U.S. AFRICA POLICY:

SOME POSSIBLE COURSE ADJUSTMENT

Ambassador Daniel H. Simpson

August 15, 1994
******

The author wrote this article while serving as the Deputy

Commandant for International Affairs at the U.S. Army War College

and before his assignment to the U.S. Liaison Office in

Mogadishu. The views and opinions expressed are entirely his own

and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of State,

the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the

U.S. Government.

*******

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army

War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013-5050. Comments also may

be conveyed directly to the Director of Research by calling

commercial (717) 245-3234 or DSN 242-3234.
FOREWORD

U.S. relations with Africa have always come low on the list

of overall U.S. foreign policy interests, after Europe, Asia, the

Middle East, and the Americas. This prioritization is logical in

terms of overall global U.S. strategic, political, and economic

interests. At the same time, in a striking anomaly, during 1993

nearly 30,000 members of the U.S. armed forces were deployed in

Africa at one time or another. Army and Marine units were

primarily involved in operations in Somalia that ended March 31,

1994. Within a few months, U.S. forces were involved in a

desperate attempt to provide humanitarian support to war-torn

Rwanda. Africa remains a minefield of issues with the potential

of involving the United States, either bilaterally or through the

United Nations or regional organizations.

Ambassador Daniel H. Simpson addresses the question of U.S.

interests in Africa and past, present, and future U.S. policy

toward that continent of more than 50 countries and 800 million

people on an analytic basis, followed by clear recommendations.

His presentation of U.S. strategic interests in Africa permits

clear analysis of the present and logical planning of future

policy and actions.

His message, in addition to being an introspective

examination of U.S. policy, is forward-looking. He seeks to lay

the basis for a long-term, sustainable U.S. policy toward Africa

based on both solid economic and commercial concerns--Africa as a

supplier and a market--and on the real cultural ties that link

what is core to America and the people of the African continent.

The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this

study in hopes that it may be of assistance to those involved in

the development and implementation of U.S. policy toward Africa.

JOHN W. MOUNTCASTLE

Colonel, U.S. Army

Director, Strategic Studies Institute
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

DANIEL H. SIMPSON served as Deputy Commandant for International

Affairs of the U.S. Army War College from February 1993 until

June 1994. His assignment came in recognition of his long and

distinguished service to the United States. He first went to

Africa following college graduation in 1961 as a teacher at the

Eghosa Anglican Boys' School in Benin City, Nigeria. After

another teaching assignment at the Libyan Army Military College

in Benghazi, Libya, Mr. Simpson joined the U.S. Foreign Service

and has had subsequent overseas assignments in Africa in Burundi,

South Africa, Zaire twice, and as Ambassador to the Central

African Republic, as well as Washington assignments in African

affairs and other overseas assignments in Bulgaria, Iceland, and

Lebanon. Mr. Simpson studied English literature at Yale

University and African Studies at Northwestern University. He

continues to serve the Nation as the U.S. Ambassador to Somalia.
U.S. AFRICA POLICY:

SOME POSSIBLE COURSE ADJUSTMENT

Introduction.

Given the enormous diversity of the African continent, and

the especially daunting economic, social and political problems

its 53 countries and 800 million people present to a policymaker,

it has always been a challenge for the United States to develop

and implement a cogent policy towards Africa. It has always

seemed somehow easier to formulate policy toward Europe, Asia,

the Americas, and the Middle East. Given the complexity that the

multi-piece African mosaic presents, the difficulty in defining

strategic interests on the continent after the Cold War, and the

economic weakness of most of its nations, there has also been

over the years a tendency sometimes to give it a lower policy

priority among regions. I can remember in previous years scanning

hungrily Presidents' State-of-the-Union and foreign policy

speeches and press conferences for reference to and guidance on

African issues. Frequently it was slim pickings. It was with

great interest that I noted that new Presidential National

Security Adviser Anthony Lake made his first public speech in his

new position on the subject of Africa (at Brookings, May 3,

1993), followed quickly by Secretary of State Warren Christopher,

addressing the African-American Institute May 21, 1993, only four

months into the new Administration.

History and Evolution of Current Policy.

It is beyond the scope of this analysis to discuss U.S.

policy toward Africa prior to the 20th century "independence"

period of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Nonetheless, efforts to

make sense of the pre-independence period have not ceased. The

continued primary intention of these efforts is to try to explain

what is going on in Africa now--more precisely usually, what is

going so badly in Africa now--in terms of pre-colonial and

colonial African history. The most recent of these efforts is

Basil Davidson's provocative book, The Black Man's Burden, which

suggests that Africa has been a victim of the framework of the

nation-state, imposed during the colonial period; in Davidson's

view a distinctly un-African and constricting form of

organization of society. This has led, according to Davidson, to

many of the problems that have followed.

It could also be said that the nation-state structure that

Africa inherited from colonial "organization" of the continent

flowed too easily into the Cold War tendency of the rest of the

world to divide nation-states into piles--ours and yours, the

Monrovia group and the Casablanca group, the Marxist-Leninist

states and the "moderates"--characterizations which the Africans

themselves may even have believed to apply, but which

unfortunately also fed an ultimately dangerous tendency on the

part of African states to try to play the West and the East
against each other for aid. It was dangerous in the sense that

the end of the Cold War meant the end of the game and a sense of

relief on the part of those who had been squeezed that the game

was over.

