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Movements Towards Discretion:
AFRICOM’s Active Security Strategy

By Stephen Roblin

05 April, 2009
Countercurrents.org

An inquiry into the most recent and significant change to the U.S. military structure – the establishment of the U.S. Africa command, commonly referred to as AFRICOM – may offer evidence that U.S. foreign policy planners still remember the lessons learned from the Vietnam war. The most crucial lesson being “a clear and pervasive reluctance of American citizens to support overt U.S. interventions in local Third World conflicts,”[i] a phenomenon called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The U.S. foreign policy establishment made conscious efforts to subvert this “syndrome,” and one solution was to move away from overt U.S. military interventions (i.e. conventional warfare) and rely more on covert operations and the training and provision of military/financial assistance to ally forces to combat mutual enemies, mainly communist “threats”.

The George W. Bush administration broke from this lesson with its decision to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and the administration soon found that the public still abides by the “Vietnam syndrome,” as evident in the quick plummet of public support for the wars. In fact, in a 2005 Foreign Affairs article, John Mueller observed an emerging “Iraq syndrome,” which he sees as unfortunate because it will likely impede U.S. “unilateralism, preemption, preventive war,” and so on.[ii] While the unpopularity of the Iraq war may be a set-back for overt assertions of U.S. military might, Mueller underestimates Washington’s ability to circumvent U.S. public opinion by fighting more discrete wars through providing U.S. clients with the financial and military assistance needed to combat mutual enemies.

This strategy is built into AFRICOM’s strategic approach towards Africa, which the new command’s planners call “Active Security.” And despite claims that “AFRICOM is a post-Cold War experiment that radically rethinks security in the early 21st century,”[iii] I think it is more prudent and perhaps wise to view AFRICOM’s strategic approach as a response to the “Iraq syndrome,” a response similar to what we saw after the Vietnam war.

Active Security’s Doctrinal Antecedents

According to AFRICOM’s commander, General William Ward, the new combatant command will benefit the U.S. and its African counterparts through the “active security” strategy. In an interview, the General described active security as “the totality of our engagement level that is designed to help our partner nations increase their military professionalism, their proficiency, and their capability to do the things that they have said they wanted to do in providing for their own security.”[iv] In short, AFRICOM will help allies in Africa “build and maintain their own security capacity.”[v] The benefit for the U.S. is that AFRICOM will help “prevent attacks emanating from Africa against Americans” and “secure U.S. strategic access,” meaning access to trade and strategic natural resources, such as oil.[vi]

Comparing General Ward’s description of the active security strategy to the Bush administration’s overt assertions of U.S. military power in Iraq and Afghanistan, may give the appearance that U.S. foreign planners are developing a new, softer approach to U.S. military engagement abroad, an approach ostensibly embodied in AFRICOM. But the active security strategy described above shares a striking similarity to the counterinsurgency doctrines developed during the Kennedy years and operationalized extensively in the post-Vietnam era. The similarity is the emphasis on enhancing ally forces capacity to defend themselves against mutual enemies through U.S. military/financial assistance, as opposed to direct U.S. military interventions as in the case of Vietnam. In fact, it was through counterinsurgency and its doctrinal offshoots (as well as intensifying media campaigns) that U.S. foreign policy planners managed to continue waging the Cold War abroad while operating in an atmosphere crippled by the “Vietnam syndrome.”[vii]

Discrete Wars

The Reagan administration, in particular, proved highly capable of waging the war against communism, giving much of its attention to central America. Take for example the administration’s support for the right-wing junta during El Salvador’s 12 year civil war (1980 to 1992). Beginning almost 20 years prior to the war, the U.S. had been providing security assistance to the small central American country. This assistance, both financial and military, increased when the left-wing guerilla group, Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), waged a war against the county’s right-wing military government, which was notorious for protecting the interests of the country’s small land-owning oligarchy through brute force and oppression. The Reagan administration provided support for the government’s counterinsurgency campaign in the form of training and providing arms to Salvadoran officers, the army, paramilitary forces, and police forces. In the end, it was government forces that were responsible for 95% of the 75,000 killed during the war. The U.S. government subsidized the Salvadoran government’s 12-year killing spree against the guerilla group and the people of El Salvador to the amount of 6 billion dollars.[viii]

