American Enterprise Institute

September 20, 2007

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

8:30 a.m.	Registration and Breakfast
9:00		Panel I: What’s New about AFRICOM and What’s Not?
	Panelists:	Gen. James L. Jamerson, U.S. Air Force (Ret.), Lockheed Martin Corporation
		Theresa M. Whelan, U.S. Department of Defense
		Paul Wolfowitz, AEI
	Moderator:	Thomas Donnelly, AEI
10:30		Panel II: African Security Priorities
	Panelists:	Lt. Gen. Tsadkan Gebretensae, Center for Policy Research and Dialogue, Addis Ababa James Kimonyo, Embassy of Rwanda
		Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Department of State Brig. Gen. Robert Winful, Ghana Armed Forces
	Moderator:	Mauro De Lorenzo, AEI
Noon		Luncheon and Panel III: Models of U.S.-African Security Cooperation
	Panelists:	Lt. Gen. Daniel I. Opande, Kenya Armed Forces (Ret.)
		Brownie J. Samukai, Liberian Ministry of Defense
		Michael L. Smith, U.S. Department of State
	Moderator:	Mauro De Lorenzo, AEI
2:00 p.m.	Adjournment

Proceedings:

Panel I: What’s New about AFRICOM and What’s Not?

Thomas Donnelly:  We shall begin.  On behalf of the American Enterprise Institute and on behalf of my partner in crime here, Mauro de Lorenzo, I would like to welcome you.  My name is Tom Donnelly.  I do defense and national security work here at AEI and we are very pleased to welcome everybody to our seminar conference today, trying to investigate just what the nature of US-AFRICOM, US - Africa Command is likely to be.

Just very quickly, to offer some stage setting remarks, I’m very pleased to see attendance at such an overflow level.  The news of AFRICOM’s impending partial birth, or whatever exactly the creation of a sub-unified command should be described as, has been somewhat subsumed in the flood of war reports from Iraq and Afghanistan.  But it is still a huge deal.  It is not very often that the United States creates new theater military commands and when it does, it is often in response to some great cataclysm or disaster.  What is now US Central Command was a creation resulting from the many unfortunate events of 1979: the Iranian hostage crisis, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, seizure of the Grand Mosque, a band of Sunni revolutionaries, and the rise to power of the then relatively unknown tough guy by the name of Saddam Hussein.  And more recently the creation, for example, of Northern Command was a response to the attacks of 9/11.  And even the few sub-unified commands we still have, like US Forces Korea, were created in response or in the aftermath of a war.

So AFRICOM does not seem to fit the pattern yet it is pretty clearly still a major event and in a major [indiscernible] reflects a new and profound commitment of the United States to African security.  It may also represent a new course for American strategy in policy toward the continent sort of collectively and towards the individual states of Africa, where our approach during the Cold War was largely again subsumed or driven, sometimes rather blindly, by the need to contain and then to roll back Soviet influence.

And since then we have too often ignored just the fundamental politics of African states and in the continent.  And those politics have produced a number of sizable wars and reintroduced the term “genocide” to Western vocabularies.  Or too frequently we have flirted with a kind of patronizing form of humanitarianism.  So possibly the advent of AFRICOM heralds a new, for want of a better term, normalization of American policy and strategy towards Africa in a way that may benefit both the United States and the people of Africa.

So I hope in some sense that is what our efforts today are about.  We have three panels, as you will know from reading the program.  Our first panel is to help define what AFRICOM may be, what it is now, what it is not going to be; there have been a huge amount of rumor mongering about what kind it is going to be.  And we are going to talk a bit about the background of US security policy [sounds like] towards Africa.  How did we get to the moment where we created AFRICOM? 

And then our second panel will be kind of look at some African perspectives on this.  This is an element in the new American approach of building partnerships.  So when you are building a partnership that implies that your partner has an equal voice and a common purpose.  And then, finally, we will look a little bit more deeply at questions of African security and politics in the final panel.

