Abstract
Before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States, Africa seemed destined to remain at best peripheral to the strategic landscape as most Americans perceived it. Promising a realist-oriented foreign policy while campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush responded negatively to a question from PBS’s Jim Lehrer about whether Africa was a significant factor in his geopolitical calculus: “At some point in time the president’s got to clearly define what the national strategic interests are, and while Africa may be important, it doesn’t fit into the national strategic interests, as far as I can see them.”1 After 9/11, however, reversing course and deeming Africa as an increasingly important “second front” in the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) through whose optic many of them now viewed the world, U.S. policymakers from the president down began building entirely new framework for engaging the continent through overlapping networks of ties that will have profound political, economic, and military implications for years to come.
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Notes
Princeton N. Lyman, “A Strategic Approach to Terrorism,” in Africa-U.S. Relations: Strategic Encounters, ed. Donald Rothchild and Edmond J. Keller (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006), 49.
See J. Peter Pham, “Next Front? Evolving U.S.-African Strategic Relations in the ‘War on Terrorism’ and Beyond,” Comparative Strategy 26, no. 1 (2007): 39–54.
See Guido Steinberg and Isabelle Werefels, “Between the ‘Near’ and the ‘Far’ Enemy: Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Mediterranean Politics 12, no. 3 (2007): 407–413.
See Shaul Shay, Somalia between Jihad and Restoration (Edison, NJ: Transaction, 2008).
See Frederick Cedoz, Robert E. Heiler, William E. Lewis, Tyson King Meadows, and Paul Michael Wihbey, Breaking the Oil Syndrome: Responsible Hydrocarbon Development in West Africa (Washington: Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, 2005).
See J. Peter Pham, “The Battle for Nigeria,” The National Interest 88 (March/April 2007): 97–100.
See J. Peter Pham, “China’s African Strategy and Its Implications for U.S. Interests,” American Foreign Policy Interests 28, no. 3 (May/June 2006): 239–253
J. Peter Pham “India’s Expanding Relations with Africa and Their Implications for U.S. Interests,” American Foreign Policy Interests 29, no. 5 (September/October 2007): 341–352.
See Stephen Ellis, “Briefing: The Pan-Sahel Initiative,” African Affairs 103, no. 412 (July 2004): 459–464.
Robert E. Gribbin, “Implementing AFRICOM: Tread Carefully,” Foreign Service Journal 85, no. 5 (May 2008): 31
Sean McFate, “U.S. Africa Command: Next Step or Next Stumble?” African Affairs 107, no. 426 (January 2008): 111–120.
See Benedikt Franke, “Enabling a Continent to Help Itself: U.S. Military Capacity Building and Africa’s Emerging Security Architecture,” Strategic Insights 6, no. 1 (January 2007): 1–13.
Edmond J. Keller, “Africa and the United States: Meeting the Challenges of Globalization,” in Africa-U.S. Relations: Strategic Encounters, ed. Donald Rothchild and Edmond J. Keller (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2006), 13.
See Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The Means of Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004), x.
See Larry Diamond, Prospects for Democratic Development in Africa (Stanford: Hoover Institution, 1997).
See Steven W. Hook, “Ideas and Change in U.S. Foreign Aid: Inventing the Millennium Challenge Corporation,” Foreign Policy Analysis 4, no. 2 (2008): 147–167.
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Random House, 1999), 157.
See Herman J. Cohen, “In Sub-Saharan Africa, Security Is Overtaking Development as Washington’s Top Policy Priority,” American Foreign Policy Interests 30, no. 2 (March 2008): 88–95.
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© 2009 Matthew J. Morgan
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Pham, J.P. (2009). The New Strategic Importance of Africa. In: Morgan, M.J. (eds) The Impact of 9/11 on Politics and War. The Day that Changed Everything?. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623712_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230623712_19
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