Assassinations and coups across the 30 years until 1990 are

the more dramatic and visible political tracks on the road; more

profound and basically unexamined (if not incapable of study) are

the "what might have been" questions: Would Nkrumah have achieved

greater African unity if it had not been determined that his

"non-aligned" meant "anti-Western" and thus "pro-Soviet"? Of

course, the Soviets played the definitive down-and-dirty trick on

the Africans across the board in exporting their economic system

there, poisoning some African economic wells perhaps for decades

to come.

American policy toward post-independence Africa can be

divided roughly into stages, the last of which are the present

and the future, which is where we will focus. The first of these

took place in the springtime of the early 1960s. The United

States recognized Western Europe's asserted preeminence in

Africa, but, nonetheless, insisted on carrying out President

Roosevelt's and Prime Minister Churchill's pledge in the (1941)

Atlantic Charter to "respect the right of all peoples to choose

the form of government under which they will live." The two

leaders sounded the death knell of colonialism with that

unequivocal affirmation of the right of self-determination.

President Kennedy, a particular hero in Africa, determined to

continue to pursue President Eisenhower's policy of extending

diplomatic recognition to and establishing embassies in the new

African states. And, starting in the fall of 1961, we sent off

our own new Peace Corps volunteers to help the new African

countries cope with their colonial heritage, part of which was a

lack of trained personnel in education, health, and all the basic

services, including governance in general.

This approach to Africa reflected Cold War antagonisms. The

U.N. intervention in the Congo (now Zaire) was the first U.N.

peacekeeping effort in Africa, designed to keep the Soviets out.

Probably the first dose of really cold water was administered to

us by Africans themselves when, on January 13, 1963, Togolese

troops under the leadership of then Sergeant and even now hardy

dictator Gnassingbe Eyadema, cornered independence President

Sylvanus Olympio, despite his efforts to take refuge in the

American Embassy compound, and killed him. Much more of this sort

of unpleasantness was to follow for years, until the end of the

Cold War. The new beginning freed us to begin to determine our

approach to African countries to a much greater degree in terms

of American supported principles of democracy, market economies,

and sensitivity to environmental and human rights concerns.

Current Policy.
These principles are the foundation and framework of the

U.S. African policy in place now. This policy includes active

support of democratization, aid directed toward sustainable

economic development, the building of free market economies,

attention to environmental concerns, respect for human rights,

and an active role for us and others in conflict resolution, when

needed. We seek to strengthen and to work with and through

international and regional political, economic, and financial

institutions. We promote democracy, not just as a system that has

worked for us, but also as a system that encourages the

development of the element of economic accountability that has

been so often missing from governance in Africa. We promote this

approach as an alternative to systems that have failed in Africa

and elsewhere: the one-party state, the military dictatorship,

African or any other socialism, even Empire. It is a decent

policy; it is an American policy.

Nonetheless, problems and some relevant, troubling facts

still remain. Competing interests have translated into generally

decreasing aid levels. In my view, a shift in the level of U.S.

commitment to dealing with the problems of Africa's

ever-increasing number of "failed states" in the face of the U.S.

experience in Somalia is a present fact in looking at immediate

future U.S. relations with African countries. Although in terms

of impact on our population the losses incurred in Somalia

October 3, 1993, were not in the range of the impact of Vietnam

two decades ago, we felt real pain watching what occurred in the

streets of Mogadishu.

Real Premises: A Sound Basis for Policy.

So, U.S. African policy must now, post-Somalia, be based on

more prosaic, but nonetheless real premises, as opposed to the

idea that we have to feed everyone everywhere, that everyone has

the right to live under a democratically-chosen government, one

which is carrying out "sustainable economic development," one

which is sensitive to its national environmental

responsibilities, and interested in conflict resolution in its

own country and elsewhere. This is not to say that we should not

differentiate, or not show preference to countries that take an

approach to governance consistent with our own. We will do that

because we are Americans, in any case. But clearly for now we are

ready to spend much less money, and no American blood, in

implementation of such policy objectives.

Clear Away the Myths.

So what are sound bases for a sustainable U.S. African

policy? One to consider is U.S. strategic interests in Africa.

Conventional wisdom is now that there are none. To examine that

hypothesis, it may first serve some purpose to dispose of a few

myths. (We can always continue to hope slyly that it is no longer

necessary to dispel myths.) Some of these "interests" always were
myths; others were creatures of the Cold War; some others were

used as shorthand by those who liked to believe that the

apartheid regime in South Africa really had "the right approach"

to governing that country.

Geostrategy. One of these myths was the "Cape sea route"

argument, as part of an overall strategic lines of communication

(SLOC) concern. The "Cape sea route" argument was underpinning

for the idea that we needed to cozy up to the white government in

South Africa because otherwise a hostile majority rule government

in South Africa, controlled by Moscow, would install itself on

the Cape of Good Hope and interdict shipping at the intersection

of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The valid part of that

argument was that the Cape of Good Hope did provide a good spot

from which one could possibly track shipping around the Cape, if

one wished to. The really weak part of the "Cape sea route"

interdiction argument was that it conveniently ignored the fact

that some 2,450 miles of blue water lie between the Cape and

Antarctica. Secretary Christopher pronounced the final

benediction on that line of argument in his May 21, 1993 speech:

"Thankfully, we have moved beyond the point of adopting policies

based on how they might affect the shipping lines next to Africa

rather than the people in Africa."

