Been There, Already Doing That: America's Ongoing Security Engagement in Africa

Abstract

Africa. 1 One year later, AFRICOM became fully operational as an independent unified command in its own right, assuming responsibility for the remaining African countries previously covered by the Pacific Command (PACOM) 2 and the Central Command (CENTCOM). 3 While American officials have continually tried to portray the creation of AFRICOM as primarily an internal bureaucratic shift, a more efficient way of organizing the American military’s relations with Africa which would enhance America’s overall support for the development of African security capabilities, the undertaking has nonetheless met with a not insignificant amount of concern, if not outright apprehension, across the continent. African reactions to the creation of the Pentagon’s sixth geographic combatant command varied greatly. Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf offered to host its headquarters. 4 South African Defense Minister Mosioua Lekota failed even to respond to a formal request to meet with General William E. Ward, then commander-designate of the new command. 5 Majority opinion, both governmental and private sector, lies somewhere in between, although the inadequate American efforts to explain the rationale for the new command and its role within existing diplomatic, development, and defence relationships have created a great deal of confusion and possibly amplified scepticism, as James J.F. Forest and Rebecca Crispin document in their enlightening study. Furthermore, the controversy over the possible location in Africa of the headquarters for AFRICOM ‐ now to remain in Stuttgart, Germany, for the foreseeable future ‐ likewise prematurely raised suspicions and generated a public backlash that was unhelpful to the launch of the new initiative, to say nothing of its impact on the achievement of its long-term objectives, including the feasibility of establishing command headquarters within the actual area of responsibility. Fortunately, as Forest and Crispin note and this author has had the occasion to observe first-hand, the leadership of AFRICOM has worked assiduously to overcome these inauspicious beginnings, engaging a wide variety of stakeholders to explain their now better-defined mission of conducting ‘sustained security engagement through military-to-military programs, military-sponsored activities, and other military operations as directed to promote a stable and secure African environment in support of U.S. foreign policy’ 6 ‐ and doing so in a new type of organization, premised on a non-traditional security paradigm. 7