Daniel Volman and William Minter
23 April 2009
analysis
Media CenterIn the first of a two-part article exploring the implications of the US AFRICOM (the United States Africa Command) programme, Daniel Volman and William Minter discuss the growing strategic importance of the African continent to US interests.
Arguing that shaping a new US security policy will require more than a mere move towards more active diplomacy, Volman and Minter underline the importance for the US of striving for an inclusive approach encompassing joint action. With AFRICOM having been subject to no official consultation with either the United Nations or the African Union prior to its announcement in 2006, the Pentagon now possesses six geographically oriented commands around the world. While the threats cited by the US military are hardly fictitious, the authors acknowledge, there is little to suggest that they can be tackled through simply emphasising US military engagement.
At the end of President Barack Obama's inauguration ceremony, civil rights leader Reverend Joseph Lowery invoked the hope of a day 'when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors'. No one expects such a utopian vision to materialise any time soon. But both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have spoken eloquently of the need to emphasise diplomacy over a narrow military agenda. In her confirmation hearing, Clinton stressed the need for 'smart power', perhaps inadvertently echoing Obama's opposition to the invasion of Iraq as a 'dumb war'. Even top US military officials, such as chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, have warned against overly militarising US foreign policy.
In practice, such a shift in emphasis is certain to be inconsistent. At a global level, the most immediate challenge to the credibility of change in foreign policy is Afghanistan, where promised troop increases are given little chance of bringing stability and the country risks becoming Obama's 'Vietnam'. Africa policy is for the most part under the radar of public debate. But it also poses a clear choice for the new administration. Will de facto US security policy toward the continent focus on anti-terrorism and access to natural resources and prioritise bilateral military relations with African countries? Or will the United States give priority to enhancing multilateral capacity to respond to Africa's own urgent security needs?
If the first option is taken, it will undermine rather than advance both US and African security. Taking the second option won't be easy. There are no quick fixes. But US security in fact requires that policymakers take a broader view of Africa's security needs and a multilateral approach to addressing them.
The need for immediate action to promote peace in Africa is clear. While much of the continent is at peace, there are large areas of great violence and insecurity, most prominently centred on Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Somalia. These crises require not only a continuing emphasis on diplomacy but also resources for peacemaking and peacekeeping. And yet the Bush administration has bequeathed the new president a new military command for Africa (the United States Africa Command, known as AFRICOM). Meanwhile, Washington has starved the United Nations and other multilateral institutions of resources, even while entrusting them with enormous peacekeeping responsibilities.
The government has presented AFRICOM as a cost-effective institutional restructuring and a benign programme for supporting African governments in humanitarian as well as necessary security operations. In fact, it represents the institutionalisation and increased funding for a model of bilateral military ties - a replay of the mistakes of the Cold War. This risks drawing the United States more deeply into conflicts, reinforcing links with repressive regimes, excusing human rights abuses, and frustrating rather than fostering sustainable multilateral peacemaking and peacekeeping. It will divert scarce budget resources, build resentment, and undercut the long-term interests of the United States.
Shaping a new US security policy toward Africa requires more than just a modest tilt toward more active diplomacy. It also requires questioning this inherited security framework, and shaping an alternative framework that aligns US and African security interests within a broader perspective of inclusive human security. In particular, it requires that the United States shift from a primarily bilateral and increasingly military approach to one that prioritises joint action with both African and global partners.
AFRICOM IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Judging by their frequent press releases, AFRICOM and related programmes such as the navy's Africa Partnership Station are primarily focused on a constant round of community relations and capacity building projects, such as rescue and firefighting training for African sailors, the construction of clinics and schools, and similar endeavours. 'AFRICOM is about helping Africans build greater capacity to assure their own security', asserted Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Theresa Whelan in a typical official statement. AFRICOM defenders further cite the importance of integrating development and humanitarian programmes into the programme's operations.
