Washington, DC — The following is the transcript of an address by Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Charles Snyder at the American Enterprise Institute. He spoke during lunch at the conference "Leave No Continent Behind: U.S. National Security Interests in Africa." The transcript was prepared by AEI.

I requested the luncheon slot so you'd all be docile, and I wouldn't have to take any hard questions because, believe me, the Sudan thing is driving me crazy and preoccupying me. It's actually refreshing to be able to come out and speak a bit about broader African issues and Africa in the long run because I am a career Africanist, and I've always thought Africa matters, and I'm glad to have this opportunity to put it in a bit of a strategic context.

I appreciate, in particular, AEI doing this for us. I think often there's just not enough focus on Africa in this town, especially the strategic level. It used to be kind of a cruel joke 20 years ago when some of us tried to pretend Africa might rise to the level of a strategic interest, but thanks to the oil deposits we're finding every day in and near Africa, I can say with a straight face 30 percent of our oil will come from there, and I promise you it is a strategic interest, but let me get back to the formal cleared remarks by the great master-- before I get in trouble again. This is not going to be UCLA, I promised the management, but you can get me to go there during the question and answer sessions.

When President Bush was elected in November 2000, some questioned whether a Republican administration would take an active interest in Africa. Many doubted the depth of our commitment to addressing the myriad challenges facing the African Continent. I believe we actually proved the skeptics wrong.

Our policy over the last 3 years has demonstrated that the Bush administration is committed to an engaged and an active African policy. From the highest levels of government, to President, to Secretary Powell, Africa remains an important priority, and we've demonstrated both with resources and diplomatic engagement.

Nearly every day the Secretary asks me about Africa. Now, 9 out of 10 times it's Sudan lately, but even before that he was asking me about Liberia. It is a subject of discussion around the Secretary's morning meeting on a regular basis and, frankly, if you've been a State Department bureaucrat for a long time, that really is the measure of whether or not it's getting attention. And I can assure you, on a personal basis, it is receiving more than adequate attention in this administration.

He and the President care about what happens in Africa and understand the continent's importance to long-range strategic U.S. interests. In partnership with this is the paid commercial announcement of, "What's Our Africa Policy." In partnership with the African government, we've made significant achievements in our four focus areas, which are encouraging trade and investment, promoting democracy and human rights, encouraging development, and protecting the environment.

But you can't do any of that, despite our passion, unless you address the crosscutting issues, the issues that you have to treat before you can get down to development of democracy. Those include fighting HIV/AIDS, countering terrorism and ending regional conflict. Obviously, the last two of those are more important to this conference than the preceding, but I think they all have to be confronted in the global war on terrorism.

As we confront these challenges, we're finding that the traditional ways of pursuing our African goals may not be the most effective in today's world. The challenges we faced in Africa, as in the rest of the world, are new, thorny, and constantly evolving. We must view these challenges with fresh eyes, and search for novel, creative approaches to solving them.

Today, I'll focus on security interests in Africa and share our thoughts on pursuing the strategic interests in ways that address that new environment. Before I get to the security interests, per se, let me say a word about what's changed in Africa post the Cold War.

One of the things that's happened is, absent the superpower competition, the ideological competition in Africa between us and world communism, the Africans are now struggling over African issues. Many of the wars and combats we're seeing are not being fought for external reasons any more. These are being fought for reasons that matter to the Africans. It's an evolution that needs to change the way we approach them.

They do look to us as the major superpower, the principal military power on the face of the earth, and therefore an example of what they might be interested in ultimately in security, but they are now engaged in combat over resources, land management and other things that matter to them.

What was called the first World War in Africa in the Congo was fought over African interests. It was a conflict for who would rule and who would dominate the great prize of Zaire--now, the Congo once again. It was fought over by several African armies coming in, one after the other, on one side or another because of their national interests, not because some superpower was pushing them into it.

The Angolans, the Namibians, and the Zimbabweans came in on the side of the Congolese Government of Kabila because they were not about to see external regional actors, and that's how they viewed some of the Great Lake States dominating what was the Northern edge of the Southern zone of interest to them. They weren't about to see Rwanda and Uganda decide who ruled in Kinshasa. That is a very African concern. It's the kind of thing we didn't see during the Cold War days or we saw only in a distorted fashion.

And so we need to approach African strategic interests with African eyes for the first time. We need to say why we care, and I'll say that shortly, but we need to remember that the Africans are now reacting for African reasons. The Ethiopian-Eritrean War, bloody and pointless though it was, was about African issues. It was about old rivalries that go back a long way. It was about friendships that changed, partnerships that changed, but it was about African issues. It was not about what the West thought.

