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GLOBAL
e Next Frontier
e creation of AFRICOM, the U.S. military's new Africa Command, offers the
hope of steady, low-key progress in the war on terror.
ROBERT D. KAPLAN NOVEMBER 2007 ISSUE

Africa matters. It is no longer a third-rate theater of war. e Pentagon’s decision to

stand up a war- ghting command exclusively for Africa by the end of 2008 presages
a new direction for the global war on terrorism, with profound implications for the
military and its relations with the State Department and other executive-branch
institutions. It also provides a way for the United States to deal with a rising China.

e U.S. military, particularly the Marines and Army Special Forces, has been
deeply involved across the Sahara Desert for years, in train-and-equip missions for
select companies of African armies, from Senegal on the Atlantic to Djibouti by the
Red Sea. e Ethiopian military that fought radical Islamists in Somalia was the
product of U.S. military training. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, will
consolidate under one bureaucracy what European Command has been doing on
most of the continent, what Central Command has been doing in the Horn of
Africa, and what Paci c Command has been doing on some Indian Ocean islands.

e hub of U.S. military activity has been Dakar, Senegal, the westernmost point
on the African continent, where European imperialists rst began moving into the
interior in the mid-19th century and creating the structure of weak West African
states that the U.S. military is now trying to shore up. Without seeking to conquer
or govern anything, the American military is pursuing a strategy of security linkages
similar to those of the French 150 years ago.

Company-sized American military elements located in Dakar and the Malian

capital of Bamako have reached out during annual exercises to smaller American
units scattered throughout the region. ese, in turn, have been working with
specially trained indigenous forces in countries such as Chad, Mauritania, and
Niger. Because most of these countries have little or no structured military
tradition, it’s easier for American noncommissioned officers to shape and in uence
their forces.
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e U.S. military’s humanitarian activities, such as medical and veterinary civil-

action programs, have facilitated this progress. AFRICOM will build on that with
an unprecedented level of cooperation with civilian agencies, with the State
Department likely providing the deputy head of the new combatant command, and
departments like Justice and Agriculture lling other slots. AFRICOM, if it is done
right, will be a test case for putting the Pentagon and the State Department under
one bureaucratic roof: becoming, in effect, a bureau for nation building.

No permanent bases will be needed, just cooperative security facilities owned by the
host country and supported by civilian contractors, used quietly and austerely by
the Americans. Civil-military projects will be run jointly from both AFRICOM
headquarters and American embassies.

In the weeks after 9/11, many analysts (including myself ) advocated for major
military involvement in the Middle East rather than the pursuit of a low-hanging-
fruit strategy aimed at discreetly killing select groups of Islamic terrorists here and
there. Even as the quagmire in Iraq continues, the stepped-up tempo of quiet,
successful operations in Africa suggests that the latter strategy may have been  the
better option. In any case, AFRICOM  will be about picking low-hanging terrorist
fruit.

e so-called long war—and particularly the work of AFRICOM—will be

relentless and low-key. Small-scale elite ground units composed largely of junior
and noncommissioned officers, working with local armies, assisted by air and sea
platforms, will hunt down select individuals. And unlike U.S. operations in Iraq,
AFRICOM will deny any point of concentration for the media. Strikes earlier this
year on suspected al-Qaeda targets in Somalia are a case in point.  When an AC-
130 gunship takes off from a base in Djibouti, or attack helicopters and surveillance
planes take off from warships in the Indian Ocean, there is nothing to lm, no way
of embedding, and no way of knowing the result until the military tells you.

Such operations by AFRICOM will not  need an exit strategy, since the military
will not be present in high numbers in the rst place. Southern Command in the
drug war in Colombia, and Paci c Command in the war against Islamic insurgents
in the southern Philippines, work like this. e creation of AFRICOM signi es the
adoption of that paradigm on a grander scale.

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AFRICOM will also help the United States to keep pace with the Chinese, who are
offering Africans across the continent an attractive development model: massive
loans and infrastructure modernization—in the form of factories, roads, and
railways—that spare recipients the subtle humiliation of that comes with accepting
help from the formerly colonial West. Because many Africans rank stability as more
important than democracy, China’s lack of concern for the moral improvement of
regimes may, in some cases, carry an additional bene t.

Still, human rights count, especially in such oppressive places as Sudan and
Zimbabwe. So the United States will try to compete with China by coupling aid
with tools to build a liberal democratic future. is program cannot succeed
without bilateral military relationships, since stable democracies require well-
trained, reform-minded militaries that behave themselves by staying clear of
politics.

e only long-term solution to crises like Darfur are pan-African intervention

forces with airlift capabilities, which is what the American military has started to
build with its train-and-equip missions. e U.S. military is not the solution to
Africa’s development problems, but without it there is simply no credible Western
model to compete with China’s.

China will be a tough competitor. It is already sending over teams of area experts
with capitalist instincts. AFRICOM should not think of the Chinese in Africa as in
any way similar to the Soviets in Africa during the Cold War. e Chinese are more
sophisticated, with a formidable ability to learn from experience.

AFRICOM should be a catalyst for greater military cooperation with civilian relief
agencies and other nongovernmental organizations. Like it or not, because
humanitarian operations are about logistics, quick access, and the establishment of
security perimeters, they encompass a strong military element. e boards of
directors of some NGOs understand this; it is their young and idealistic volunteers
who must get over their inherent distrust of the American military. Indeed, through
a combination of small-scale military strikes that do not generate bad publicity and
constant involvement on the soft, humanitarian side of military operations,
AFRICOM could rebuild the post-Iraq image of the American soldier in the global
commons.

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