The "interdiction," "strategic lines of communication"

arguments are slightly more valid for the Straits of Gibraltar,

if we consider that passage an African question since one side is

Morocco. There are also the two ends of the Red Sea, accessible

from Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. It is true

that the African continent abuts upon and provides possible

points of interdiction to the Red Sea, with the Suez Canal to the

Mediterranean Sea at the northern end, and with the Bab el Mandeb

at the southern end, with access to the Gulf of Aden and then the

Indian Ocean.

At the same time, these are scarcely "African" questions, in

the sense that our relations with African governments seriously

impact upon them. The Suez, access to which and use thereof is

very old, well-trodden history, is only slightly an African

issue. As for the shores and the other end of the Red Sea at the

Bab el Mandeb, in the wake of the scalded cat reaction of the

world to Iraq's move against Kuwait and its oil and the massive

power so visibly employed against Iraq in the event, it is very

difficult to imagine that the government of a weak African nation

would undertake to levy ransom on or to threaten interdiction of

the Red Sea route. That would have to be the work of a much more

formidable potential adversary. The Red Sea littoral African

states--with the exception of Egypt, which wouldn't--lack the

means now. If the means were acquired, it is hard to imagine that

the world's hand would be stayed for long from simply removing

the means of interdiction quickly and neatly.

A fact of world "choke point" geostrategy, whether it be

with respect to Straits of Gibraltar, the Bab el Mandeb, or any
other geographic feature, is that if a serious enemy were likely

to sink an American ship or a ship of one of our major allies in

one of those places, it would presumably also be willing to sink

one in the North Atlantic or the Western Pacific. And if it did

that, we would have on our hands a completely different strategic

problem, one which would make "control" of an African passage a

marginal issue, if it ever were not.

The only other geographic pieces of possible U. S. strategic

interest in Africa are port access and overflight clearance. But,

in fact, lots of ports up and down the coasts compete for

traffic. The problem there is rather one of infrastructure,

efficiency, and economic interest--a commercial matter post-Cold

War. Overflight clearance is sought, and available, from courtesy

and responsiveness to international practice. What states have

the means to deny it in any case if it were necessary to have?

U.S. Africa policy in any case should have a more solid base than

the transient existence of U.S. "global adversaries," which,

after all, come and go, be they World War I's Central Powers,

World War II's Axis powers, or the Soviet Union. Whatever

geostrategic interests remain after the Cold War, they are much

less relevant than other enduring interests that are a better

basis for continuing American engagement in Africa.

Minerals or Commodities. Then there is the strategic mineral

argument. It is trite but true to say that Africa is a treasure

house of strategic minerals. It has chromium, platinum, cobalt,

copper, zinc, manganese, and oil. In my view, this, however, is

not a "strategic" interest; it is a commercial opportunity.

Africa also has diamonds and gold. It has coffee and cocoa.

At one time a lot of time and energy was devoted by the U.S.

Government and some members of Congress to developing and

maintaining the position that U. S. relations with Africa,

especially with parts of then white-ruled southern Africa--

Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa--should be driven by our

need for access to strategic minerals. For years we defied a U.N.

trading ban on Ian Smith's white minority- ruled Rhodesia because

of its chromium production. One reason we helped Zaire's

President Mobutu keep rebels out of Zaire's Shaba (ex-Katanga)

Province was because of its cobalt production. The idea was,

basically, that if we were denied those sources of those

minerals, we either couldn't get the needed minerals or the

Soviets might tie up the other sources and it would be curtains

for the Western world.

This, too, seems to me to be more of a commercial argument

than a geostrategic one, or, in the case of Rhodesian chrome, a

"code" U.S. politico-racial dispute. That approach reached its

limits of tragicomic potential in Angola, where, for years, Cuban

troops guarded American oil production installations on behalf of

an African Marxist government. A lot of Angola's oil was exported

to the United States; the U.S. companies involved made money. The

Cuban troops were paid for by the American oil revenues. The
Marxist government was kept in power by Soviet and Cuban forces,

which were fighting the ostensibly pro-Western guerrilla

movement, UNITA. UNITA, by the way, at the same time was being

supported in its effort to defeat Cuban, Soviet, and government

forces by the United States and South Africa. It would have made

a good Alec Guinness movie except that so many people got killed

or starved. That one is still going on, of course, even though

the Cold War foundation of it is now long gone.

The bottom line on commodities--and chromium and cobalt are

basically commodities, just like pork bellies and orange juice,

even though they are used for aircraft engines and the like--is

that they are fundamentally a commercial and investment trading

matter. That was probably true even during the Cold War. It is

definitely true now. Zaire's mineral-rich Shaba province was

invaded twice in the late 1970s. Both invasions were very

low-budget operations--guerrillas numbering only in the hundreds,

low-tech armed, badly trained, of unclear genesis, with lots of

reports of money going into the external bank accounts of the

"leadership." Both times the price of cobalt went through the

roof on world markets, in 1978 from $6 to $30 a pound, and those

holding stocks of it or futures in it made a lot of money.