The batting order for this panel will begin with Theresa Whelan, current Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs in the Pentagon and someone who is as deeply involved with the creation of AFRICOM as anybody has been.  I’m not going to read her entire bio nor of any of the other panelists, but Theresa has been a distinguished civil servant for many years.

Following Theresa will be General James Jamerson who is, I think in his final posting, the Deputy European Command to D.C. [sounds like] in Europe, and the officers who have held that post have often essentially had the African portfolio.  So in some sense you might say he commanded AFRICOM before there was an AFRICOM.

And finally we will hear from our new AEI colleague, Paul Wolfowitz, who will talk a bit about the nexus of development policy and security policy which is a key issue, certainly, for Africa Command but also has been an important political issue on the continent for many decades now.  And if there is anybody who understands that nexus, I cannot think of anybody who understands it better than Paul.

So that is what we have on offer here in the first panel.  And without further ado I would like to turn it over to Theresa.

Theresa Whelan:  Thanks Tom.  Well, I am from the Department of Defense so I do have a PowerPoint slide but it is only one PowerPoint slide.  So, that is right.  But hopefully, it will prove that we are able to not have to speak entirely to slides.  But I will speak to each one of the bullets.

I think one of the biggest problems that we have had since we began discussing the command and what our intent was in establishing the command, what the Secretary of Defense’s intent was and the President’s intent was I think dealing with myth versus reality.  And many things I think quickly became misconstrued and pulled out of context in this current world media environment, which I think happens quite frequently.  So I think one of the main thing that I wanted to do this morning is address, essentially, what is new and what is not or sort of the realities and the myths behind the Africa Command.

With regard to the what is new, well, the command itself, having a single command for Africa clearly is new.  For those of you that are not familiar, we divide currently Africa up among three different commands:  Specific Command, Central Command and European Command.  That has been the case since 1983.  And much of that was due -- the division was due to our perspective at the time in 1983 of Africa looking at it through a very Cold War-based lens.  That organizational model worked for us in the 1980s.  But after the Cold War ended, we began evolving our thinking about the role of the continent vis-à-vis US security.  And I think that our thinking on that has progressed to the point where Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld last year instructed us to explore the possibility of actually reorganizing the unified command plan and creating a single command for the continent, where we would have a single four-star that could focus entirely on the continent as opposed to three four-stars who had other responsibilities other than Africa and of necessity, quite frequently, got distracted by those responsibilities.

So that is clearly new.  A single command headed by a four-star to focus on all of Africa except for Egypt.  And Egypt is essentially going to be in a unique position -- because of its unique position globally and in the international security environment in that it will remain underneath CENTCOM but it will have a relationship with the Africa Command as it relates to African security issues.  So it is essentially cross-hatched, but everything else will fall under the Africa Command to include combined joint task force more of Africa currently located in Djibouti.

Another thing that is new is the integration as we say of skills of various US government agencies into the commands.  We have in our planning to have a very high percentage of civilians in this command as compared with other existing unified commands.  And we hope that there are a significant percentage of those civilians will actually be civilians from the inter-agency, from other US departments, from State Department, from Treasury, from Commerce, from USAid, et cetera.

In fact, this command will be unique in that it will have a deputy - it has two deputies actually - and one of the two deputies will be a State Department official, a US ambassador, and responsible primarily for the theater security cooperation activities of the command.  So the command will also have a political adviser as all commands do.  So we will have both the political adviser and a civilian deputy from the State Department.

We have several other senior executive service level, SES level, positions that have offered to other elements of the interagency as positions that they could nominate candidates to fill.  We also, below that level, intend and hope that we will have the interagency sending us appropriately skilled qualified people to service detailees to the command and serve with the command for a period of two or three years, bringing their skills sets, their knowledge base to the command.

This does not represent an acquisition by the command of authority.  It represents simply an acquisition of knowledge.  We are not -- many people have accused us of attempting to use the Defense Department and this command to control the interagency and US foreign policy approach to Africa.  And this is not the case at all.