We didn't intervene to try and end it, as we do elsewhere, but the underlying causes are very African, and we need to address those causes. It's no longer a case where we can step into these situations and merely throw money and manpower at it. We need to be more sensitive to what's driving these issues in the longer run, especially in the context of the global war on terrorism.

Back to the paid text.

U.S. national security interests. As a number of speakers at this conference have made clear, the United States has real interests in Africa. We ignore the continent at our peril. Africa will provide up to 30 percent of U.S. oil in the next 10 years. The petroleum is coming from traditional suppliers like Nigeria, Gabon and Angola, but from emerging producers such as Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Sao Tome and Principe, and still more I think that are only beginning to come on-line.

More and more businesses are paying attention to Africa. During President Bush's trip to Africa, he referred to Africa as the last great emerging market of the world. It is. And my predecessor, Walter Kansteiner, is back in that business, and Walter is many things, but he's a shrewd businessman, and he's making his living in Africa. There really is a large emerging market there, a serious one, maybe the last one that's open for grabs in any real sense that doesn't have preexisting patterns that can't be broken at this point.

Infectious disease knows no borders. Public health officials warn of the possibilities of emerging infectious diseases that could spread to the U.S. and Europe, the comeback of TB in many places. The failure of the global eradication program against polio goes to the difficulties we've had getting to the last couple of pools of polio, one of which was in Sudan.

And one of the things we've gotten out of the peace talks, thanks to the quietude we brought into the South, is a chance for WHO to get in there and do that. But now we're faced with new outbreaks in Nigeria, where the global war on terrorism may have bled back a bit. One of the myths that's being spread is that somehow this polio vaccination that's being given is some kind of Western plot to harm the population which is largely Islamic up in the North of Nigeria.

This insidious lie is causing us real problems. The outbreak has now spread into Burkina Faso and other places in the immediate area near Nigeria. Kofi Annan and the Secretary have talked about this constantly. This is one of the pernicious side effects of this global war on terrorism, that someone would believe this kind of myth. It's in our interests to stamp out these diseases, and it's in our interests globally.

The African get it, the Nigerians are doing what they can, but this risk of infectious disease coming back is very real. It's not an idle comment. It's not a way to try and build a case for strategic interests in Africa. It's very real. If we can't eradicate it there, it's going to come back, whether it's polio, whether it's tuberculosis, whether it's river blindness. It is a strategic interest when you can get on a plane in Capetown and get off that plane in Atlanta. It's just a simple fact of global life the way it is today, and it is a strategic interest.

Finally, of course, terrorists and extremist groups find sanctuaries in Africa and have conducted attacks against U.S. and allied interests there. The continent's crises and conflict, as well as the brutal HIV/AIDS pandemic breed instability which opens new safe harbors for our enemies.

In short, for these reasons and others, what happens in Africa impacts the United States, and our policy needs to reflect this reality.

Let me talk a bit about what we're doing on the global war on terrorism, why Africa matters in that context.

Following 9/11, and the subsequent military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, many asked whether Africa was the next front line on the war on terrorism. While the scale of threat from Africa is not clear, we know that terrorists who mean harm operate in Africa. Indeed, al Qaeda and allied terrorists have attacked U.S. interests there long before 9/11, with the August 1998 bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

To address these challenges, President Bush announced the East-African Counterterrorism Initiative, a $100-million effort to enhance our foreign partners' capabilities to fight terrorism. We're working to help equip and train countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti, and others to improve their border security capacities, enhance law enforcement skills and reach out to marginalized communities to improve perceptions and awareness of the U.S. and its policies.

Other areas of Africa, such as the Sahel in Northern Nigeria, are also of concern. Both areas are home to disadvantaged Muslim populations, where some may be sympathetic to fundamentalist organizations. Parts of their regions also have loose ties, at best, to the central government and could be safe havens in which terrorists can operate and transit.

The Pan Sahel Initiative is also an effort to engage governments in this region and build their capacity to effectively monitor their borders. Improving African capacities to monitor their coastlines is also a critical part of our strategy. We need to revive, and we will revive the old African Coastal Security Program, which helps African security forces to protect their shores, as well as their marine resources. And as I pointed out earlier, a lot of this new oil is actually off-shore. There is no one to protect it, unless we build up African coastal fleets, et cetera.

Just like the old African Coastal Security Program had a twist, one of the things it was meant to do was jack up the price, frankly, of protein to the Soviet Union, one of the principal overfishers. One of the side benefits of this African Coastal Security Program when we revive it is there will be some kind of competent Navy, some kind of competent Coast Guard to answer the mail in the events of threats to off-shore drilling rigs and other kinds of operations.