With respect to strategic minerals, as well as to other

commodities, it is also true that availability is a function of

price. For example, no cobalt was produced in the United States

during the period when we were wringing our hands about Zaire and

"access" to its cobalt. At that point we had some 13 cobalt

deposits in the United States that could have been operated

profitably if world cobalt prices had risen to a certain level

(25 percent above what they were at that point). A 25 percent

price rise in cobalt would have added $20,000 to the cost of a

Boeing 747 engine, which cost $8.5 million. I am not sorry to see

African products valued. In fact, it is the trading function in

U.S. relations with Africa that I believe should be emphasized,

if those relations are to be put on a long-term sustainable

basis. But we should be spared (and should have been spared) the

hyperbole on African "strategic minerals." I will add

parenthetically that I am as guilty as anyone else on that score,

having served as U.S. Consul General in Zaire's Shaba Province in

the late 1970s and having reached at that time to the right and

left for creative arguments to support our continued involvement

there.

Pursuing the assault on the "economic denial" argument,

international cartels, even the vaunted OPEC, remain notably

undisciplined and weak. This is a natural result of member

countries' inability not to respond to short-run cash-flow

problems. The idea that a poverty-stricken African country, with

major legitimate social service and infrastructure needs and,

probably, very greedy leadership, would be able to forego

exportation of its major foreign-exchange earner or earners

either to "stiff" the United States politically or to push up the

price to a point damaging to our national security is really a
very difficult case to make. We made it on occasion, faced off

across the world with a Soviet Union in full cry. Now, in my

view, it is truly a dead letter as an argument. The 1994 version

of this old argument is that Russia and South Africa are now

going to form a diamond cartel, with forehead-wrinkling

consequences "for the world." Consider the state of solvency of

the two putative partners as well as the strange bedfellows they

would comprise and the argument collapses. These are commercial

matters, in the hands of people who need money badly, ready to

trade what they have, not even always at a good price.

Grounds for a Sustainable Policy.

So what are the grounds for a solid, interest-based U.S.

African policy, if the old geostrategic, strategic minerals, Cold

War arguments no longer are, or never were, valid? Why do we

concern ourselves with Africa? It is not easy and it is sometimes

dangerous as well as expensive to work there. Why should we do

it?

There are a variety of good answers to this question. Some

of them are positive. One of these is the traditional American

interest in economic and financial opportunities. It would be

folly for a trading country like the United States to ignore

Africa in that regard. Fifteen percent of our imported oil comes

from Africa. It is a largely undeveloped commercial market of 800

million potential consumers. How can we not go after that market?

A second good answer is heritage. This one sometimes gets

hyped and misused. However, it is an indisputable fact that a

good solid percentage of Americans hail from Africa, and our

culture is profoundly shaped by African influences. It is

perfectly legitimate for African-Americans to ask us as a country

to take a special interest in Africa.

A third answer to the question of why we should be

interested in Africa is the human, emotional and sentimental side

to us as a people; us in some ways at our best. We cannot do it

all everywhere in the world--agreed--but it is a good thing that

we still have a heart. I, for one, believe that we were right to

go into Somalia in 1992 to create conditions under which children

no longer starved because of the folly and cruelty of their

elders. (The rest of the Somalia argument is beyond the scope of

this essay.) What will we have come to when we can--as we would

have had to--work our way through an American holiday season with

all its excesses with the spectacle of Somali children starving

for want of our action in front of us? That was much more than

CNN-driven policy. There is and will be misery in Africa. We

can't take care of all of it, or even much of it. But when we can

do something that doesn't put American lives at unreasonable risk

or cost so much money that our involvement will not be

sustainable, we should do so.
There is also another hard, practical reason to be

interested in Africa. It is certainly true that a lot of what

happens there that is bad does not touch us, even the worst of

it. We could thus simply say that Africa's problems are not our

concern. Or, to put it more kindly to us, we could say that many

of Africa's problems are beyond our means to deal with. But it is

also a small world that we live in. Diseases, drugs, terrorists,

and even illegal immigrants do not find our borders much of a

deterrent to entering our country and putting themselves

front-and- center on our agenda.

AIDS is a case for examining the potential of U.S.-African

cooperation. Parts of Africa are ground-zero for AIDS; Africa is

also the place where the origins, pathology, means of prevention,

and the quest for a cure have been able to be pursued most

thoroughly through effective experimentation. It is a sad truth

that the enormity of the tragedy of AIDS in Africa has led in

some cases to a very pragmatic, matter-of-fact approach to the

problem on the part of African governments and public health

authorities.

These are the sorts of reasons why we must be interested in

things African, and have an African policy. We cannot responsibly

not be concerned by phenomena such as nests of terrorism,

uncontrolled immigration, international narcotics trafficking,

weapons of mass destruction in irresponsible or hostile hands,

and mobile plagues. At the same time, I believe firmly that in

the balance of affairs, the positive economic, heritage, and

environmental points weigh infinitely more heavily than the

"threat" elements as a basis for an enduring, sustainable U.S.

African policy.

Building Blocks: It's the Economy.

Let us now consider, in greater detail, some of the positive

and defensive building blocks of such a policy. Looking at Africa

again and again and now in the mid-1990s, I am given to conclude

that, for Africa as for President Clinton's successful 1992

campaign, it's the economy that counts. It is manifestly clear

that President Clinton's Administration, consistent with its 1992

electoral mandate, is concentrating its efforts in general

primarily on U.S. domestic economic and social policy. Put

another way, it could be said that it is seeking to tie our

foreign policy more closely to domestic interests.

