lies in the shifting attitudes of African citizens toward democratic governance. Public opinion surveys used in regional security assessments indicate a clear decline in resistance to military involvement in politics. Only 43 percent of respondents believe that the army should never intervene in political affairs. This weakening of popular commitment to civilian supremacy creates space for military leaders, many of whom now expect at least limited public acceptance, and sometimes early support, when they move to seize power.
International Dimensions and Extra Regional Power Competition
The receding Western footprint
The coup in Guinea Bissau deepens the ongoing shift in West Africa away from its traditional links with Western partners. France’s forced withdrawals from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger in recent years show a sharply reduced ability to intervene directly. This retreat reflects practical security constraints and a rising wave of anti-colonial sentiment that has reshaped political life in these countries. As one analysis observes, recent coups have been directed at what are described as Western imperial powers, particularly French influence which is accused of taking resources and encouraging corrupt leadership.
The United States faces comparable limits after its security cooperation with Niger was suspended following the 2023 coup. A similar pattern is visible across the region, where partnerships with Western governments have become politically damaging for national leaders. These alliances often trigger domestic protest movements and expose vulnerabilities that military factions can exploit.
The wider trend signals a rejection of the liberal international order that shaped African security policy since the end of the Cold War, with Western governments now struggling to exert influence through either force or normative pressure.
Alternative alignments and security partnerships
With Western roles diminishing, new security arrangements have gained visibility and weight across West Africa. These partnerships give military leaders external options that reduce the impact of regional sanctions and limit their isolation. The main actors include Russia and China.
The Wagner Group from Russia in the Central African Republic shows its capacity to provide security services for ruling elites in return for access to natural resources. This approach offers military authorities a source of assistance that comes without political conditions and shifts the balance of bargaining power in the region.
China promotes its Global Security Initiative as a model that prioritises regime stability and economic development without requiring political liberalisation. Beijing has supplied military support to several African states and consistently endorses the principle of African solutions to African problems while avoiding demands for democratic reform.
For the junta in Guinea Bissau, these alternative partnerships provide potential options for easing international pressure. The central question is whether these external powers view the country as strategically important enough to offer support that could offset regional sanctions.
The NARCO state dimension: Structural corruption
The country has evolved into a NARCO state where drug trafficking has deeply compromised state institutions. Its location between cocaine producing regions in Latin America and consumer markets in Europe, combined with weak governance and a long, lightly monitored coastline, has turned it into a key transit point for international trafficking networks. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has recorded extensive infiltration of state structures by traffickers, with senior military figures frequently identified as beneficiaries and protectors of the trade.
The 2025 coup was accompanied by allegations that President Umaro Sissoco Embalo maintained ties with drug lords who sought to influence election outcomes. This highlights how narcotics networks have become intertwined with the formal arena of political competition.
The resulting system of criminalised governance produces several reinforcing dynamics. Political contenders rely on trafficking money to fund electoral campaigns. Military authorities, who command the security apparatus, hold privileged access to trafficking revenue. International counter narcotics operations can disrupt these arrangements and create incentives for political or military interventions.
The narco state reality sets Guinea Bissau apart from other regional crises. While Sahelian coups often claim justification through security failures against jihadist groups, instability in Guinea Bissau is fundamentally linked to struggles for control over illicit economic systems. This creates an unusual set of external alignments in which global drug enforcement bodies and financial intelligence organisations may become as relevant as traditional diplomatic or security actors.
Strategic implications and pathways
Scenario Analysis: Potential resolution frameworks
The crisis in Guinea Bissau opens several possible avenues for resolution, each carrying its own strategic implications. One potential outcome is a negotiated transition in which Ecowas brokers a power sharing formula that eventually leads to elections. This route preserves the outward appearance of democratic continuity, although in practice it often confirms the military’s continued influence over national politics. Another possibility is an authoritarian consolidation that resembles the trajectory seen in Mali, where military rulers gradually neutralise political opposition and secure their position through a blend of populist rhetoric and external security partnerships. A third scenario involves an Ecowas military intervention, but this option has become increasingly improbable due to the organisation’s diminished ability to enforce its decisions and the explicit warnings issued by military governed states against such action.