The reason that we want these people into the command is that they will bring valuable skill sets and valuable knowledge that will help DOD do its mission, not Commerce’s mission, not Treasury’s mission, not USAid’s mission, but its mission in Africa better.  And the reason that we believe that we need this knowledge base and these skill sets in order to do the DOD mission, is that increasingly we have found lessons learned through the decade of the 90’s in Africa, in the Balkans, even in the last years in Afghanistan, in Iraq, that you cannot promote stability and security successfully in a vacuum.  Stability and security are interlinked with other elements such as good governance, the rule of law, economic opportunity, et cetera.  Those things are not DOD’s mission; however, if DOD is to be successful in carrying out its mission, it needs to be able to work in an integrated cooperative fashion with those agencies who have those missions.  And so the best way in our minds to achieve that level of integration and cooperation is to bring knowledge into the department in order to facilitate that, but not authority, just knowledge.

Third bullet talks about a more holistic and streamlined approach and that goes to actually some of what I just mentioned in terms of integrating ourselves better, in being a better supporting element using the DOD terms of supported and supporting.  We see ourselves in the command as a supporting element of US Foreign Policy.  And through this single command for the 53 countries of the African continent and its associated island nations, we believe that we will -- our more holistic unified approach will make us more effective supporting player in the system.

The other piece that is new is essentially the focus of the mission.  The nickname for the unified commands or the combatant commands has also been the war-fighting commands.  These commands were developed to fight and win the nation’s wars, traditionally.  However, what we are doing with regard to AFRICOM is we are turning that mission statement upside down.  Instead of saying that war fighting is the primary mission of the command and that all other things, such as theater security cooperation and building partnerships, that all other things are subordinate to that war-fighting mission and must facilitate that war-fighting mission.  We are flipping the equation around and we are saying that the primary mission of this command is to focus on building security capacity in Africa so that Africans can manage their own security challenges and not essentially be importers of security from the international community.

 We want Africans -- ideally it would be great if Africans could join the international community and be able to export security.  But at a minimum, what we hope is that African nations will be able to manage security in their own territorial waters, in their own land territories, in their own regions and then also across the continent.

So that is the primary objective of this command.  It is not to fight and win wars on the continent as many have accused us of having designs to do.  We do not anticipate having to do that on the continent.  And so that is why we are flipping this command’s mission statement and putting theater security cooperation and capacity building as the number one mission for the command.

So those are all the things that are different.  What are the things that are not different and that are going to stay the same?  The first thing that is going to stay the same our chief of mission authorities in the individual countries in Africa and the role of the ambassador as the President’s representative in those countries.  The creation of Africa Command does not, in any way, subordinate US ambassadors to the command or the Department of Defense or put the commands in any position to be able to dictate to those ambassadors what they will or will not do.  The command, just like UCOM today, CENTCOM today, PACOM today, to the extent that PACOM does much in its part of the African AOR, but the command will continue to be a supporting element to those ambassadors as regards to our peacetime mill to mill relations with the countries in which those ambassadors serve.

The second piece of that, of course, is foreign policy will continue to be executed through and led by the Department of State.  Again, one of the things we have been accused of is militarizing US foreign policy by the creation of this command, that this command will essentially begin to dominate US foreign policy on the continent.  The opposite is actually true.  If you look at the focus of US policy towards Africa in the last five to seven years, the bulk of our efforts on the continent are focused on non-security areas.  And if you want to look at it in numbers terms, the United States spends on average $9 billion a year in non-security programs in Africa.  We spend on security programs $250 million as compared to $9 billion.  That emphasis is not going to change.

We will continue to see the bulk of our foreign policy in Africa focused on non-security issues.  However, as I said before, we have recognized that if you want, if countries in Africa are to be able to develop successfully, they must have at least some semblance, some minimal semblance of secure and stable environment that is sustainable over the long haul.  And so therefore, we believe that DOD has an important supporting role to play in that overall US foreign policy that is focused on economic development, good governance and promoting the rule of law.

