Bush’s Compassionate Realism

The September 11 attack influenced the administration of George W. Bush to reassess U.S.-Africa relations and embrace the realist logic of fear and self-interest. Bush’s administration saw Africa as a threat to national security. For senior Bush policymakers, Africa’s so-called weak and failing states and its historic links to the Middle East amounted to a breeding ground for transnational terrorism. As Lyman pointed out, “combinations of relatively weak states, ethnic and religious diversity and sometimes discrimination, [Africa’s] poverty and in many places its ‘ungoverned space’” make the continent susceptible to the growth of radical and sometimes internationally connected movements that employ terrorism (Lyman, 2009). The Bush White House also feared that Africa’s natural resources, such as diamonds, together with drug money, might be used to finance transnational terrorist activities. The fear was not hypothetical, as a sizeable body of academic and policy-relevant studies had shown that alleged terrorists and their groups, including Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, made millions of dollars from the illicit trade in West African diamonds, or they concealed their money in diamonds from West Africa, or both (Farah, 2004; Pham, 2006). One estimate, for instance, suggested that Al Qaeda made between $30 million and $50 million in a month from the illicit diamond business in Liberia and Sierra Leone just before the September 11 attacks (Farah, 2004, 38).

The change of course by the Bush administration was driven not only by fear, but also by economic self-interest. The Washington policy establishment came to the conclusion that continuing American dependence on Middle East oil undermined national security, and Africa’s oil provided the U.S. with a good opportunity to reduce its dependence in the short to medium term. The oil argument dovetailed neatly with interests of a growing number of U.S. business groups who had come to see Africa’s natural resource endowments and its youthful and growing population as attractive business opportunities (Kraxberger, 2005; Carmody, 2005). The Washington policy clique recognized, however, that these interests had to be pursued cautiously. The African-American Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, introduced the idea of “transformational diplomacy” as a heuristic device to anchor U.S. policy interests in Africa and to elevate the continent from its peripheral position in “the U.S. spectrum of vital interests” to a more central one (McFate, 2008). The new paradigm enabled the administration to put a benign complexion on its newfound interests in Africa (Rice, 2006; Kfir, 2008; McFate, 2008). As part of the transformational diplomacy, U.S.-Africa relations came to be defined by the three D’s: Diplomacy, Development, and Defense (Rice, 2006; Kfir, 2008; Jaotody, 2008). The diplomacy aspect rehashed the traditional rhetoric about treating African states as equal partners and offering African policymakers new avenues for sustained dialogue with the U.S. on critical issues. The hope was that the new emphasis on regular contact with African policy elites would promote understanding between the U.S. and African governments on shared interests.

The development cluster sought to support African efforts to improve “health, education, democracy, and economic growth and to “prevent problems from turning into crises and crises from turning into conflicts” in Africa (Bush, 2008; Kfir, 2008). An outstanding contribution by the Bush administration was the injection of massive resources into the health sector of Africa’s economies. The Republican-led government first pledged U.S.$200 million towards the Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and followed it up a year later with a U.S.$500 million International Mother and Child HIV Prevention Initiative, which sought to prevent the maternal transmission of HIV (Cook, 2006). In 2003, the Bush White House introduced the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to help people infected with HIV access life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. PEPFAR was expected to disburse about $15 billion over its first five years, but by the end of 2008 it was estimated that the figure had already reached around $25 billion (Lyman and Wittels, 2010). The health initiative of the Bush administration is widely believed to have had a major impact in Africa’s health sector, including helping to halve the incidence of malaria in 15 African countries and saving the lives of thousands of people infected with HIV.

Despite the major financial contributions to health-related areas in Africa, which gave some credibility to the compassionate aspect of Bush’s policies, in reality it was the defense component of the three Ds that mattered the most under President Bush. The Bush government built on the work of its Democratic predecessors, using both bilateral and multilateral channels to develop U.S.-Africa security relations centered on the global war on terrorism. First they put pressure on and provided financial incentives to African governments to enact legislation along the lines of the U.S. PATRIOT Act (Njau, 2003; Sidel, 2006).5 The governments of Gambia, Mauritius, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda did so, but attempts by the governments of Kenya and Namibia to do the same thing were defeated by strong domestic opposition. The Bush administration sought to strengthen the capacity of government agencies in selected African states to fight internationally linked terrorists in their countries, with the governments of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda being the main beneficiaries of this policy (Shady, 2007; Davis, 2007). In 2003, these countries together received over $100 million in currency as well as technical assistance through the U.S.’s East Africa Counter-terrorism Initiative to improve their military capabilities, maritime security, border security, law enforcement capacity, and prosecutorial capacity (Hurley, 2007). They were required to detect and block the movement of personnel, arms, money, and other forms of support from their sources in the Middle East to terrorists in East Africa. The same countries received technical and financial assistance through the United States Safe Skies for Africa Program to improve airport security and safety. Another program, the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI), was introduced in 2002 to assist the governments of Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger to better protect their borders and to enhance the capacities of their security institutions to fight terrorism within the West African sub-region. The program was expanded to include the Sahel sub-region, and renamed the Pan-Sahel Initiative in 2005. Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia were added to the list of states that were assisted in their efforts to police the Sahel sub-region of Africa (Lyman, 2009).

