Does America Need an Africa Strategy?
Sam Wilkins
April 2, 2020
“I could make your life hell,†Senator Lindsey Graham reportedly told Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, if the Pentagon withdrew American troops from Africa. While Graham later denied the report, the senator confirmed that he warned against any potential force reductions as a part of the ongoing “blank slate review†of America’s military posture. Esper, meanwhile, pushed back against bipartisan Congressional support for a U.S. military presence in Africa, stating that the Defense Department’s review represents a key part of the National Defense Strategy’s ongoing focus on “great power competition.â€
This recent debate over American military posture in Africa begs a more fundamental question — does the United States need an Africa strategy? For a continent so large and diverse, facing widely divergent challenges, is applying a continent-wide strategy even worthwhile? Layer on competing U.S. domestic interest groups, an independent-minded Congress, and unexpected crises, such as the 2014 Ebola outbreak or the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and one might be tempted to see attempts to conjure a coherent Africa strategy as either folly or neo-colonial hubris.
https://warontherocks.com/2020/04/does-america-need-an-africa-strategy/