Virtually all African countries are potentially valuable

trading partners. Take, for example, the Central African

Republic, certainly correctly rated as one of the poorest

countries on the face of the earth by all contemporary economic

standards. It is also a country that has endured notoriously

irresponsible leadership, most notably the Emperor Bokassa.

Nonetheless, the Central African Republic is well-watered--no

droughts like the Sahel--and fully capable of feeding its
population and producing for agricultural export. It has diamonds

for ready cash. The size of Texas, its population numbers fewer

than three million. In my view, it is the case that,

well-managed, the Central African Republic is capable of

providing a very nice living for its population. From our

perspective, its population represents a small but real market

for American exports. Again, managed well and modernized, its

diamond industry is a small but interesting market for American

mining equipment, a field in which we excel. This is not to

gainsay the country's formidable problems, but most of these are

management/governance problems. The management needs work, but

that is underway. The country held real democratic, multiparty

elections in 1992-93.

One does have to continue to believe that through a

functioning democratic process of governance the element of

economic accountability is introduced to the equation. If the

leadership of the country loots the coffee fund or steals the

diamonds, or, perhaps worse, spends all the country's money to

the benefit of the urban population, or, even worse, to the

benefit of the civil servants, there has to be a means of getting

rid of that leadership, short of a coup d'etat or assassination.

We have to believe that democratic leaders, knowing that they

will face regular elections sooner or later, will behave

differently and run the country in a less self-serving way. The

donors, bilateral and multilateral, will have increasingly to put

teeth into that approach. African leaders must be made to know

that "diverting" national or international resources to their own

personal or ethnic ends means that the gravy train will simply

stop running to their countries. "Donor fatigue" and other

competing demands are forcing sharper donor discrimination

already; that approach--a demand for sound, honest economic

management--must become a principle of economic assistance to

African countries.

It must become the case that an African head-of-state comes

to measure his greatness as a leader by the degree of prosperity

and well-being that his country enjoys under his leadership, not

by the amount of wealth he is able to build up for himself and

his extended family in offshore real estate and bank accounts

during his reign.

Virtually all African countries do have sufficient land and

not so large a population that, again, correctly managed, they

could feed themselves and produce for export. Florists' flowers

are now Kenya's fourth largest foreign exchange earner. Mangoes,

literally falling from the trees all over Africa, sell for 15

French francs ($2.50) each in Paris. Virtually every African

country has some source of ready cash--iron ore, copper, oil,

cobalt, diamonds, bauxite, phosphates, cassiterite, nickel, or

something. Many African economies are one-product operations,

lacking export diversity, thus making them ruinously vulnerable

to world market trends far beyond their control. At the same

time, the market has an answer to that problem, short-term
painful perhaps, but an answer. That is to diversify. Africans

should not moan that no one wants to buy their coffee or cotton

or dream of making the importers pay artificially high prices for

their produce through a cartel or a commodity agreement. Instead,

they should grow something that people do want to buy; or

produce, process and sell what they grow now cheaper.

On a continental basis, there are some very important

relevant facts in the U.S.-African economic relationship. In

general it is fair to say that oil as a commodity catches

American attention. Africa provides 15 percent of U.S. oil

imports; the United States buys 30 percent of Africa's oil

production. The Middle East has 60 percent of the world's oil

reserves, but Africa has 10 percent, more than the CIS states,

including Kazakhstan, a current apple of our oil eye. A dozen

African states produce and export oil; others have unexploited

and probably unexplored or underestimated reserves. High

production costs and/or weak or nonexistent infrastructure leave

these reserves in that state. At the same time, companies and

banks also make money building roads and pipelines so there is no

insurmountable barrier to development in this area. The United

States is a great producer and exporter of oil production and

marketing equipment. A pipeline across Chad involves important

contracts and exports; exploiting Chad's oil means that the

Central African Republic's oil becomes accessible and a

potentially viable investment opportunity.

Developing Africa's oil and other resources in a responsible

way clearly presents important environmental challenges. I

believe that these are challenges that can be met; that, in fact,

are better met. Put another way, better that the environmental

challenges of conserving fauna and flora be met head-on, rather

than that the challenges remain unmet and finally, simply be

finessed as the animals and plants at risk are eliminated from

the face of the earth. This will, in fact, otherwise occur,

through the results of population pressure or civil war. This is

not a chimera; it has happened already in Uganda, Angola, Chad,

Zaire, Rwanda, and other countries. At the risk of being

pigeonholed as hopelessly sentimental, I will recall that when I

first went to Benin City, Nigeria as a teacher, back at the dawn

of time (1961), elephants were considered to be omnipresent,

evil, hungry, dangerous creatures that rampaged through villages

trampling urchins; now there simply aren't any elephants there.

South Africa: Current and Critical.

There is a particularly poignant and urgent element in the

present policy need for the United States to concentrate its

engagement in Africa in the economic realm. To delve into this

issue in what otherwise is a continent-wide approach to U.S.

African policy is, in part, to change diskettes in a major way. 

 It is, however, necessary, for two reasons. First, South Africa,

the issue in question, is at a critical crossroads. Second,
perhaps even more importantly, South Africa's success or failure

may constitute the last chance in decades for Africa to profit,

rather than suffer, from circumstances. Successful South African

negotiation of the difficult transition from apartheid (South

African state racism) to majority rule without destroying the

country's economy gives Africa as a whole the opportunity to

hitch a 20-wheel, fire-belching locomotive to the presently

bumpy, creaking, narrow-gauge African economic train.