The other that will not change is African leadership on continental security issues.  That was the other thing that we were accused of.  They said we were going to come in and we were going to tell all the African countries how to do business.  And that is patently untrue.  And what we have tried to make clear in the consultations that we have done with the African countries in Africa and also in other venues is that we are very, very supportive of the leadership role that the Africans themselves are taking in trying to develop their own vision for their security in the 21st century.

We are particularly supportive of the African Union and the African Union’s vision for security in Africa in the 21st century.  And what we want to do actually is support that vision.  A core element of that vision on the security side is the development of an African standby force and supported by African standby brigades that are based in each of Africa’s five major regions.  And we have made it very clear that our intent with the Africa Command is not to come in and reinvent the wheel or provide some American solution to the African security problems, but rather to take what the Africans have already built and essentially assist them in making it a reality.  So they will continue to dictate the course of African security priorities on their continent and our hope is that we can simply help them in achieving those goals.

Other things that will not change - current programs, activities, bilateral relationships - all of that will remain the same, obviously provided that the countries that we have those relationships want to continue those relationships.  If they want to change, then we will change.  But if they do not want to change, if they like our current relationship, then we intend to maintain that.

The other thing that will not occur and will stay the same is that we will have no bases with the one exception of our forward operating site in Djibouti, which has been in existence now since 2002.  We will have no new bases and we will not be deploying forces or basing US forces on the African continent.  We have been in the process, over the last 78 years of actually pulling US forces back to the United States from places that they had been based historically overseas.  There is no intent on the Department’s part to reverse that process and start basing troops in Africa. 

We will have a presence on the continent, but presence will be in some ways similar to our current presence on the continent in the form of staff officers.  We have defense attaches and security assistance officers that are located in a number of countries in the continent already, and we hope to increase the presence of those defense attaches and security assistant - and in particular the security assistance officers - on the continent.  We also intend that the command will have a staff presence on the continent in locations which would allow those staff to facilitate our working relationships with each different region and our support of the African standby brigade concept.

We estimate that no more than 20 percent of the entire command will actually be physically present on the continent and maintain a presence on the continent.  Roughly 80 percent of the command will be off the continent.  So our presence will be small.  This is something that we have discussed with the African nations and they were very supportive actually despite what you read in the press of the concept of presence.  In fact, many of them reacted by saying, “Well, maybe if you guys actually lived here on the continent with us you might start to understand what the challenges are that we face and not sort of bring your Western perspectives, but begin to understand a little bit better where we are coming from.”  We sort of had to agree with them.  So, in any case, that is the purpose of the presence.

The last thing which will not change in any significant way, shape or form, at least immediately, is that our security policy priorities vis-à-vis Africa will remain the same.  They are -- we take those policy priorities from NSPD 50, National Security Presidential Directive 50, which was signed up just this past year which outlined overall US strategy for Africa.  And there is a security component of that. 

It has the United States focusing on developing capacity in Africa for secure and stable environments for peacekeeping, and also what we call an African Maritime Governance initiative to help African nations gain a control over their territorial waters and in order to be able to take advantage of the rich economic resources that come from them and also to stem the illegal activities that take place in African territorial waters.

So I think I probably ran over my time just a little bit and I apologize.  I was not paying attention to my watch but anyway, I hope that answers some of the questions.

Thomas Donnelly:  Thank you very much, Theresa.  That was an excellent framing discussion and it also makes me think that if I ever get in trouble with the law, I’m going to ask you to be my defense counsel.  General Jamerson, over to you, sir.

James Jamerson:  Okay, I’ll try to put a little bit of historical context to maybe underline what Theresa talked about here.  I do not spend or labor that too much because we are where we are and some of that is not necessarily relevant but it is important that we move forward.  I think we have -- we should learn from history and we have a boss that said, “You do not have to repeat but you should learn from it” and sometimes we do not do that as well as we might.

My connectivity, it was described, I mean I would have been honored if someone had said I was the commander of AFRICOM in its time.  Of course it was not AFRICOM and we did it out of the European command.  And as Theresa has described exactly, sometimes we worked well with our partners and sometimes we did not.  And it was kind of an individual thing, almost.  I mean, it was kind of that in my case.