Right now, the only one that can answer the mail, other than occasionally French ships passing that way, are our own. There are really no African coastal Navies, in the sense of having large capacities. This, again, is an American strategic interest. It's a small program, but it can make a big difference, and we do mean to revive it and push it quite heavily in the next year.

While the East-African and Pan Sahel Initiatives and Coastal Security Programs are critical elements of our counterterrorism strategy, they address short-term challenges. The foundation of an effective, long-term strategy is not security assistance by itself, but rather programs that promote justice and the rule of law, encourage agricultural production and force their lasting economic development. These programs, when they're effective, create strong stable states that are much more effective in dealing with counterterrorism issues and in denying havens for terrorist organizations.

With that in mind, the Millennium Challenge Account, which the President announced 2 years ago, represents creative new approach to foreign assistance that will form a critical part of our long-range counterterrorism strategy. The truth of the matter is we have to answer the mail in terms of the threat that faces us now, and that's what the East-African Counterterrorism Program is about, that's what the Pan Sahelean Initiative is about, that's what that new capacity, in the form of the CGA TFO is about.

But in the longer run we have to drain the swamp, and draining the swamp in this war on terrorism needs the things that the Africa policy has been about, the foundation of the African Bureau, which is development, democracy and institution building. We have to take away the reasons that people are susceptible to the approach by the fundamentalist hard-liners. We've examined this problem, and the fertile ground for this kind of recruitment follows where failed government or where government doesn't reach out.

What these people provide, in many cases, is some system of justice where there is none. It might be in the form of an Islamic court, but when there is no justice, that sometimes is an attractive thing. They provide basic medical assistance in places where the governments don't get as a recruitment device. They provide food, in some occasions, where agricultural programs have failed.

So, if we don't drain the swamp, this will begin endless war. That's why the Millennium Challenge Account is, in fact, part of the global war on terrorism. It's going to change behavior if we succeed in this program, and it's large enough to make a difference.

The MCA provides development assistance to those countries that rule justly, invest in their people and encourage economic freedom. Congress has provided $1 billion in initial funding for FY '04, and President Bush has pledged to increase the funding for MCA to $5 billion a year, starting in '06, roughly a 50-percent increase over current U.S. core development assistance.

We've held the basic program harmless. The traditional aid program has been held harmless. This is additional money, and this is meant to reward good behavior, not because we can save one country at a time, but because we need to prove, once and for all, that big bucks will make a difference, that development may be because the West has not done enough, but it's a combination of not doing enough and having the fertile ground to plant the seed money in.

And if we can get some of these states to stand up and begin a pattern of the dominoes going in the right direction in terms of development, we can make a difference. And that's got to underpin this war on terrorism in Africa. That's not a universal solution. This war is going to take different forms in different places. But, in Africa, this is one of the critical concerns that we have to follow up on.

I mentioned one of our crosscutting problems was preventing and ending conflict. A common theme in our approach the Africa understands that Africans must take the initiative, no less so in the security arena as in others. As partners, we can support them, but change must begin on the continent.

We have worked with the Africans to increase their capacity to respond to internal problems. Modest investments in these areas provide improved U.S. access, increased U.S. leverage to press the parties to fulfill commitments, open the way for American participation in international coalitions, and more importantly make it more likely that capable African forces will respond regionally, reducing a potential need to deploy U.S. troops.

The United States is pursuing a multifaceted assistance program to promote African security and stability. The African Contingency Operation's Training and Assistance, a ACOTA program, trains and equips African units so that African militaries are better able to deploy and operate in peace support operations and other complex humanitarian situations.

ACOTA also assists partner militaries in building a trainer cadre from women in their own ranks. This provides training sustainment and continuity. Our ACOTA partner contingents are currently serving in U.N. peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the African Union's mission in Burundi and with ECOWAS' mission in Cote d'Ivoire.

An effective program has to include counterinsurgency training to confront the new realities in Africa. Africa has many weak states where defense and security institutions can be vital instruments for protecting and improving the performance of legitimately elected governments. Training and counterinsurgency tasks, including improving human rights, winning hearts and minds, and other things that help with that kind of performance, will help the Africans build societies that can weather the storms of economic and political development.

We've also learned that providing new, expensive and hard-to-maintain equipment is not the solution to the African security challenge. The Achilles Heel in Africa is logistics. Providing high-tech toys that African infrastructure can't maintain and that already overindulgent African defense budgets can't afford is a prescription for technological disarmament, not national empowerment, but a sharing of information and other low-tech kind of force multipliers are the real answers.

We are working closely with our colleagues in DOD on developing our security policy towards Africa. Hence, I'm reading a clear text.

