International Scientific Conference Squaring the Circle : the New Global Dynamics (2026) [pp. 135-137]
AUTHOR(S) / AUTOR(I): Danilo Babić 
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.46793/7067.3731.135B
ABSTRACT / SAŽETAK:
The goal of this article is to examine the ongoing “scramble” for the Sahel and to analyze how the region’s security and diplomatic order is being reconfigured through the simultaneous interaction of intra-African political agency and intensified external engagement. Moving beyond the G5 Sahel lens, the paper conceptualizes the Sahel as a wider geopolitical corridor –from Nouakchott to Port Sudan, in which state survival strategies, sovereignty narratives, and transnational threats (jihadi insurgencies, borderland governance gaps, etc.) interact with competing partnership offers from various actors. Rather than treating the Sahel as a “theatre” of counterterrorism, the corridor concept captures how pressures and opportunities diffuse across West Africa’s coastal interface, the Lake Chad Basin, and the Red Sea hinterland, and how political decisions in one node (coups, expulsions, sanctions, etc) cascade along the belt. The corridor lens also allows the paper to treat regional order as an evolving network of routes, bases, and political bargains, rather than a fixed set of institutions.