I was the Air Force commander in Europe when we had Rwanda ‘94.  We were obviously deeply involved.  I went down to the European command in ’95 to ’98 and we had what I had called Rwanda 2 the next cycle and then several embassy evacuations.  We used to claim probably one a week we were having, it seemed like.

And in all that time it did cross not just my mind, but many others have said we are simply not paying enough attention to Africa.  We need to get more involved.  I was fortunate that I had a political adviser, Ambassador Joe Wilson, at the time who helped me and Bill Swaltel [phonetic] and others who helped a deputy commander of UCOM who knew very little about Africa.  I have learned a lot in three years, I’ll tell you.  I was privileged to work with them and spend a lot of time on the continent for the three years I was there.  It did not make me an expert, but it made me, and I guess, among other things, I got to travel with the President when he made his trip to Africa because he claimed I knew more than any other military person.  I do not know if that is good or not good when they said, but it was an interesting experience to work from both the top end and then down to the operational level who were actually trying to get things done.

In the same context of what is new, well, obviously AFRICOM is new.  What is not new is it is not a new idea, and we went through the Unified Command planned cycles repeatedly and people would bring up, “What about an African Command, a sub-unified command, a separate command?”  I will tell you I was not a fan of that in its day, not because I did not believe we did not need to have the focus but because I was worried then and I’m still a little worried now as how are we going to resource this activity appropriate to the job.  That will be our challenge for the US government side.  Because at the time we talked about it in the past, every time it would come up we would be going through sort of a salami-sliced 15 percent cut in the Unified Command at the same we were talking about creating another command.  I mean, the logic kind of escaped me at the time.  I mean, we could not even keep the resource of our normal commands and then we are going to create another.

That is really neither here nor there to a degree now.  I mean we have the command, I am all in favor of this command and what it can do its potential to do great things in partnership with our friends in Africa.  It makes me want to think just a second here; I have to give the AEI some credit here.  We are having a discussion of Africa in which we have included Africans.  You would be amazed how often in Washington you can have a gathering like this in which there will be nobody that represents the interests of Africa.  And if we make mistakes periodically, that is where we make them.  As we find ourselves sort of talking to ourselves about what is good for Africa and we forget that there are some other people that actually have an interest and a vote in it.

The thread - one of the other comments made to me was to talk about the thread of history, how we got here.  So I will not, again, I will not belabor that.  But I positively think, to think in a positive vein, that we are on a track that is pretty healthy.  If you start back from the period of about Rwanda and then we went through what we call the Afri-crisis response force which got off to a rough start, turned it into the African Crisis Response Initiative and I’m not going to deal in great depth in any of these things.  And we moved to the African center for strategic studies which was a bit of an output of President Clinton’s trip to Africa.  We have a coda which is now sort of a lineal descendant of ACRI.

I mean, in each of these cases - and now we have AFRICOM - in each of these cases I see a pretty positive slope.  Now is it as steep as some would like?  Probably not, but we are in fact doing things that will help us be more beneficially for both sides involved in Africa.  So I think it is pretty positive.  Sometimes we do these things well; sometimes we do not, by the way.  ACRI -- and it is ACRF and I will not dig too much in this but it is called Africa Crisis Response Force.  The term “force” did not sit well with Africans but we sort of roared in like we are wont to do, when the US side on occasion has said, “Slam, bam, here is the plan.”  We should be smarter than that.

I’m not saying that that is what has happened in this case.  I think Theresa, as she said, there has been an awful lot of bad information flowing.  So I caution everybody.  I learned this in the military, I learned it in the business world: Never believe the first story that you hear.  So when you read something about AFRICOM, be careful about taking that as the truth, in either side.

So anyway, we have got these series of events that have taken place which I think are good.  I mean, I commend all the different people, Dr. Nancy Walker [phonetic] who did ACSS and did a great job in getting that thing moving.  These are all good things for this relationship with Africa.