I, for one, believe that the U.S. military, not just contractors, should play a role in these programs. We multiply the effectiveness of our training programs when we use military trainer to work with the Africans. While we have excellent contractors, the Africans feel short- shrifted when they see military trainers in other places in the world. They respect U.S. military personnel greatly, and placing military trainers in key programs has an exponential impact on our training efforts.

I've long believed that Africans for the African Union and subregional organizations need to develop and implement a common security policy. Such a policy could set out African priorities for the regulations of arms flows. Much like the Africans are playing a key role in the African Nuclear Free Zone, an African-initiated policy on arms flows would be much more effective than any international proposal.

One of the real problems we have day-to-day, and one of the things we have to constantly fight, is that somehow we're spending huge amounts of time and money on military assistance, military equipment to Africa. The truth is the Africans are buying a lot of equipment that they don't need and a lot of corrupt deals, in many cases, but one of the reasons is there is no global standard in Africa. There is no OECD equivalent that could rationalize African procurement.

One of the problems we face on a day-to-day basis is someone will come to us and say, "The neighborhood has just got a whole shipment of brand-new MiG-29s in the Ukraine. Can't you do something about it?"

We'll go to complain to someone, and we'll discover they have an export license that was granted by another African country. Until Africa steps up, and I can say that you have to have an African Union license, and then I can go to the government of Ukraine or I can go to the government of another European power and say, We have all got to enforce this African standard. I don't care that you have a license from Togo. The African Union didn't put its stamp on this, and therefore this is an inappropriate and potentially dangerous exploitation of African military needs and maybe an escalation of defense needs beyond what's necessary.

But we need the Africans to step up, and one of the things we intend to take the lead with the AU on is helping them be sure that they don't become the OAU, ineffective in the military area. We need to do more to work with this committee. It's very ambitious. It's proposing an African army, very hard to do, but they've got the right idea, and I'd rather have them aim high and fail than not aim high at all and give us no chance to push them to where they need to go.

So you're going to see us come back and ask for assistance on other things for the African Union, despite our lack of success with the OAU, because, for one thing, they seem to be wanting to step up to the plate, and we have to be there with them on that. There has to be an African standard. We can help them enforce it, but they have to set the standard.

Regional organizations are a key part of this strategy. Organizations, such as the Economic Community of West African States to oversee and support regional peace, to respond to requirements and to encourage African solutions for African problems on a regional basis are the key. ECOWAS has been a key player in Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, and elsewhere in West Africa to help maintain post-war peace.

The AU, under its current leadership of Mozambique President Chissano, is active in responding to potential and actual crises. For example, Chissano has strongly called for restraint and avoidance of violence in the crises in Sao Tome and in Equatorial Guinea. His voice has been invaluable in resolving these tensions before they escalated to regional conflict. We are working constructively with the European Union and its member states in Africa.

In cooperation with the U.N., the U.K. is playing a lead role in Sierra Leone, France and Cote d'Ivoire, and we've taken on that role in Liberia ourselves. The EU is also establishing a 250-million euro peace facility designed to support African training of African peacekeepers and African participation in peacekeeping and other crisis activities. The U.S. will coordinate closely with the EU to ensure this synergy.

Our objectives of democratic governance, robust market economies, competent health systems, environmental awareness cannot be achieved when conflict and instability affects African states. The U.S. must work long and hard to ensure that our African policies work towards the long-term security. We cannot constantly be putting Band-Aids on a crisis. We don't have the money, and the Africans don't have the bodies and the capacity to suffer in the 21st century at the level that that kind of approach would demand.

Africa's importance in the world and to the United States will only increase in coming years not only as a source of growing natural resource, but as a source of allies and friends willing to help us fight on the front lines on the war on terrorism. Their security and stability affect ours. Through attention to security assistance, promoting economic development, democratization, good governance, we must do what we can to make sure our African friends have the resources and the will to be effective partners in the global community, and we must find them new partners.

I've often thought one of the failings we've had over time is not to encourage more synergy between countries like Brazil and some of the other Latin American states that are at a stage in their development, both military and otherwise, in which some of the lessons they've learned are much more applicable in time and space to Africa than some of the European and American examples. This needs to be a case where maybe we introduce them to new friends. The Indians may have an important role to play in this. Again, the stage of their economic development matches more closely where Africa is and yet their military development is quite promising. They stood up as a world power. They may have lessons to learn. Simply because it's a place we haven't looked for lessons to use in Africa doesn't mean we shouldn't, and I think we're going to take a hard look at moving out beyond those traditional parameters.

Now, you have heard the paid advertisement and a few excursions. I'd like to save the rest of the time for questions.

The full transcript and additional information about the "Leave No Continent Behind" event is available on the American Enterprise Institute site: AEI Events.