Applying Calculus in Intelligence Calculations
(The Question of a Coup)
Coups in Africa
Let's examine some well-documented coups in Africa where post-event investigations, memoirs, and expert analyses exactly show the slow-burn patterns of coups:
Elite whispers
Performative loyalty
Silence from insiders, and
Danger being misjudged rather than unseen.
Here are specific, widely studied cases, with the pattern made explicit:
AI-generated image. The image of the military officer is for illustrative purposes only and does not represent any real person or country.
Mali
The Aug 2020 coup, then May 2021 “coup within a coup”; Aug 2020 (removal of Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta)
Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, former president of Mali
Image credit: Office of the White House (Amanda Lucidon)
Key veto/force nodes:
The Kati Garrison/Bamako-area units (the coercive hinge for the capital)
Senior military leadership network that later coalesced as the junta
The mass-protest environment (a legitimacy accelerator, not the force node itself).
What President Keïta likely believed:
The military grievances were real but containable through reshuffles and political concessions
The state could ride out protests without the armed forces becoming a unified veto player.
What was actually happening:
Protest pressure + insecurity created a permissive environment; the real break came when Bamako-area soldiers acted as a coordinated force node, detaining top leadership and forcing resignation.
Post-2020 transition analysis describes how the military retained “absolute power” behind a civilian façade, which sets up the 2021 sequel.
May 2021 (the transition leaders detained; Assimi Goïta consolidates)
General Assimi Goïta, president of Mali
Image credit: Office of U.S. Ambassador to U.N.
Key veto/force nodes:
The same junta network (now embedded inside the “transition”)
The legal/constitutional institutions of the transition (courts/charter), which mattered mainly for post hoc legitimation.
What the civilian transition leaders believed:
That the charter and role assignments created real civilian control
That the military’s leadership would accept the transition bargain.
What was actually happening:
Reuters and other reporting show the transition’s top civilian leaders were simply detainable by the same officers who had orchestrated 2020—revealing where the real veto power still lived.
Analysts explicitly describe this as a façade transition: the coup leaders “ran the country despite the façade of a civilian transition.”
Continuity signal vs Nigeria: this is the “1983 problem” (warnings/structures exist) plus the “1975 problem” (the coercive core you rely on is the coalition removing you).
The 2012 Coup (The overthrow of Amadou Toumani Touré)
General Amadou Toumani Touré, former president of Mali
Before the coup:
Junior and mid-level officers openly complained about poor equipment and government indifference, but political elites dismissed this as routine grumbling.
Senior military figures publicly affirmed loyalty while quietly withdrawing active support.
Civilian advisers avoided confronting the president with the depth of military anger.
After the coup (as analysts noted):
The warning signs were visible but treated as noise, not signals.
The coup appeared sudden only because elite silence masked internal decay.
Common patterns in the coups
Across these cases, experts consistently identify the same sequence:
Elite discontent becomes private, not public
Rituals of loyalty continue, but substance disappears
Advisers hedge, delay, or fall silent
Leaders mistake formality for fidelity
The coup appears sudden—only in retrospect
One day an administration stands; the next, it is gone.
This is why many coup experts argue that coups are not shocks but revelations: the moment when invisible shifts finally become undeniable.
Other Countries
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About the tool book
This free introductory manual starts where conventional intelligence analysis grows uncomfortable—and grinds to a screeching halt—and that is, sophisticated mathematics. No one likes maths, but it's maths that saves the day, every day. This manual takes a turn most intelligence analysts never expect: Calculus. This is not just equations; it's not academic maths, but a discipline designed to reason under uncertainty, thresholds, and hidden coordination.
Yes, many intelligence failures are driven less by missing information and more by a false sense of certainty.
Calculus accounts for what you do not know! In this case, calculus may be the missing tool leaders never realized they needed.
What intelligence analysts will get from this manual:
A disciplined way to treat coup risk as a continuously evolving process rather than a binary outcome.
A method for preventing repeated signals from masquerading as independent confirmation
Practical tools for integrating noisy, incomplete, and deceptive intelligence without forcing premature conclusions.
A calculus-based framework for handling hidden coordination, thresholds, and nonlinear escalation.
Protection against false certainty created by consensus, narrative dominance, or analytic momentum.
Clear guidance on when confidence is warranted, conditional, or unjustified.
An approach that strengthens judgment without replacing experience or tradecraft.
Techniques for briefing senior leaders that explain not just what you assess, but why that level of confidence exists.
Earlier warning without alarmism, even when visible indicators remain weak.
A way to stay analytically ahead of surprise rather than explaining it afterward.
Explore our other recent projects:
The Question of a Coup: Applying Calculus in Intelligence Calculations: A practical intelligence manual showing how calculus-based reasoning can prevent false certainty, expose hidden coordination, and reduce strategic surprise in coup analysis.
National socio-digital early warning and strategic foresight architecture: a computational intelligence ecosystem to anticipate mass sentiment shifts before coordinated unrest and destabilization emerge.
Understanding the Lockwood Analytical Method for Prediction (LAMP): my firsthand experience applying one of the intelligence community’s most rigorous forecasting methodologies.
Self-disruption research: Applied Whitney Johnson's four principles of self-disruption in addressing unconscious bias among intelligence analysts.
Intelligence training manual: Self-disruption as analytic tradecraft
Self-disruption as analytic tradecraft: Classified-style analytic vignettes and tradecraft alignment
Not Intelligence-Related:
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Nwankama Nwankama
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nwankama@nwankama.com
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