All of this was done with minimal U.S. military presence on ground, and with relatively minimal awareness and outrage from the American public. Nevertheless, the impact on El Salvador was devastating to arguably similar degrees as the Vietnam war, a testament to Washington’s ability to adapt to the “Vietnam syndrome.” Clearly the administrations following the Vietnam war learned the importance and efficacy of providing the means for clients to fight Washington’s wars. But the question we must ask now is: is there any evidence that foreign policy planners have learned this lesson since the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions? Judging from U.S. involvement in the recent Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, the Bush administration proved adept at circumventing the more recent “Iraq-syndrome” to wage the “war on terrorism” in a more discrete manner, at least from the perspective of American public and mainstream media.

Three years after the launching of the Iraq invasion, Washington set its eyes on Somalia when a broad coalition of Islamist courts and militias called the ICU took control of country’s capital, Mogadishu. The rise of the ICU in June 2006 came after years of failed attempts by the internationally recognized government of Somalia, the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), to build government structures, establish a viable national reconciliation plan, and provide services and offer security for the Somali citizens.[ix] The ICU’s rise was immediately branded a security threat by the U.S. and Somalia’s Christian neighbor, Ethiopia – the largest recipient of U.S. financial and military assistance in Africa.

According to the U.S. State Department, the ICU was “controlled by al Qaeda cell individuals,” a claim taken at face value by the American mainstream media, notwithstanding contrary views from Somalia experts, such as Ken Menkhaus.[x] The Ethiopian government’s fear was that the ICU would aid militant groups fighting for self-determination in the Ogaden Province of Ethiopia, a province comprised primarily of ethnic Somalis. Its immediate response was to send troops into Somalia to bolster the TFG and prepare for the overthrow of the ICU. The U.S. effectively gave Ethiopia “the green light” and took an active role in the invasion through training Ethiopian troops and providing the Ethiopian military with U.S. military advisors and intelligence on the positions of ICU fighters.[xi] Not surprisingly, when the invasion was initiated in late December 2006 the ICU proved ill-equipped to defend itself against the regional power backed by the world’s superpower.

During the invasion, the “worst abuses” of international law were committed by the foreign occupier. According to Human Rights Watch, the crimes committed by Ethiopian forces included firing “rockets, mortars, and artillery in a manner that did not discriminate between civilian and military objectives….[and] deliberate attacks on civilians, particularly attacks on hospitals.”[xii] Ethiopian troops, who just recently began pulling out of the Somalia, left the country devastated. According to one source, “Thousands of civilians have died in the violence that has engulfed the country.” Furthermore, “over one million have been displaced and up to 3.2 million need humanitarian assistance.”[xiii] The U.S. response has been to support its allies, Ethiopia and the TFG, by refusing to “confront or even publicly acknowledge the extent of Ethiopian military and TFG abuses in the country.”[xiv]

Similar to the Reagan’s administration’s counterinsurgency policies in El Salvador, the U.S. “counterterrorism” strategy in Somalia was done with minimal U.S. presence on the ground and minimal awareness from the American public.

Movements Towards Discretion?

What is striking about the U.S. counterinsurgency policies in El Salvador and counterterrorism policies in Somalia, is that General Ward’s description of AFRICOM’s active security strategy would apply in both cases. In other words, the U.S. helped build and maintain the “security capacity” of its allies as a means of combating mutual enemies, the former being “communists” and the later being “terrorists.” As we have seen, devastation can come through training loyal clients to do destructive things, and this does not require putting American troops in “harm’s way.” For the U.S. foreign policy planners, this approach has had the benefit of avoiding outrage from an American public inflicted with various “syndromes.” So, if the “Iraq-syndrome” and AFRICOM’s active security strategy are any sign of the nature of future U.S. involvement abroad, we may see Washington revert back to fighting more discrete wars, which are only discrete from the American public, certainly not for those on the receiving end. Furthermore, given Africa’s recent move “from peripheral to central” on Washington’s strategic radar, those of us who seek to temper aggressive, illegal, and inhumane U.S. foreign polices should keep a close watch on Africa.[xv]

[i] Michael T Klare and Peter Kornbluh, “The New Interventionism: Low-Intensity Warfare in the 1980s and Beyond,” Low-Intensity Warfare: Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency, and Antiterrorism in the Eighties, Pantheon Books: 1988. pp. 9.

