US Sending More Troops to Africa to Offset China's Influence

Carter Ham, the outgoing commander of the U.S. Africa Command, recently said that if they are not suppressed, the expanding African Islamic extremist forces will pose a huge threat to the United States. It’s not hard to understand from this that Ham is trying to appeal for more troops to be sent to Africa.

Despite establishing AFRICOM in 2007, the United States military still insisted that it had no real plans to establish a base or send troops there. But now, the military holds at least 10 military bases in Africa and has about 5,000 military personnel deployed in the region. The United States Air Force also intends to establish four bases there; the Navy is increasing its involvement on the eastern and western coasts of Africa. With this amount of involvement in the region, who does the military think it is trying to fool?

The fight against terrorism is a direct and practical consideration of the United States in Africa. After the events of the Arab Spring, regimes in Egypt, Libya and other countries collapsed, leaving North Africa with minimal leadership. Extremist Islamic forces with terrorist tendencies began to rapidly spread in the region. In 2012, the Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad, better known as Boko Haram, carried out dozens of terrorist attacks in Central and West Africa. At the beginning of 2013, extremist groups in Mali created a lot of ruckus and Algeria had a hostage crisis, making North Africa the center of global terrorism. Especially after the attack on the U.S. ambassador to Libya in Benghazi in September of last year, the United States issued an initiative to put more troops in Africa. In December of 2012, the Associated Press disclosed that a U.S. Army brigade would begin sending teams into 35 African nations in early 2013. By 2014, the United States Army will have prepared an additional two brigades to be sent to Africa. In February of this year, the soon-to-be-appointed commander of AFRICOM, David Rodriguez, wrote in a statement addressed to the Senate Armed Services Committee to increase the military intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance mission efforts in Africa by 15 times.

Implementation of Western values is yet another motivation for the U.S. military to increase involvement in Africa. In the international area, the United States has always pushed the so-called liberal democratic values as a part of their foreign policy, whether it was Clinton’s expansion strategy or Bush’s “Greater Middle East Initiative.” The Obama administration cannot afford to allow other values enter the Middle East or North Africa. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton visited Africa in 2009 and emphasized the importance of good governance in African countries. Some analysts believe that this was not completely unrelated to the outbreak of the Arab Spring and that the United States helped fuel and incite the revolution. One book about the background of the Arab Spring revealed how social media was utilized to promote the Arab revolution. Despite the regime changes in Egypt and Libya and the situation in Syria being stalled, the United States still continued to send troops to Africa to undoubtedly protect and promote its democratic values.

Offsetting China’s influence in Africa is also an important consideration for the United States. In recent years, with the continuous development of China’s relations with Africa, China’s influence in Africa is expanding rapidly. Politically, China’s partnership with many countries in Africa is very welcoming and trusting. Economic trade between China and Africa in 2012 totaled nearly $200 billion, almost twice the trade between the United States and Africa. In terms of culture, the Confucius Institute and other Chinese institutions began to take root in Africa. Possibly jealous of China’s rapidly expanding influence in Africa, many departments in the U.S. government have agreed to try to curb the interests and influences of China in Africa. Due to the open door policy, the usual practice of the United States is to use its military means to defend their economic interests. As one German radio station said, the United States wants to use “hard power” to offset China’s “soft power.”

Senator John McCain, in evaluation of Obama’s authorization to send troops to Uganda, said, “I worry about with the best of intentions we somehow get engaged in a commitment that we can’t get out of.” Recalling the situation regarding the United States in Somalia, McCain’s concerns are not unreasonable.