I guess my concern as a major comment for it is resourcing.  And thinking about what Theresa said, I went to General John Abizaid; he is here in town this week just recently the Central Command commander and he has had the challenge of Iraq and Afghanistan.  But John was on the track today as I listened to him.  His voice is exactly what I would be saying in front of this group of peers.  And I was looking through this -- you got a handout in here, the Brenthurst Report.  If you look at the different moving parts for things in Africa, it is exceptional.  And not withstanding Theresa’s comments, I think we got half a grip on how to bring it together to the best benefits of everybody.  We have not figured out what I understand in Iraq, I have not figured it out quite in Afghanistan.  And it has to do with stove pipes in Washington and rice bowls and all the kinds of things that our great bureaucracy brings to the table.

We had a briefing at the European Command when I was there that one of our young officers put together called the “Lens [sounds like] Briefing.”  I mean, people kind of bad mouth over this thing after a while but the functional part of the briefing was you need to bring all of these things together through a lens and get control of what is going on.  So we all know what the various interagency outfits and beyond interagency, World Bank and others.  What are people doing?

I do not think we have solved that problem yet.  John obviously does not think we have solved it yet.  I know we are working around an AFRICOM concept.  This could be the incubation for doing this right.  But we have got a ways to go and this is a US national strategy issue in my view.  We do not know how to face the new world right now.  We are still configured a lot for the old world.  So that is another hope that I have that AFRICOM could help us begin to understand how you do bring these things together.

Our question was where is the lens?  Is the lens at UCOM, in Stuttgart?  And I answered, no, it is not going to work that way.  Is the lens at the chief of mission?  It could be, maybe.  Is the lens in Washington?  It could be here; that is always a little dangerous.  So, where do you bring it all together?  So we get this synergy of all the different kinds of things.

Now, I have been a participant in some exercises that the military has periodically done as we came through Bosnia and the first Gulf War and all these things.  And we began to incorporate in our military exercises, NGOs, private volunteer organizations, civil affairs, civil affairs being the part of the US military that works on nation building.  We began to incorporate those.  I was in an exercise this past fall in which there was actually a really high-end panel that participated in this air force exercise that was composed of interagency people that video teleconference with.  I mean, that is all sort technical magic, but the point was we actually had people talking about all the tools - treasury, commerce, other kinds of things that we could bring to bear on the problem that we were trying to solve.

If we can -- now, this again was just an exercise.  I mean, it is easy to put a panel together and exercise and sort of fake your way through doing one of these things, harder to make it happen.  But the trend again is not necessarily in the wrong direction of this but we are going to have to keep working.  And so maybe AFRICOM can be the starting point for this.

Let me just hit a couple of things and we will move on, keep this going so we can talk more about courses.  I’m not, by the way, going to talk about location.  I think Theresa kind of dodged that one but I’m sure it will come up anyway, but maybe we can all talk about it.  But the key to this thing is acceptance in Africa.  We have got to give -- we have to be on the ground working from the bottom up talking to Africans about this concept.  And I have just said I think we just do not do that well.  But it is a recoverable kind of thing if we just get out there and do it.  Did the explanation that I heard right now -- I mean it fits exactly with kind of what I think the concept as I have heard it about AFRICOM - what it can be, how it can work.  And it is pretty good.

We are not going to be accepted universally across the continent.  I mean, there are currents that flow in Africa that say they are just not going to buy necessarily the concept.  But it does not mean you cannot work with the leaders of Africa.  It just means the public face, as is true in many things, is not going to be as positive as getting the work done.  But it does not mean you quit trying and hopefully, as I said, we do not pay too much attention to what we read in the media.

The role of allies, and I want to say this, we have friends now and has been talking really about the European side.  I was a great believer when we were doing things in the mid-‘90s.  One of the first phone calls I would often make would be to European countries who have relationships in Africa that are different than ours.  You then have to go back and talk to the African side to see what they feel about.  I mean, I was blundering around sometimes and said, “You want me to go talk to people in country XYZ?”  And they would say, “Absolutely not.  We want to work with you.  In this particular case we want to work with you.  We do not want to work with them.”  But there is an awful lot of positive financing sort of management firepower, if you will, logistics -- well, a lot of things should happen if we work internationally together, that we waste a lot of time and energy if we do not do that.