[ii] John Mueller, “The Iraq Syndrome,” Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec2005, Vol. 84 Issue 6, p 44-54.

[iii] Sean McFate. “U.S. Africa Command: A New Strategic Paradigm?” Military Review, January-February 2008.

[iv] Interview with General William Ward, Commander, U.S. Africa Command, May 22, 2008.

<http://www.cfr.org/publication/16330/africom_
seeks_militarytomilitary_relationships.html>

Africom Seeks Military-to-Military Relationships

[v] Africom.mil. “Marine Corps Forces, Africa Officially Established.” November 14, 2008. Retrieved on November 30, 2008. <http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=2252>

[vi] Africom.mil. “AFRICOM POSTURE STATEMENT: Ward Updates Congress on U.S. Africa Command.” March 13, 2008. Retrieved on November 30, 2008.<http://www.africom.mil/getArticle.asp?art=1679>

[vii] For further discussion see Michael McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerilla Warfare, Counter-Insurgency, and Counter-terrorism, 1940-1990, Pantheon Books: 1992.

[viii] See Frederick Gareau, State Terrorism and the United States: From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terror, chapter 1 “The School of the Americas and Terror in El Salvador,” Clarity Press, 2004.

[ix] International Crisis Group, “Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State,” Africa Report No. 147, December 23, 2008, pp. 2, 7,and 8.

[x] Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, was the primary spokesperson for Washington’s position. See Sue Pleming. “U.S. says al Qaeda radicals Lead Somali Islamists.” Reuters. December 14, 2006. For analysis of the media bias surrounding the invasion, see Julie Holler, “Rediscovering Somalia: Press downplays U.S. role in renewed crisis,” Extra! March/April 2008.

Ken Menkhaus is considered of the top Somalia experts. According to Menkhaus, the only “legitimate” debate concerning ICU’s connection to Al-Qaeda was “whether a small number of leaders in the Islamic Courts…[had] linkages with a small number of leaders from Al-Qaeda.” See “Seven Questions: War in Somalia.” Foreign Policy, December 2006.

[xi] Mark Mazzett. “Pentagon Sees Covert Move in Somalia as Blueprint.” New York Times, January 13, 2007; Mark Mazzettie. “U.S. Used Base in Ethiopia to Hunt al-Qaeda in Africa.” New York Times, February 23, 2007.

[xii] Human Rights Watch, “Shell-Shocked: Civilians Under Siege in Mogadishu,” August 2007, p. 5; Berschinksi Robert G. “AFRICOM’s Dilemma: The ‘Global War on Terrorism,’ ‘Capacity Building,’ Humanitarianism, and the Future of U.S> Security Policy in Africa.” Strategic Studies Institute, November 2007, p. 43.

[xiii] International Crisis Group, “Somalia: To Move Beyond the Failed State,” Africa Report No. 147, December 23, 2008, p. 1.

[xiv] Human Rights Watch, “So Much to Fear: War Crimes and the Devastation of Somalia,” December 2008, p. 7.

[xv] Sean McFate. “U.S. Africa Command: A New Strategic Paradigm?” Military Review, January-February 2008.

Stephen Roblin is currently a masters student at the University of Maryland, School of Public Policy. His research interests are U.S. foreign policy, specifically U.S./Africa relations, the conflict in Nigeria's Niger Delta, the impact of of neoliberal economic policies in Africa, and ecological economics. Stephen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and currently resides there. You can contact him at [email protected]

 


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