Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 1, February–March 2009, pp. 249–256
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I
During the decade between the end of the Cold War and the 11 September attacks, America’s Africa policy was more about political and ethical values than strategic interests. In 1992, a lame-duck President George H.W. Bush bet that humanitarian intervention in Somalia would help to establish a kinder, gentler ‘new world order’. It didn’t pay off, and made the Clinton administration gun-shy about intervening in Rwanda, where timely major-power action might have prevented the genocide. During the latter part of the 1990s, the United States handled instability in West African states mainly with measured participation in an international campaign against illicit ‘blood diamonds’. By denying destabilising elements the source of their lucre, this effort facilitated UN-managed political reconstruction and relative peace in Sierra Leone and Liberia, but hardly constituted full-fledged engagement. Washington’s response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic was (and remains) founded in humanitarian concern, not strategic alarm. Although state failure in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Robert Mugabe’s malign and incompetent governance in Zimbabwe drew rhetorical consternation, Washington largely deferred to weak multilateral organisations and feckless regional powers respectively on these matters. Sustained US bilateral engagement was generally limited to ‘anchor states’ such as Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya.
During George W. Bush’s tenure, concerns about Middle Eastern stability yielded substantial US counter-terrorism assistance to North African governments and Washington’s fruitful if limited diplomatic engagement of Libya. Bush also substantially increased direct humanitarian and development aid to Africa. But Washington’s preoccupation with Iraq has meant diminished strategic attention to sub-Saharan Africa. The management of US interests in West Africa – which consists mainly of maintaining access to hydrocarbons – has essentially devolved to oil multinationals. Washington has for the most part limited US involvement in East Africa to counter-terrorism, including support for a politically short-sighted takedown of Somalia’s de facto Islamist government by Ethiopian forces; the episode raised anti-Western sentiment among Somalis and conditioned an Islamist resurgence.1 Owing in large part to the American Christian Right’s support for the Sudanese Christian rebels in southern Sudan, the White House has advanced resolution of the conflict there. But the January 2005 peace agreement between Khartoum and the southern Sudanese rebels, which the United States helped broker, is in danger of unravelling. Not even a State Department finding of genocide in Darfur has been enough to prompt the serious commitment of an overstretched US military to a UN–African Union peacekeeping effort.
II
A mandate for a more humble and consensual foreign policy could dovetail with the first African-American president’s political and personal inclination to reinvigorate Africa policy. To some considerable extent, the Bush administration has already recognised Africa’s strategic importance, establishing an entire new military component – Africa Command (AFRICOM) – dedicated to the continent.2 Moreover, the disturbances that have beset Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Somalia and the Maghreb in 2008, and the potentially corrosive effect on European security of rising jihadism in the latter two areas, make the need for attention from major powers objectively clear. Among the former colonial...
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Jonathan Stevenson, a Contributing Editor to Survival: Global Politics and Strategy and Professor of Strategic Studies at the US Naval War College, was deployed on the USS Fort McHenry, lead element of the Africa Partnership Station, in April 2008.
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Africa’s Growing Strategic Resonance by Jonathan Stevenson (Winter 2003–04)
Risks and Opportunities in Somalia by Jonathan Stevenson (Summer 2007)
The Evangelical Roots of US Africa Policy by Asteris Huliaras (December 2008–January 2009)