The Bush administration established unprecedented military alliances in Africa to fight specific transnational terrorist groups (Anyaso, 2008; Ward, 2008; Reed, 2008; Ploch, 2009). As part of the counter-terror alliances system in Africa, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) established the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti in 2003, under which about 18 thousand military personnel were deployed to the Horn of Africa between 2002 and 2009. The CJTF-HOA tried to establish military- to-military relations, joint training and exercises with military units in the Horn of Africa and to assist in the procurement of military equipment and the provision of humanitarian assistance in the area. CJTF-HOA personnel provided military support and engaged in joint military exercises with selected military establishments in the Horn; beneficiary states were Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya, and to a lesser extent Burundi, Tanzania, and Rwanda.

The CJTF-HOA forces often patrolled the coast of the Red Sea, gathering intelligence on possible terrorist groups in the greater Horn and watching for terrorist infiltration from the Middle East (Mills, 2007). They also contributed to the peacekeeping activities of the African Union. The U.S. military airlifted Ethiopian peacekeeping forces to Burundi in 2003 and gave technical and intelligence assistance to Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia. In addition, the CJTF-HOA have provided intelligence and other materials to support Ethiopian and Djiboutian security forces in conducting military operations in the Horn of Africa. For instance, they provided intelligence and technical assistance to the Ethiopian forces that invaded Somalia in 2006 to overthrow the Islamic Court Union. On a few occasions the forces have, on their own initiative, engaged in military campaigns in Africa, including the ill-advised March 2008 bombings (ill-advised because they were based on faulty intelligence and resulted in the deaths of civilians) of suspected hideouts of those accused of bombing the United States embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salam in 1998. The bombers were, apparently, not in the area.

The Bush administration established the African Command (AFRICOM) in October 2007 to anchor U.S.-Africa military relations. AFRICOM ended the United States’ long-time practice of dividing its military relations with Africa into three geographic commands: the European Command (EUCOM), the Central Command (CENTCOM), and the Pacific Command (PACOM) (Ploch, 2009).

Contrary to popular perception, the Bush administration took a multilateral approach to developing military relations with Africa (Davis, 2007), using the United Nations system to pressure African states into restructuring their domestic security institutions and enacting legislation to fight transnational terrorist groups. African states were compelled to implement sectoral counter-terrorism agreements developed by UN specialized agencies and the General Assembly (Gioia, 2006). The agreements in question cover counter-terrorism policies against such acts as the hijacking of aircraft, disruption of aviation, endangering maritime navigation, violence at airports, unlawful acts that undermine the safety of fixed platforms located on the continental shelf, crimes against internationally protected persons (such as kidnapping of diplomats), unlawful taking and possession of nuclear material, hostage taking, terrorist bombings, support and funding of terrorist organizations and nuclear bombings by non-state actors.6

The focus of the Bush administration was to ensure that African states put into place mechanisms to either prosecute those accused of committing terror-related crimes or extradite accused persons to states willing to bring them to trial (Davis, 2007). UN agencies such as the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) were persuaded to pay closer attention to the implementation of their legal instruments in Africa. In addition, in the spirit of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy adopted by the General Assembly on September 8, 2006, the Bush White House channelled resources through the UN to strengthen African states’ capacities to address some of the underlying drivers of terrorism.

The Bush government also worked through the Security Council to compel African states to embark on domestic legal reforms and adopt legislation in conformity with Resolution 1373 adopted by the UN Security Council on September 28, 2001 (Rosand, 2003). The resolution required that African countries:

1. 1. freeze financial assets, impose travel bans and deny safe haven to terrorists and their supporters;
2. 2. prevent terrorist recruitment and the supplying of weapons;
3. 3. cooperate with other countries in information sharing and criminal prosecution;
4. 4. sign and ratify the other UN conventions and protocols against terrorism;
5. 5. give all possible assistance to other states to investigate terrorist acts; and
6. 6. file annual reports showing measures undertaken to comply with Resolution 1373.

As part of this process, the U.S., through the UN system, assisted South Africa in establishing the South African Financial Intelligence Centre in 2003 to prevent terrorists from using South Africa’s sophisticated financial system to finance terrorist activities.

To build the capacity of African states to implement the resolution, the Bush administration assisted in mobilizing international resources for the Counter-Terrorism Committee established by Resolution 1373.7 African law enforcement agencies were the main beneficiaries of the work of the Committee. The U.S. government, through the UN, helped governments in eastern and southern Africa to establish the East and South Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group and trained financial investigators to prevent, detect, stop and disrupt the use of money by terrorists to recruit, travel, communicate, train, and execute attacks (Hurley, 2007). The United States government also led efforts to bind African states to other counter-terrorism resolutions, including Resolution 1456, adopted on January 20, 2003, which introduced human rights promotion into counter-terrorism measures; Resolution 1566, adopted on October 8, 2004, which established a working group to consider additional counter-terrorism measures that the Security Council might adopt; and Resolution 1540, adopted on April 28, 2004, which was intended to prevent terrorists from acquiring, using or transferring nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their delivery systems.

The U.S.-Africa relations developed by the Bush administration have been maintained, although the Obama administration will struggle to match its financial commitment. Obama’s promise to double U.S. aid to Africa in the next four years already appears unlikely to be kept. The State Department requested only an 8 percent increase in U.S. aid to Africa for the 2011 fiscal year, while the increase in PEPFAR funding was just 2 percent (Lyman and Wittels, 2010). The contribution by the U.S. to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is $50 million less than the amount earmarked in fiscal year 2010. Some scholars have noted that the Obama administration and U.S. missions in Africa are putting pressure on African governments to absorb into their national budgets some of the HIV/AIDS programs introduced by PEPFAR (Lyman and Wittels, 2010). The reality of U.S. deficits and the constraints it has imposed on the Obama administration have forced President Obama to mix Clintonian cosmopolitanism with a great deal of realism in his approach to foreign policy in general and to Africa in particular.