Challenge: Upper Volta with missiles

Helmut Schmidt once described the Soviet Union as Upper Volta with missiles. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make the Upper Volta/Burkina Faso either a nuclear power or part of a nuclear power by the present day with a POD after its independence.
 
Well, if we go for a post-1900 although pre-independence POD, if French West Africa ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_West_Africa ) was governed in a more centralized fashion and local "evolvees" were sent to other parts of the state or accumulated in the capital to create a more homogenous elite, it might have emerged from the colonial period as a unified state: it'd be no more ridiculous, really, a conglomerate than Nigeria or Zaire.

With over 100 million inhabitants OTL, and given that some of its components (Senegal, Ivory Coast) actually have a higher GNP/Capita than Pakistan, I don't think we need a leadership of absurdly high competence (by African standards) to get a nation with the human and material resources to build a bomb (especially if the Pakistanis/and/or N. Koreans are a buyers market for nuclear info): they have the uranium in OTL Niger, after all.

Tricker is motivation: national prestige, sure, but it's pricey for third-world regimes - no Latin American state ever built one. Perhaps a fierce African leadership contest vs. the Nigerians? (Into which we can add an AngloSphere vs Francophonie contest :D ). Perhaps a longer-lasting Apartheid regime which develops its own bomb, thereby providing incentive for the "African bomb?"

Now, POST-independence, its rather harder: no African unions or federations have lasted OTL. (BTW, have you ever read Mack Reynold's 'Black Man's Burden' series?)

Bruce
 
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Well, if we posit that French West Africa ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_West_Africa ) was governed in a more centralized fashion and local "evolvees" were sent to other parts of the state or accumulated in the capital to create a more homogenous elite, it might have emerged from the colonial period as a unified state: it'd be no more ridiculous, really, a conglomerate than Nigeria or Zaire.

The POD has to be after independence, and thus after the dissolution of the AOF. You could have the country join some African union post-1960.

Perhaps a longer-lasting Apartheid regime which develops its own bomb, thereby providing incentive for the "African bomb?"

The apartheid regime did have nuclear weapons, actually.
 
The POD has to be after independence, and thus after the dissolution of the AOF. You could have the country join some African union post-1960.

As I said, that makes it a lot harder, given the failure of any such efforts OTL, and it would have to be a pretty big one to have the necessary resources. As for military expansion, again not an OTL feature, and would in any case be opposed by both the US&co and the USSR during the cold war, depending on which side the "black Napoleon" was seen as favoring.

Hmm. WWIII, and the dictator of Upper Volta gets some nukes from US or Soviet pilots fleeing the wreckage of their countries? Or do they have to be indigenously developed?


The apartheid regime did have nuclear weapons, actually.

I meant _openly_. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Pre-Mandela, IIRC, it was kept fairly quiet.

Bruce
 
We could have the French grant their colonies independance on the condition that they join a more tightly controlled British Commonwealth-type arrangement- they have to have a unified foreign policy with France, they all use the franc/euro (later), there is a large degree of economic cooperation, but they have complete independance otherwise. Assuming this arrangement becomes stable, then we could say that Burkina Faso is part of nuclear power (France) because they have all of these things. Maybe the French President could be the formal head of state of all of these countries like the British Queen.
 

Thande

Donor
Burkina Faso is broadly in the right area for uranium. Say the French draw the borders differently and Upper Volta includes the bit of Niger with the uranium deposits as well. (EDIT: saw OP restrictions - OK it merges with Niger in a federation post-independence) Then during the Cold War, Gaddafi or a similar figure (if such a thing is possible ;) ) arranges uranium imports from Burkina to fuel his nuclear programme. Libya gets invaded by the US, or perhaps just bombed and then UN inspectors are sent in. Gaddafi hides the programme by sending his warheads and missiles into Burkina (which would share a border with Libya in this scenario). Then there's a typical African coup and Gaddafi finds that the new Burkinan regime doesn't want to give them back again...
 
I don't know anything about Upper Volta, and don't want to learn in case the knew knowledge pushes out something important, but what about some strange little Cuban Missile Crisis analogue? The Soviets were happy to interfere in Africa, what if this included a couple of FROGs with nukes and maybe a gravity bomb or two?
 
I don't know anything about Upper Volta, and don't want to learn in case the knew knowledge pushes out something important, but what about some strange little Cuban Missile Crisis analogue? The Soviets were happy to interfere in Africa, what if this included a couple of FROGs with nukes and maybe a gravity bomb or two?
The Soviets always kept a pretty tight hold over the nukes they deployed to foreign countries. IIRC, they didn't even let the Cubans near the missiles in 1962. And the Cuban deployment had a sound strategic goal in mind: rapid-strike capability to match the US missiles in Turkey. What would they have to gain by putting missiles in Africa?
 
Buggered if I know, and as I said I will not be finding out for fear of displacing something important with a piece of Burkino Faso trivia.

However, when the Soviet Union broke up there were huge piles of nukes left in component republics that were handed to Russia in exchange for political advantages. Perhaps our BF arsenal is left there when the Su breaks up.
 
Buggered if I know, and as I said I will not be finding out for fear of displacing something important with a piece of Burkino Faso trivia.

However, when the Soviet Union broke up there were huge piles of nukes left in component republics that were handed to Russia in exchange for political advantages. Perhaps our BF arsenal is left there when the Su breaks up.
Right, but that was all in the former territory of the USSR itself, or perhaps WarPac nations, who could at least nominally be trusted, under threat of the Red Army being 'asked' to intervene. Any country in Africa would be far, far less trustworthy from a Soviet viewpoint, and, if they did put nukes there, I don't think they'd leave them lying around Africa. Or, if they did, perhaps the US would be proactive and sweep them up.
 
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