The most important part of what is happening in South Africa

in 1994 is, of course, the first multiracial, one-person one-vote

elections ever. Those elections are millennial in their political

impact in South Africa and, in fact, on the African continent and

the world, relegating apartheid to the boneyard of failed,

immoral approaches to human governance. But the hard part starts

as newly-elected President Nelson Mandela begins to try to

govern. The bad news is that governing the new South Africa will

be difficult; the good news is that the changed circumstances

that Mandela's taking office will validate in fact contain within

them the solution to what will be his main problem, how to meet

and fulfill reasonably the economic hopes and aspirations of the

South African population.

At least two fundamental barriers to economic development

and prosperity existed in pre-majority-rule, post-World War II

South Africa. They were, first, the size of the economically

active domestic South African market, and, second, the at least

partial politically-based isolation of South Africa's economy

from the African continental economy. First-class participation

in the domestic economy, in terms of buying power and

capital-generating capacity, resided almost entirely in the South

African white population, at any given time about 15 percent of

the population. In addition, the labor/skills market--from top to

bottom--was skewed grotesquely by apartheid's "job reservation"

laws. (Roughly put, very few blacks, despite their ability, were

in supervisory roles; few whites, without respect to their

competence, were not in supervisory roles. A black doctor could

not supervise a white nurse, for example.) Even the whites were

saved from the long-term development consequences of this

economically- flawed approach only by the existence under the

soil of the country of shocking amounts of gold, diamonds, and

other riches.

The second fundamental barrier to what would have been

normal South African economic development, and to what would have

been normal Africa-wide economic development, was the partial

economic isolation of South Africa from the rest of Africa. This

was the official and basic prevailing state for three critical

decades, from independence until 1990. It is certainly true that

the various economic sanctions imposed by various parties against

trade with and investment in South Africa were always unevenly

enforced and respected. The apples we munched in Lubumbashi came

from the Cape. Even late in the game, some American firms

responded to the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 by
"selling" their assets in South Africa to their local

distributors. At the same time, the "lost opportunity" costs to

South Africa and to the rest of Africa of the relative economic

and commercial isolation of South Africa were formidable. There

is no doubt that the sanctions were seriously instrumental in

finally bringing about political change in South Africa and, in

that sense, were very much worth the candle. On the other hand,

the disengagement from the overall African development process of

the continent's most powerful national economy was very

expensive, to South Africa and to Africa as a whole.

Some of these costs should now be transformed into

opportunities, if it isn't too late and if South Africa's economy

rides out the ongoing political sea change without structural

damage. South African manufactured goods should eventually knock

the socks off French and British imported competition in African

markets. Building and creating the infrastructure to make that

possible should attract and channel investment in South Africa

and in the rest of Africa. America should see this as an

opportunity. Why should African countries always borrow from

international financial institutions or in Europe instead of in

Johannesburg? Why shouldn't African companies be listed on an

African stock exchange? Why should African politicians and

business persons stash their cash in Zurich when it could earn

higher interest, and be plowed back into their own national

economies, through multiracial participatory South African

financial institutions?

The blessing of all this--if it works--is that the possible

surge in South African economic prospects will not only help the

rest of Africa, it will also help solve the new multiracial South

African government's own basic, fundamental problem. That is to

meet the economic aspirations of the now participating majority

of the South African population. This is a very high stakes wager

in that, if it doesn't work this way, the South African economy--

the last national African economy capable of pulling the African

development train--risks slipping into the sad, hopeless cycle of

debt, social decline, and eventual political chaos that prevails

in much of the rest of the African continent.

The Role of the United States.

Where do we come into this? The role of the United States

Government in this enterprise must be basically that of

cheerleader and confidence-builder. We can help with manpower

training in South Africa. We can target what bilateral aid we

still send to Africa as a whole toward the economic integration

of the continent. We can cajole and threaten the international

financial institutions through our large participation in them to

row in that same direction with us. The real key, however, is

American business, American private enterprise, American banking,

that hardy band of former Yankee traders who, in their economic

approach to Africa, have generally in recent years shown the
derring-do of an 85-year-old figure skater considering a triple

axel. There is reason to hope, however, that they will be driven

by a nose for profit, if not by heritage or farsightedness, to

interest themselves in South Africa and Africa, with equity

investments as well as with the normal, sometimes ghoulish

concerns with gold and diamonds that fascinate the world economy.

African nations have breathtaking amounts of foreign debt on

the books. African debt constitutes 106 percent of African Gross

Domestic Product (GDP); the debt of Latin American countries

represents 37 percent of Latin American GDP. What to do about

African debt is difficult. Private financial institutions have

written it off. Most debt to governments has been forgiven. But

the West loaned them the money. And sometimes the circumstances

of the loans were seamy--bribes, repayment agreements tied to

particular revenues, endless "studies" and "consultancies"; in

effect, the moral equivalent of taking French, British or

American money out of one pocket and putting it into another, the

cash having passed only figuratively through country "X" as

"development." A loan requires two parties. So just cancel and

forget all of it, but loan no more unless the request comes from

a creditworthy private investor and not a government, and unless

the viability of the investment is crystal clear. There has to be

credit available for development to occur, but the track record

of the past 30 years makes it painfully clear that "concessional

terms" are basically a concession only to our paternalism, their

leaders' greed, and our common folly. "Donor fatigue" is real.