Given current dynamics, the most likely future is a hybrid arrangement. In such a formula, the military maintains decisive authority even as a civilian administration is reinstated to provide institutional cover. This would allow regional bodies to claim success in restoring constitutional rule, while accepting that effective power remains concentrated in military hands.
Broader implications for African Governance
The Guinea Bissau coup reinforces several deeper transitions underway across African political systems. The first concerns the growing crisis of election centred democratisation, where formal electoral exercises continue while state institutions themselves remain captured by entrenched interests. This produces a pattern of democratic facades that outwardly conform to constitutional norms but fail to embody genuine political accountability. Secondly, the crisis highlights the persistent challenges facing security sector reform. Efforts by international partners to establish firm civilian oversight over militaries prove ineffective in contexts where officers benefit from parallel economic structures, including illicit networks that provide independent sources of power.
A further development is the fragmentation of regional organisations. West Africa now contains increasingly distinct political blocs, one composed of democratic governments and the other of military dominated regimes. This division weakens collective security arrangements and makes coordinated action far more difficult. Perhaps the most important insight from the crisis is the recognition that anti Western rhetoric cannot serve as the basis for long term governance. While such rhetoric carries strong emotional resonance and mobilises nationalist sentiment, it does not offer a coherent institutional vision capable of addressing underlying governance failures or rebuilding public trust.
Beyond the coup cycle
The November 2025 coup in Guinea Bissau stands as both a national crisis and a clear expression of wider regional transformations. The combination of domestic governance failures, weakened regional institutions, and shifting global power dynamics has created an environment in which military takeovers increasingly appear to be the default method for political change.
A lasting solution requires moving beyond the competitive geopolitical frameworks that currently shape international engagement. Western democracy promotion has struggled to take root in environments where institutions lack legitimacy, while alternative development models that prioritise regime stability over accountability have not resolved the fundamental issues that erode public trust. Neither approach has succeeded in building institutions that can provide citizens with both security and dignity.
Real change will depend on regional organisations and international partners placing institution building at the centre of their approach rather than treating it as secondary to strategic rivalry. Without this shift, the cycle of coups will continue not only in Guinea Bissau but also across an expanding set of African states that face similar political and economic vulnerabilities.
The tragedy of Guinea Bissau does not rest in a single episode of military intervention but in the persistent failure of the international system to confront the structural conditions that make such interventions recurring features of political life. Until those foundations are transformed, careful geopolitical analysis will remain essential not only for understanding the present but also for anticipating the next rupture in a cycle that shows no sign of ending.
Beyond the coup cycle
The November 2025 coup in Guinea Bissau stands as both a national crisis and a clear expression of wider regional transformations. The combination of domestic governance failures, weakened regional institutions, and shifting global power dynamics has created an environment in which military takeovers increasingly appear to be the default method for political change.
A lasting solution requires moving beyond the competitive geopolitical frameworks that currently shape international engagement. Western democracy promotion has struggled to take root in environments where institutions lack legitimacy, while alternative development models that prioritise regime stability over accountability have not resolved the fundamental issues that erode public trust. Neither approach has succeeded in building institutions that can provide citizens with both security and dignity.
Real change will depend on regional organisations and international partners placing institution building at the centre of their approach rather than treating it as secondary to strategic rivalry. Without this shift, the cycle of coups will continue not only in Guinea Bissau but also across an expanding set of African states that face similar political and economic vulnerabilities.
The tragedy of Guinea Bissau does not rest in a single episode of military intervention but in the persistent failure of the international system to confront the structural conditions that make such interventions recurring features of political life. Until those foundations are transformed, careful geopolitical analysis will remain essential not only for understanding the present but also for anticipating the next rupture in a cycle that shows no sign of ending.
Geopolistics
