Daniel Volman provides a rundown of US military spending in Africa for the coming FY 2011. President Obama is continuing and expanding:
… the militarised and unilateral security policy that had been pursued by the George W. Bush administration toward Africa, as well as toward other parts of the world.
CAMP KASENYI, Uganda - Staff Sergeant Andre Amantine of the 2-18 Field Artillery Regiment out of Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, marches with his students of the Counter Terrorism Course on June 16, 2009 at Camp Kasenyi, Uganda. More than 100 Ugandan soldiers graduated from this CJTF-HOA-supported course, which covered topics such as individual movement techniques, troop landing procedures, land navigation, first aid, identifying improvised explosive devises, and more. (Photo by Master Sergeant Loren Bonser)
Volman’s figures on FY 2011 Budget Requests by Country
The 38 million dollars for the Foreign Military Financing programme to pay for U.S. arms sales to African countries includes:
9 million for Liberia,
9 million for Morocco,
4.9 million for Tunisia,
2.5 million for Djibouti,
2 million for Ethiopia,
1.5 million for the Democratic Republic of Congo,
1.4 million for Nigeria,
one million for Kenya.
The 21 million dollars for the International Military Education and Training Programme to bring African military officers to the United States for military training includes:
2.3 million for Tunisia,
1.9 million for Morocco,
1 million for Kenya,
1 million for Nigeria,
1 million for Senegal,
950,000 for Algeria,
825,000 for Ghana,
725,000 for Ethiopia,
600,000 for Uganda,
500,000 for the Democratic Republic of Congo,
500,000 for Rwanda.
The 24.4 million dollars for Anti-Terrorism Assistance programmes in Africa includes:
8 million dollars for Kenya,
1 million for South Africa,
800,000 for Morocco, and
400,000 for Algeria, and
14 million for African Regional Programmes.
A U.S. Air University’s Strategic Studies Quarterly paper (PDF) by Maj Shawn T. Cochran, USAF, includes a description of the difference between creative aid and acquisitive aid:
Creative aid, even of a military variety, focuses on the socioeconomic development of a recipient without being tied to any specific strategic objective of the donor. It is “not primarily intended to acquire anything, at least not immediately; it is extended in the hope that it will favorably affect the economic and political development of the recipient country.” On the other hand, a donor will utilize acquisitive aid to “win a comparatively specific advantage” or to “acquire” an asset. In further defining the nature of the latter, Liska postulates,
In the case of acquisitive aid the recipient’s performance substitutes directly for action by the donor. The donor either does not expect to act at all or would have to act “more” or “differently” if he could not anticipate the performance of the recipient. … The case is clearest where military and economic aid are intended to help the recipient maintain an army for local self-defense, so that the United States does not have to participate with troops or need involve only a correspondingly smaller number of troops.
This passage highlights the basic linkage between security assistance and surrogate force.
I have not seen much sign of creative aid coming from the US government to Africa for many decades. There is plenty of acquisitive aid. AFRICOM’s partnering is acquisitive aid, security assistance designed to acquire surrogate force. The gift is arms and military training so that African soldiers can fight, suffer and die for US interests, and US soldiers will not have to. But we won’t see creative aid. We won’t see aid that will favorably affect the economic and political development of the recipient country. We won’t see aid that will help develop transportation, or health, or education, or improved sanitation and sewage, or any of the things governments do to earn the consent of the governed and to govern peacefully and prosperously. We see the Africa Command in military photo op aid performing a few of these functions in local isolation. But the money for these is peanuts compared with the money for arms and military training, or even compared with the expense of just moving military equipment from place to place.
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania - Tanzanian Sailors practice visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) techniques during an exercise aboard the Africa Partnership Station (APS) East platform USS Nicholas (FFG 47), January 20, 2010. VBSS is just one of a series of maritime training courses being offered onboard Nicholas and the High Speed Vessel Swift (HSV 2) by APS East instructors to members of the Tanzanian Navy. APS East is in Tanzania to participate in maritime and cultural exchanges with the Tanzanian Navy and will visit ports in Comoros, Djibouti, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique and Seychelles to enhance maritime safety and security in the region. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Julian Olivari)
April 5, 2010 at 7:47 am
Actually, the long running ACOTA program has trained tens of thousands of African troops for peacekeeping operations (also, Operation Focused Relief). Sierra Leone, Liberia and Burundi have all benefited as a result – and with more capability Africa now has more say over peacekeeping operations and is not beholden to the EU and US. Maybe this training is really a win win?