Now we have to understand the complexities, the regional and the sub-regional structures, [indiscernible] all these things.  These are complex mechanisms under a complex mechanism of the African Union.  It is going to take a lot of time and energy just to understand it and understand how to work in there.  And much of that has been done but you will always have to keep working on it.

Let me make one other comment that was -- it was in sort of my instruction coming here because I’m ex-military now and an industry guy.  It said, “Where might industry fit in here?”  Again, because it seems to me that AFRICOM being a brand new concept, a bit of a [indiscernible], built it the way you want to build it.  This is a great opportunity to bring some of the aspects of industry and private - I guess they wanted to call it private business - to how AFRICOM could be put together and can work.  This could get at the resourcing problem.  Again, I’m really worried that it is just within the budget, and the manpower ceilings and restrictions that the US government has, you can have a hard time doing this.

One of these exercises we did not long ago that I was involved in, Treasury felt I was sitting on the team.  He told us how many people are in Treasury.  I mean it’s mind-boggling.  It is like a platoon.  I mean, compared to -- which is one reason, I think everybody knows, but I mean it is one reason that the military becomes involved in all these things.  Because the military is manned to do things that the other departments of the US government simply are not put together to do.  I think that has to change.  I mean that is big high-level stuff but I think we need to work on that.

So I guess I would say at the end of this, my principal concern of having watched through the time that I watched this, we have got to make sure we resource this organization to get the job done.  If not we are going to stumble around, not be nearly as good as we could be working with partners in Africa.

Thank you.

Thomas Donnelly:  Thank you very much, sir.  That is an excellent complement to Theresa’s brief.  I’m going to actually charge Paul a bit with further complementing our discussion.  Both the General and Theresa have talked about the organizations and what we sort of have to do to create an instrument to affect our policy towards Africa.  I’m going to ask Paul a bit, in addition to his other subjects, to talk a bit about the substance of our strategic goals and aims on the continent.  And again, I cannot think of anybody better positioned or better qualified to do so.  So Paul, the floor is yours.

Paul Wolfowitz:  Thank you.  It is probably -- I think it might be helpful to start by saying something which may surprise a lot of you.  And by the way, there are a lot of you.  I think that is a very interesting and good thing.

The announcement of AFRICOM took me completely by surprise.  I had not heard a word about it when I was still at DOD.  I left in May of 2005; I was at the World Bank; I was very focused on Africa and I have to confess to Theresa when I first heard about it, I was not sure it was a good idea.  I’m still not absolutely convinced it is a good idea, but it is there and I believe it can be made into something that can work and that can be useful.

The main reason I was not sure about it when I heard about it was I think something that is on many people’s minds, and that is the perception.  What does it mean?  What does it signal?  I think that is much more the issue than the reality.

And I think the reality is better reflected by what I did hear about Africa when I was at the Pentagon.  And that was principally we focused on Liberia.  And let me just say because probably a lot of you know this history but if you do not, you should know it.  And if you do, it may be worth reminding you.

The US was an extremely reluctant participant in the Liberian peacekeeping intervention.  The Pentagon had to practically be dragged kicking and screaming by the President to do what we did.  As someone who was there at the time and who thought the President was right, I’m very proud of what we did, and also very pleased that the Africans kept their bargain and the UN kept its bargain and the US was not stuck with a permanent commitment in Liberia, which is what frankly terrified the Department of Defense.  So it stands as a true success story of which - I think I saw Ambassador Minor - the Liberian people today are benefiting.

But the problem was getting the US to do something in the first place and without that initial commitment, I’m not sure where we will be in Liberia today.  And if AFRICOM can help in managing that kind of situation or, more fundamentally, in creating a somewhat greater awareness among that huge American institution, the US military, then Africa is not insignificant.  Provided it does it the right way and I think Theresa has described it the right way, then I suspect over time the issue of perceptions will fade away.

