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February 4, 2009
Exclusive: Does Africa Beckon? Should It?
Jack Bauer’s defense of torture, both at a Senate hearing and in the streets of the nation’s capital, on the Fox TV series 24 is not the only topical issue as the show’s seventh season unfolds. There is a new battle front: Africa. The rationale for American involvement is humanitarian, to stop a renegade general who has already killed 200,000 people after deposing an elected president. In the TV movie prequel Redemption, Bauer ends his personal isolation and takes up arms to save a group of children from the warlord’s press gang. To deter further intervention, the warlord sets in motion a terrorist plot against the U.S. homeland which has killed several hundred Americans.
Does the show foreshadow American policy? The invasion plan fictional President Allison Taylor has the Pentagon draw up for the fictional country of Sangala sounded similar to the real life advice offered by Susan Rice for Sudan. President Barack Obama named Dr. Rice as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In 2007, she testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and repeated her argument made in the Washington Post (October 2, 2006) for military action to stop the slaughter of black Africans in the Sudan by an Islamic dictatorship backed by China. She said, “The U.S., preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. They could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan’s oil exports flow. Then, the UN force would deploy – by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing.” She even envisioned American troops in the UN ground operation.
At her Senate confirmation hearing to become Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton laid out ambitious objectives in Africa. Besides combating al Qaeda, there is “helping African nations to conserve their natural resources and reap fair benefits from them; stopping war in Congo; ending autocracy in Zimbabwe and human devastation in Darfur; supporting African democracies...and working aggressively to reach the Millennium Development Goals.” She praised outgoing President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. During the 2001-2008 period, the U.S. allocated $22.3 billion to fight HIV/AIDS on a global basis, with a primary focus on Africa.
On the Sudan, she told the Senators, “We are putting together the options that we think are available and workable. It is done in conjunction, as you would assume, with the Department of Defense. There is a great need for us to sound the alarm again about Darfur. It is a terrible humanitarian crisis, compounded by a corrupt and very cruel regime in Khartoum, and it's important that the world know that we intend to address this in the most effective way possible once we have completed our review, and that we intend to bring along as many people as we can to fulfill the mission of the U.N.-AU force, which is not yet up to speed and fully deployed.”
Clinton and Rice both believe is was a mistake not to intervene in Rwanda during the 1994 massacres. The consequences of the battle between the Tutsi and Hutu people in Rwanda continue to play out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. When the Hutu forces that attempted genocide against the Tutsi were driven out of Rwanda, they fled to eastern Congo to regroup and plot their return under the banner of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). A December UN Security Council report accused the Tutsi regime in Rwanda of backing an insurgent movement against the Hutus in the Congo. FDLR leader Laurent Nkunda was recently captured by Rwandan military forces working in cooperation with Congolese forces. The UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo reiterated its appeal to the FDLR to disarm on Feb. 2.
Sudan and Congo are among a long list of African lands caught in a vicious cycle of political violence and armed conflict that has claimed millions of lives. Nigeria, Somalia, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, and Eritrea usually only make the news when the body count escalates. Will these conflicts draw in U.S. forces for a surge of “muscular humanitarianism?” And if so, where will the troops come from to oust warlords, disarm militants and provide security for nation-building? Given that soldiers and Marines have already been spread thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, placing another entire turbulent continent under the American security umbrella seems beyond comprehension.
If the Obama administration marches into Africa, it will be following a path opened by President George W. Bush. On October 1, 2008, the U.S. Africa Command was officially stood up, after having been authorized in early 2007. AFRICOM plans a staff of 1,300 personnel, half of whom will be civilian employees from non-military agencies. It will not have any combat units initially assigned, but will be given forces as needed to carry out missions. It has good relations with the Rwanda regime and has flown troops and supplies into Sudan in support of UN and African Union peacekeepers. Its primary mission is not to take the field, but to help African governments maintain order and security by providing training and logistics through military-to-military cooperation.
At a hearing of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs last July, questions were raised by Chairman John Tierney (D-MA), about the purpose of AFRICOM. The continent is an area of expansion for radical Islam. The Congo has minerals such as coltan, cassiterite and wolframite essential to high-tech electronics, as well as traditional resources such as copper, diamonds, zinc, and cobalt. Nigeria, Angola and Sudan have oil. China is heavily involved in Sudan and other trouble spots like Zimbabwe. But in response to Rep. Tierney, Theresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, claimed there was no strategic U.S. agenda. “Some believe that we are establishing AFRICOM solely to fight terrorism or to secure oil resources or to discourage China. These are misperceptions,” she told the subcommittee.
Whelan was only following the line set out earlier by Ryan Henry, Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. At an April, 2007 press conference, Henry said, “The goal of AFRICOM is to support indigenous governments, not to assert U.S. primacy on the continent.” Henry also said, “That AFRICOM was not being stood up in response to Chinese presence on the continent. It was not being stood up solely for the effort of enhanced counterterrorism, and it was not being stood up in order to secure resources.”
So what is the point? Is this just foreign policy as social work?
In the late 19thcentury, there was a “scramble for Africa” among the major powers of the day, then all European. In the course of two decades, the entire continent was placed under European flags. Britain held the most lucrative areas, Egypt and South Africa, the latter attracting substantial white settlement. Many exciting tales of the Empire come from this era. Sir Charles Gordon’s death defending Khartoum from an Islamic messiah claiming to be the Mahdi in 1885, avenged by Gen. Horatio Kitchner at Omdurman in 1898. The Zulu and Boer Wars. The adventures of Henry Stanley and Dr. David Livingston. The stories of H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad. But London’s efforts returned little. Even in 1906, with the region fairly stable, Africa (including Egypt) was a market for less than ten percent of British exports.
Sub-Sahara Africa was a strategic backwater during both world wars. During the Cold War, the Soviets tried to exploit national liberation movements to spread their influence on the continent. Fidel Castro provided Cuban troops to spearhead Moscow’s efforts, but instead of wealth and glory, the military expeditions only brought home an AIDS epidemic.
Jack Bauer’s willingness to “do whatever it takes” to protect his country is to be applauded, but his character also believes there must be a defined mission. Plunging into Africa without a strategic vision linked to concrete national interests will promote only frustration, at a cost Americans will not likely want to pay.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in defense and trade issues. E-mail him at HawkinsUSA@aol.com.
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