-doug brooks, IPOA
March 15, 2012 at 6:31 pm
win win. interesting appraisal
March 17, 2012 at 10:49 am
And the connection with ACOTA is . . .?
April 5, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Actually, in many cases, the troops that have received training through the ACOTA program have been used in counter-insurgency operations or to repress internal political dissent; this is hardly a win-win situation. For more information on Africom and U.S. military involvement in Africa, see the website of the African Security Research Project at http://concernedafricascholars.org/african-security-research-project. And for more information on the campaign to resist Africom, go to http://www.resistafricom.org.
April 7, 2010 at 12:28 am
Daniel and XCroc,
Approximately 180,000 African troops have received U.S. peacekeeper training since 1997. As you yourself wrote back in 1997, “U.S. support for African peacekeeping efforts has been largely positive, though modest” when you called on the U.S. to play a more meaningful role in African peacekeeping. http://www.fpif.org/reports/peace_and_military_policy_in_africa
Today, African nations are able to provide 42 percent of Africa’s peacekeeping troops for U.N. and A.U. missions, and their capacity to do so has increased dramatically since the late 1990s. African militaries also contribute to U.N. missions worldwide.
You say “in many cases” U.S. trained troops have been used against their own people. As a scholar, you could be more specific. You could also estimate how many of these troops have particpated in international peacekeeping.
Also, to clarify, Foreign Military Financing (U.S. grants for security, as opposed to weapons sales) is used for non-lethal sustainment programs such as radios and vehicle repair.
Respectfully,
Vince Crawley
U.S. Africa Command Public Affairs
April 7, 2010 at 12:34 am
Below are more quotes from Daniel Volman’s January 1997 policy recommendation — http://www.fpif.org/reports/peace_and_military_policy_in_africa
“Current levels of funding for U.S. security assistance for conflict resolution by African countries and organizations are insufficient to provide them with the capacity to deal effectively with internal conflicts and the collapse of states.”
“American support for conflict resolution in Africa—less than $100 million for the entire continent over the past five years—is remarkably small when compared, for example, to the $1 billion that the U.S. government is spending each year for the Bosnia peacekeeping operation.
At the same time, however, the U.S. is largely unwilling to play a direct role in conflict prevention, peacekeeping operations, and other efforts to resolve African conflicts, even when these efforts do not involve the use of force in peace-enforcement operations conducted under Chapter VII of the UN charter.”
April 7, 2010 at 9:45 am
Vince and XCroc,
Regarding what I wrote about the U.S. support for African peacekeeping efforts in 1997, I have thought a great deal about this over the past thirteen years and I no longer think that this support has been largely positive. Since, as you note, I am a scholar and have been studying these issues for more than thirty years, my views have changed in the light of additional evidence and subsequent developments.
Examples of how military forces which have been trained under the ACOTA program have subsequently been engaged in counter-insurgency operations include the military forces of Uganda, Senegal, and Mali.
Yours,
Daniel Volman
Director
African Security Research Project
Washington, DC
April 10, 2010 at 9:54 pm
Daniel,
It would be surprising if your views had not evolved over time and in light of unfolding information and events. The unilateral creation of the Africa Command and the accompanying massive influx of military spending drastically changed the contours of African political issues. I admire and have learned a great deal from your work and hope I’ve brought a few more readers to your audience.
Doug and Vince,
I don’t see much win anywhere. This is already hurting African people and countries. It will hurt US position in the world in the long run, and will hurt US taxpayers in both short and long run. After the treatment of the African Union troops in Darfur by the donor countries, cutting funding for the AU effort in favor of a UN effort because the donors could better control the UN effort, I hardly think you can talk about “peacekeeping” that is not beholden to the US and EU. What is loosely termed peacekeeping in Somalia is entirely a creature of the donor countries. I think the US and EU want to keep any peacekeeping beholden and under their control. Africa Endeavor also helps maintain US control through coordinating communications and facilitating Information Operations (IO). US security assistance is intended to be acquisitive aid.
As to training the AFL, Armed Forces of Liberia, and the future of Liberia, Sierra Leone and West Africa, that has not yet begun to play out. No one can truthfully call it a success for many decades. We don’t yet know the result.
From Congressional testimony by the Africa Faith and Justice Network, in July 2008:
Given the history, it will not be possible to call the military training program a success for several decades, if success turns out to be the right word. I pray that it is the right word, but as I say, given the history of US military training in Liberia, I am not particularly optimistic.
