Should the U.S. Be Expanding Its Forces into Africa?
March 20, 2017
Obama posted U.S. Special Forces in various African countries to work with and train their military forces. Trump is now continuing and expanding Obama’s policy. Trump has relaxed constraints that Obama installed to prevent civilian deaths.
The U.S. forces are in Djibouti (4,000), Niger (400), Cameroon (300), Somalia (200-300), Kenya (50), Chad (40), and Morocco (20). “The United States is building a $50 million drone base in Agadez, Niger, that is likely to open sometime next year to monitor Islamic State insurgents in a vast area on the southern flank of the Sahara that stretches from Senegal to Chad.” “The Pentagon has allocated about $250 million over two years to help train the armies and security forces of North, Central and West African countries.”
How vast is the area of U.S. attention? Roughly 7x the size of Texas. Roughly one-half the size of the United States, including Alaska. Texas is 269,000 square miles. Compare this to Niger (489,000), Chad (496,000), Somalia (246,000), Cameroon (184,000), Kenya (224,000), Morocco (172,000) and Djibouti (9,000). Djibouti is almost the size of Massachusetts. The Pentagon stores equipment in several other African countries, like Botswana, Uganda, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Gabon.
Crimea joined Russia by a referendum and it had a long association with Russia historically, strategically and ethnically. Crimea’s area is the size of Massachusetts. When the Soviet Union broke up, really huge lands and countries separated from the current Russian Federation. The U.S. has not only been cementing its ties to some of those countries surrounding Russia, but has now entered into footholds within this huge region of Africa.
Should the U.S. government be expanding its forces into Africa? These commitments can only grow as the years pass. The U.S. can only commit more money, more equipment, more arms and more manpower as time passes. This is because the area is vast. It’s because the Africans will lobby for more. The article states
“Many African soldiers and security forces said they would welcome an even larger United States military presence to help combat myriad extremist threats. ‘Of course we’d like more,’ said Hassan Zakari Mahamadou, a police commissioner from Niger. ‘U.S. forces enhance us.'”
It is because the Pentagon will lobby for more to accomplish the goal of creating stable African states with domestic armed forces that keep the peace. The U.S. has not been able to accomplish this goal in Iraq and Afghanistan with much larger commitments of treasure and blood.
It is because the operations are fighting rebels and terrorists who replenish their ranks. The article states
“‘We could knock off all the ISIL and Boko Haram this afternoon,’ Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, the leader of the military’s Africa Command, told the Senate this month, using an acronym for the Islamic State. ‘But by the end week, so to speak, those ranks would be filled.'”
The very presence of U.S. forces and their attacks, with civilian casualties, is a rebel recruiting tool. The very links of U.S. forces to existing political factions and governments, who are typically corrupt and inefficient, help swell the ranks of rebels who view the U.S. forces as invaders.
Who really believes that the U.S. is active purely out of the goodness of its heart or out of a noble purpose to cleanse the earth of bad guys? Who really believes that the U.S. does not want to link up to governments and political figures that it finds compatible and who suit its purposes?
U.S. personnel attempt to distinguish an African war from a U.S. war:
“‘Africans are at war; we’re not,’ said Col. Kelly Smith, 47, a Green Beret commander who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and was a director of a counterterrorism exercise in Chad this month involving about 2,000 African and Western troops and trainers. ‘But we have a strategic interest in the success of partners.'”
But does that distinction hold up? And won’t it be shot full of holes as the U.S. ratchets up its forces, raids and drone bombings? The U.S. may make this distinction, but rebels and terrorists do not have to make it.
Does the U.S. really have a “strategic” interest in the fate of these countries? That’s the critical question. One case for that laid out for Congress is here.
That U.S. report said
“In recent years, analysts and U.S. policymakers have noted Africa’s growing strategic importance to U.S. interests. Among those interests are the increasing importance of Africa’s natural resources, particularly energy resources, and mounting concern over violent extremist activities and other potential threats posed by under-governed spaces, such as maritime piracy and illicit trafficking. In addition, there is ongoing concern for Africa’s many humanitarian crises, armed conflicts, and more general challenges, such as the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS.”
The suggested strategic interests are nothing of the sort in a military sense: not energy, not weak states and not humanitarian concerns. None of these impact in any serious or tangible way on America in such a way as to justify military involvement of the kind that Obama put into place and that Trump is continuing and expanding.
Africa’s natural resources are listed first and energy is singled out. The U.S. intends to repeat in Africa its enormously wasteful policy of “protecting” energy supplies as it has done with Saudi Arabia. There is no need to do this. There is no need to subsidize political cliques within these countries and oil companies by sending forces paid for by American taxpayers to protect their investments and division of the returns. We get nothing from this exercise in return for the wealth we expend. These resources are not ours. Africa is for the Africans. Let them establish their own systems of property rights.
“Under-governed spaces” is a reference to weak states that do not have a full monopoly on violence in their territories. Consequently, there is a higher degree of anarchy than in America. Rebel forces and war lords arise who compete for space, resources and control. This should be left to play out as it may without American and European interference for several reasons. First, past attempts by European colonial powers to control the resources and build states have not attained the goal of peace-loving democracies and strong states that protect private property rights within their countries. Given the past record of the U.S. in a similar land like Haiti or in such lands as Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, there is little reason to think that the U.S. will succeed in these African countries. The U.S. cannot succeed by bringing in its military and turning them into some sort of society-building or nation-building or state-building experts. The forms of government have to be indigenous and grow indigenously. Attempts to impose Western laws will fail. The natives have their own ideas, not to mention that they have factions with conflicting ideas. The U.S. is bound to choose some faction and play favorites, becoming embroiled in local politics. Second, should the futile attempts be made for outsiders like the U.S. to build up countries so that they won’t be undergoverned, they will require far greater resources in the failed efforts than are imagined by Washington experts. Which of these experts thought that the U.S. would still be entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan? Which experts thought that Haiti, a special focus of the Clintons, would remain in a dire condition after years and years and years of Clinton and Obama attention?
Piracy on the high seas is a genuine problem, but it’s not met by Special Forces training the militaries of various African countries. It makes its appearance in this report simply to create a laundry list and make it seem essential that Africa be of strategic military interest. Shippers can hire protection and they should bear the costs of hiring them. It is to be expected that market forces, if allowed to operate and not forced off the market by governments, will rapidly devise inventive methods of protecting shipping and warding off pirates.
HIV/AIDS is another laundry list item, far removed from being a strategic interest, military or otherwise.
The U.S. actually has no genuine defense or strategic interest in Africa that warrants the widespread introduction of U.S. Special Forces. The Congressional report cannot be believed or accepted.
Trump may be taking a different tack than Congress, the military, and the State Department. Judging from his rhetoric, Trump’s objective may be the futile attempt to eliminate terrorists from Africa. He appears to be expanding the war on terror, begun by Bush and continued and expanded by Obama. The issue still comes down to the basic question: Are there sound reasons for the U.S. government to be engaged militarily in Africa? Is there a strong and persuasive case that this should be done? The answer is that there is no such case. A stronger case can be made that such involvement is very problematic and that it’s basically an unnecessary and losing proposition for America to have its government becoming more and more involved on the African continent.
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