Africa and we have squandered 30 years worth of good will. We

can't afford any more. Africa can't afford any more.

U.S. Policy: Some Course Adjustment Needed.

So where does this put us exactly in terms of concrete U.S.

policy, as it stands at present and what should be done to change

it? First of all, with respect to South Africa, we have grasped

the picture. Hard on the heels of the removal of sanctions,

African National Congress President Nelson Mandela's unequivocal

declaration in September 1993 that sanctions were, in fact, no

longer necessary, and Mandela's and President De Klerk's plea for

full U.S. participation in the South African economy, U.S.

Commerce Secretary Ron Brown led an important and highly visible

mission to South Africa to try to kick-start U.S. economic

involvement in post-apartheid South Africa. The New York Times of

January 9 proclaimed, "Foreigners Flock Back to Johannesburg" and

consumer-vulnerable companies such as Sara Lee, Honeywell, and

Proctor & Gamble are back into South Africa. One senses that a

lot of the heat in Johannesburg is being generated by

speculation, rather than by solid, long-term equity investment,

and that there is still quite a bit of "wait and see" about

investors' approach to South Africa. At the same time, the main

point is that they are there, with a basically positive attitude.

The fact that they are there in a tentative mode should have a

sobering effect on all political elements in the country. All
South Africans should understand--and I believe that many do--

that for the economic dreams of all of them to be realized, for

everyone to live well from the very profitable enterprise that

South Africa can be, the political transition must occur without

leaving broken glass all over the floor.

If we accept that the road of a predominantly economic U.S.

involvement in Africa is the right one--in fact, the only one

that is viable and sustainable in post-Cold War U.S. political

terms--as well as being the approach that is best for Africa

itself, in terms of enabling its resources to be engaged in

meeting its peoples' needs and aspirations, then the United

States needs to pursue it more vigorously. This would

significantly complement our interests in peacekeeping,

peace-enforcing, peacemaking, and peace operations.

The Somalia problem has so far absorbed by all accounts a

good $2 billion since it started in 1992. Somalia has seven

million people. U. S. economic aid to Africa in 1994 will come in

under $800 million. The problem of Liberia, with 2.5 million

people, is getting another $30 million poured on it by us in 1994

under a new program. Africa has 800 million people. There are a

number of countries where things are going well, or could be

going well. The message that we may be delivering to African

countries is, basically, "If you want our attention, and, in

particular, our money, fight among yourselves to the point where

economic activity becomes no longer possible and your people flee

and then starve. Oh, and be sure that CNN knows."

We cannot be blind to suffering. We would not be the people

that we are if we were. But Americans' patience is always thin

and our attention span short. The American taxpayer's patience is

especially thin at a time when we are being asked by our

leadership to look at ambitious new approaches to our own social

problems.

In my view, purely and simply, the message of U.S. economic

assistance to Africa, through bilateral and multilateral means,

should be that we help those who take a constructive approach to

building their own countries. That approach does not mean

disengagement from Africa. In fact, some countries are on the

right track with respect to economic development and responsible

government. Some which come to mind as in decent political health

or on the road to it and seriously interested in economic

development are Benin, Botswana, Eritrea, Kenya, Tanzania,

Uganda, Mauritius, Malawi, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Cote d'Ivoire,

Mali, Niger, Cape Verde, Senegal, Ghana, and, possibly, Nigeria,

if one accepts that a country of that size and population with

its diverse groups and wealth is difficult to rule cogently. True

Africanists will now be able to tear my thesis apart with cases

of individual countries either included or excluded, but I would

nonetheless maintain that we can differentiate between those

roughly on the right track, and those clearly not. In fact, that

is what the American taxpayer pays Africanists to do. The fact
that we have not always done so skillfully may be part of the

eternal problem of trying to hoist Africa higher in the American

foreign policy pecking order. We have sometimes succeeded in

convincing our people that they should pour their money down a

particular rat hole. That we have done so may have been a tribute

to our eloquence or persuasive powers, but we are now harvesting

the reaction in the form of sometimes indifference and resistance

to involvement in Africa in general on the part of the American

public.

U.S. Structural Adjustments Needed.

While we are hard at work, we should look at a couple of

organizational problems, also in the conduct of U.S. relations

with Africa, that some have suggested need to be fixed in the

name of efficiency, logic, and principle. After the 1973

Arab-Israeli war, the Department of State removed the North

African countries--Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya--from the

jurisdiction of the Bureau of African Affairs and put them into

the then Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs. Those

countries were involved in the Arab/Israel question, a matter of

primordial concern to us, as Arab, "Middle Eastern" countries;

thus, logic in conducting relations with them was based on that

aspect of their nature. Their inclusion with other Arab League

states in that Department of State bureau made administrative as

well as policy sense at that time.

Twenty years later, it may be that that division of

responsibility for countries within the Department of State is

now in fact archaic and the North African countries should be

"returned" to the African continent in terms of the conduct of

U.S. foreign policy. With the forward movement toward success in

the Middle East peace negotiations that has been achieved,

whether the Maghreb states, firmly on the African continent after

all, are lumped with Near Eastern countries or African countries

in terms of carrying out U.S. policy is no longer the major

question that it was in 1973.