As Refugees International reported on that training in Liberia:
Human rights training and education in civics and civil-military relations in a democracy are probably the most critical instruction needed by the AFL.
It is also an embarrassment that the most generously funded State Department program for Africa is ACOTA, a military training program; and the 17:1 ratio of military to civilian spending. If the State Department were funding to train leaders in city planning, public administration, public health, sanitation, and other skills of peaceful governance, that would be a source of pride. (For transportation Africans might do better to study in Europe or somewhere other than the United States.) But training military leaders, especially investing in them way beyond all other aspects of government, is just to train a new generation of military coup makers, and create a new wave of military governments. There is plenty of history to demonstrate this, and not much to refute it. The Africa Command military investment in African countries is a threat to human rights, to democratic governance, to sustainable development and to the rule of law in all the countries it touches. It is already showing itself to be such in a number of countries, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Mali, Somalia, Niger, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, to name a few. It encourages the use of force rather than more peaceful and democratic means to solve political problems, which does not work, and delays solving the problem until the force is withdrawn, after much destruction and often years or decades later. AFRICOM and the US Government are already propping up unpopular and repressive regimes and helping suppress dissent, labeling it terrorism, because the leadership is agreeable to US intentions and objectives. Terrorists is a very handy word to label political opposition and even journalists. We are seeing that in Rwanda and Uganda with elections coming. It will be interesting, but I fear unpleasant, to see how those elections unfold, and the role the US government plays.
Koranteng writes:
The US Africa Command and the military contractors continue that ruinous colonial tradition, the latest manifestation of that ruinous colonial inheritance.
April 12, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Xcroc,
If you concede that Daniel Volman’s views can evolve over time, cannot U.S. policy also evolve and adapt?
Certainly there are elements of U.S. history that do not instill pride in the Americans of today, because we as a nation have changed. But U.S. history with regard to Africa is not universally negative, either. To cite just one example, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 materially supported the people of South Africa.
The United States has been working closely with a wide number of African militaries in a post-Cold War context since the early 1990s, with educational exchanges and training exercises. It would be interesting to see if there is a relationship between these partnerships and the trend toward growing stability and civil control of the militaries of Africa. Certainly the numbers of coups have declined significantly over the past two decades, though many factors are at play.
Finally, it is not correct to say that the Africa Endeavor exercises force the 30 participant nations to adopt U.S.-centric or Euro-centric systems or technology. This Africa exercise is very much an evolution of a pan-European exercise, EUCOM’s Combined Endeavor, that annually brings together nations using NATO, Russian and other equipment to help overcome technical barriers in a training setting so they can better coordinate during a crisis. The first Africa Endeavor took place in South Africa under EUCOM sponsorship.
Respectfully,
Vince Crawley
U.S. Africa Command Public Affairs
April 13, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Vince,
I would hope US policy can evolve. So far it seems to be evolving in the wrong direction when it comes to Africa. I have a friend who does a very funny bit of physical comedy with the Great Leap Backward. The US has been quite popular in Africa until President Bush, despite some historical problems. I would like to see good relationships grow and flourish between the US and African countries. Unfortunately US policy seems energetically and relentlessly racing in the wrong direction. It would make for great comedy, except that peoples’ lives and the environment are in grave danger.
The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 was an excellent piece of legislation. President Reagan tried to veto it but he was overridden by Congress. The act should have come at least a decade earlier, in 1976 when the students were demonstrating in Soweto, better still would have been some sort of positive action at the time of Sharpeville. In 1986 Reagan invited Savimbi to the White House, and continued his own colonial approach and military assistance to Africa.
The extra decade or more of US support for apartheid, constructive engagement, 76-86, allowed apartheid’s further destruction of South African families and social structures. The legacy of extreme violence combined with the destruction of family life and family structures has been particularly lethal, and that legacy continues in the present.
I remember closely following the events in Soweto around 1976. The students were so brave and inspiring. I remember thinking at the time that this is the last chance to deal with people who want a peaceful resolution and peaceful future. That would have been true except for the greatness and magnanimity of Nelson Mandela. Even so another decade turned the potential for violence up signicantly and further damaged civil society. At the time I couldn’t believe the US made no serious positive response to those demonstrations in 1976. Ford was President at that time.
As to Africa Endeavor, I don’t believe I said anything about forcing the 30 participant nations to adopt U.S.-centric or Euro-centric systems or technology. I don’t think that is the point. Rather I think the US goal is to become thoroughly embedded into African communication systems, making spying or information/disinformation campaigns far easier for the US.