Pentagon spokespeople describe AFRICOM as a logical bureaucratic restructuring that will ensure that Africa gets the attention it deserves. They insist AFRICOM won't set the priorities for US policy toward Africa or increase Pentagon influence at the expense of civilian agencies. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in August 2007, Whelan denied that AFRICOM was being established 'solely to fight terrorism, or to secure oil resources, or to discourage China,' countering with '[t]his is not true.'
But other statements by Whelan herself, by General William 'Kip' Ward, the four-star African-American general who commands AFRICOM, and Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, his military deputy, lay out AFRICOM's priorities in more conventional terms. In a briefing for European Command officers in March 2004, Whelan said that the Pentagon's priorities in Africa were to 'prevent establishment of/disrupt/destroy terrorist groups; stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction; perform evacuations of US citizens in danger; assure access to strategic resources, lines of communication, and refueling/forward sites' in Africa. On 19 February 2008, Moeller told an AFRICOM conference that protecting 'the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market' was one of AFRICOM's 'guiding principles', citing 'oil disruption', 'terrorism', and the 'growing influence' of China as major 'challenges' to US interests in Africa. Appearing before the House Armed Services Committee on 13 March 2008, General Ward echoed the same views and identified combating terrorism as 'AFRICOM's number one theater-wide goal.' Ward barely mentioned development, humanitarian aid, or conflict resolution. US official discourse on AFRICOM doesn't engage with parallel discussions in the United Nations and the African Union about building multilateral peacekeeping capacity. Strikingly, there was no official consultation about the new command with either the United Nations or the African Union before it was first announced in 2006.
In practice, AFRICOM, which became a fully independent combatant command on 1 October 2008 with its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, is built on the paradigm of US military commands which span the globe. Although AFRICOM features less 'kinetic' (combat) operations than the active wars falling under CENTCOM in Iraq and Afghanistan, its goals and programs are more conventional than the public relations image would imply. The Pentagon now has six geographically focused commands - each headed by either a four-star general or admiral - Africa (AFRICOM); the Middle East and Central Asia (Central Command or CENTCOM); Europe and most of the former Soviet Union (European Command or EUCOM); the Pacific Ocean, East and South Asia (Pacific Command or PACOM); Mexico, Canada, and the United States (Northern Command or NORTHCOM); and Central and South America (Southern Command or SOUTHCOM), as well as others with functional responsibilities, such as for special forces and nuclear weapons.
Before AFRICOM was established, US military operations in Africa fell under three different commands. EUCOM handled most of Africa, but Egypt and the Horn of Africa fell under the authority of CENTCOM (Egypt remains under CENTCOM rather than AFRICOM), while Madagascar and the island states of the Indian Ocean were the responsibility of PACOM. All three were primarily concerned with other regions of the world that took priority over Africa, and had only a few middle-rank staff members dedicated to Africa. This reflected the fact that Africa was chiefly viewed as a regional theatre in the global Cold War, as an adjunct to US-European relations, or - in the immediate post-Cold War period - as a region of little concern to the United States. But Africa's status in US national security policy and military affairs rose dramatically during the Bush administration, in response both to global terrorism and the growing significance of African oil resources.
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With due respect to the good Americans and their new reasonable leaders, I hope some ignorant leaders will understand from this article that these blood tasty US militaries and their obnoxious US AFRICOM (created by their former dictators) are here for their interest. Despite the objections by our reasonable leaders to their devilish and egocentric US AFRICOM, they went ahead to create it, putting headquarter in Germany –showing the objections by Africans - except people with parochial thinking. It is clear that it was created due to their failure in the Middle East; creating it as platform for stealing Africa's… [Read Full Text]
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Ask the people in Rwanda (who survived that Peace-keeping) about the UN PEACEKEEPERS .
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(Here’s a Search Link To Many Witnesses To THE NEW U.N. RICE MONSTER)
[http://ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl?query=Susan+Rice+Rwanda&cat=web&pl=ff& language=english]
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Our Deepest Fear Is Not That We Are Inadequate,
Our Deepest Fear Is That We Are Powerful Beyond Measure.
It Is Our Light , Not Our… [Read Full Text]