“It is time to acknowledge that the U.S. military presence in Africa is a failure, bring our troops home, and replace violence with diplomacy and commerce. It is the right thing for America and the best thing for Africa.“
Pretty soon the government will run out of places on the OTHER side of the planet for proxy wars.
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/u-s-out-of-africa-now/
by Brad Pearce
Political map of Africa with each country represented by its national flag.
On October 26, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) forced a debate and vote on the U.S. military presence in Niger. The Senate overwhelmingly voted to keep our troops in that troubled country. There has been an increased focus on Africa due to widespread instability and a contest between superpowers for the continent. The presence of U.S. troops puts Americans in danger while failing to solve any of Africa’s problems.
During the Cold War era, the United States mostly relied on “soft power” in Africa, but U.S. military presence has continued to increase over the past 30 years. It is time to acknowledge that the U.S. military presence in Africa is a failure, bring our troops home, and replace violence with diplomacy and commerce. It is the right thing for America and the best thing for Africa.
Prior to the advent of the Global War on Terrorism, U.S. military actions in Africa were primarily evacuating American nationals in times of crisis, something which they did on many occasions due to frequent volatility. The first major U.S. deployment was the United Nations Operation in Somalia, which has transformed into one of the longest conflicts in American history while failing to make Somalia secure. The U.S. footprint has continued to expand; currently the largest U.S. base in Africa is in the small Red Sea nation of Djibouti, while there is also an enormous and expensive drone base in Agadez, Niger in the central Sahel. Further, the United States trains troops around the continent, having commandos deployed to at least 22 African nations in 2022.
When U.S. troops were first permanently deployed to Africa following 9/11 there were no known transnational terrorist organizations on the continent. The United States got a better excuse for its presence after the Islamic Courts Union took control of Somalia in 2006. The ICU were then expelled by an Ethiopian-led invasion, leaving in their wake an offshoot known as Al-Shabab which later pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. Following the Ethiopian invasion, the United Nations authorized the African Union Mission in Somalia [ANISOM] which the United States has supported since it began in 2007 with a large air and ground presence.
Radical Islamic terrorism did not spread across Africa in earnest until the 2010s, when it was greatly spurred by U.S. and NATO actions across North Africa and the Middle East. Most notably, when a NATO coalition overthrew Libya’s longtime leader Gadaffi in 2011 fighters he had been employing looted his armory and returned to their home countries, restarting dormant rebellions.
Be seeing you