There is another aspect to the matter. The line drawn below

North Africa on the State Department map roughly divides "Arab"

North Africa from black, "sub-Saharan" Africa. Elsewhere in the

Department of State such differentiation does not exist.

Australia and New Zealand are part of the Bureau of East Asian

and Pacific Affairs. The "Near East" and "South Asia" parts of

the old Bureau of Near East and South Asian Affairs were split

into two separate bureaus at Congressional behest in 1993,

presumably at least partly in the name of geographic logic.

Canada remains part of the Bureau of European Affairs rather than

the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, but one wonders how long

that will last as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

is expanded and Canada itself takes a greater interest and role

in the Organization of American States (OAS), linking to a

greater degree U.S. relations with Canada to our relations with
Mexico and other countries in the Americas.

I believe that it is now time, with the Middle Eastern

question on the way to resolution and with the need to tightly

coordinate U.S. relations with all the Arab nations diminished by

the end of the Cold War, to consider restoring the geographic

logic and integrity of the term "African affairs" by transferring

responsibility for the conduct of U.S. relations with the North

African nations back to the Bureau of African Affairs. All of

this reorganization may seem a bit arcane. At the same time,

anyone who has ever worked in an organization knows well that the

structure of an organization determines the locus of

responsibility and power--in fact, the logic of the body.

Some observers have noted that the same cognitive dissonance

exists in the organization of U.S. military relations with

Africa. Africa now falls under the purview of several commands,

several commanders-in-chief. Part of it belongs to the European

Command (EUCOM), part of it belongs to the Central Command

(CENTCOM), and part of our activities in Africa fall under the

authority of our Special Operations Command (SOCOM). I am not

aware that these commands step on each other's feet and I

hesitate at the thought of creating another command in the face

of budget cuts and "reorganizing government," but it is

nonetheless the case that Africa is the sole continent which does

not have a U.S. command specifically responsible for coordinating

and carrying out U.S. military activities within it. In my view

that does not make sense, particularly considering the level of

our recent activities in Africa--in Somalia, in Rwanda, in Kenya,

and elsewhere. The new Africa Command (AFCOM) should be based in

the continental United States, for purposes of economy and

because it would not be obvious in any case where in Africa such

a headquarters should be based. This would not be unprecedented:

CENTCOM is based in Tampa, Florida; the Pacific Command, in

Honolulu; and SOUTHCOM, for Central and South America, is

presently based in the Canal Zone of Panama, with thought being

given to a move to the continental United States as 1999 and the

handover of U.S. installations in Panama to the government of

Panama draw closer. AFCOM would have a staff, but no specific

forces assigned to it.

Thus, I put forward for consideration one major substantive

and two organizational course adjustments of current U.S. Africa

policy. The substantive one is a shift away from crisis-oriented

attention and aid to Africa, to a dollars-and-cents, "Africa as a

financial and commercial opportunity" approach to the continent.

I believe that such a policy is the only long-term sustainable

American approach to Africa. The two structural changes that I

suggest we look at include moving the Maghreb states back into

the Bureau of African Affairs of the Department of State and

mounting a new U.S. military joint command, AFCOM, based in the

United States, to coordinate and be responsible for all U.S.

military involvement in Africa. I believe that these two

structural changes are suggested by logic, efficiency, and
principle in the conduct of U.S. relations with Africa.

Vision.

What should be our long-range vision of Africa and U.S.

relations with the countries that together comprise the

continent? First, it should be that each African country governs

itself in such a way that its people live a decent life from the

land and resources available to it. A decent life is hard to

define, but its obvious components include education, health, the

free exercise of human rights, a functioning system of justice,

and distribution of wealth that does not include extremes that

polarize, but does provide incentives to achieve. African

countries should live at peace inside themselves and with each

other. They should cooperate fruitfully in economic and political

forums, realizing economies of scale and infrastructure whenever

possible, to seek to improve the lot of each of them.

African nations should be responsible citizens of the

planet, acting as conscientious conservators of the portion of

the environment that they occupy. African nations should be

responsible participants in commonly agreed upon international

undertakings, including peace operations when necessary. They

should take a particular responsibility for maintaining order on

the African continent, as much as possible, keeping the peace

among themselves. The rest of the world does not have much means

for it.

What should Africa be for the United States? It can and

should be an interesting and reliable economic partner. We have

things we wish to buy from Africa, we have savings to invest in

Africa, and we have products we wish to sell to Africa. It should

be a place where African-Americans in pursuit of their heritage,

American missionaries, scientists, researchers and

conservationists interested in Africa, and just plain American

tourists wanting to show their children Africa can go and travel

in peace and security, as free as is possible of danger from

disease or violence. We want Africa and Africans to do well. We

want African nations to be strong, healthy, prosperous neighbors

and partners in the world. Obviously, a long way remains to go in

that regard for that state to prevail across the continent, but

despair in the face of disparity between actual circumstances and

what one seeks to bring about is never justified; realism is, and

upon that basis future U.S. policy toward Africa should be

constructed. It can be done.
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Richard A. Chilcoat

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Colonel John W. Mountcastle

Director of Research

Dr. Earl H. Tilford, Jr.

Author

Ambassador Daniel H. Simpson

Editor

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Secretaries

Mrs. Eva M. Dougherty

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mr. Daniel B. Barnett

Cover Artist

Mr. James E. Kistler