We might remind people here that we have something called the Southern Command which operates in a part of the world, that is to say Latin America, that is even more allergic to US military intervention probably than any place in the world.  Its headquarters, Theresa, are in Florida, not in Latin America.  Maybe that is a lesson; I do not know.  It has no committed forces.  I do not believe it has been I think a useful instrument for engagement in a positive way with Latin America.

But let me next say, I think the fundamental American interest, and I can now speak as an American and not as a World Bank official.  But I could say the same if I were, even more so I guess if I were a World Bank official.  The fundamental American interest is in seeing sub-Saharan Africa turn the corner and stop being the hopeless continent that the economists described in a cover story four or five years ago and begin to be what I think it really is beginning to be: a continent of hope.

One of the things, when I came to the World Bank, I was acutely aware of the fact that Africa had done very poorly in the last 25 years.  I say 25 years because that is the quarter century that has seen more progress around the world in the fight against poverty than any quarter century in history.  It has been led by the East Asian countries, particularly by China.  But we have seen half a billion people escape poverty during that time period, not only in East Asia but in Latin America and in South Asia as well.  And, of course, sub- Saharan Africa is the glaring exception to that story, where 600 million people have actually gone backwards, and today, roughly half of that 600 million live in extreme poverty.  That is not good for Africans and it is not good for the world and it is not good for the United States.

What I also learned though when I came to the World Bank is that that is a slightly out-of-date picture of Africa.  And that in fact, in the last ten years, there are some 15 African countries, 17 I think to be exact, roughly a third of the countries and roughly, I think, a third of the population that are non-oil producers, that have been growing at 4 percent annually or better.

Now one of the reasons you do not notice that is when countries are very poor and their population is growing at 2 percent, then subtract 2 from 4 you are down to 2 percent per capita annual growth.  That is not enough to really make an impact or to be noticed.  Although I would note that Rwanda is up there at 7 percent.  Mozambique is up there at 8 percent over a 10-year period.  It is stunning, actually.  And of course, it is only roughly a third of sub-Saharan Africa.

But the fact that things are changing I think is noticed.  It is noticed by Africans.  Two years ago, Gallup did a poll on what Africans thought of -- I’m sorry, what people around the world thought of their future.  Whether they thought -- I guess this was in 2005 or 2006 -- would be better or worse than 2005.  I will not tell you which countries were the most pessimistic but you can probably guess; the very rich ones.  The most optimistic region in the world was sub-Saharan Africa at 54 percent.  Now that is not high level, but it is only 2 percentage points ahead of East Asia.  It was noteworthy to me.  I thought, well, maybe this is just an aberration.  St. Paul was done a year later, basically the same result.

There is positive change taking place.  Not uniformly, but there is positive change.  Of course, when I start to say things like this, people say, “Well, what about Darfur?  What about Somalia?”  And I think it is interesting that the really black holes, the really terrible spots in the subcontinent are places that are ravaged by conflict.  And I think one of the reasons we are starting to see progress is because we are seeing a reduction in the amount of conflict in sub-Saharan Africa.  If you like statistics, I was given a statistic at the bank and I do not -- I should check on how this was counted.  Some international think tanks said the number of hot wars in sub-Saharan Africa decline from 16 ten years ago to 5 today.  I have not done the exact count but, of course, we know Mozambique has emerged from a terrible war, Rwanda, Liberia, Sierra Leone.

I was the first president of World Bank ever to visit Burundi and I think the reason is because for most of its history, Burundi has not been a country where there was much hope for development.  Today, there is.  And even the Democratic Republic of Congo, which probably has suffered the worst war in the last 20, 25 years in terms of number of people killed has a measure of peace today.  It is a very imperfect peace but it is a lot better than the perfect storm that they had before.  Ethiopian and Eritrea, although we worry about it, that terrible war at the moment is behind us. 

And I think this brings home that it is very hard to have development without security, without peace.  And for too long, too many parts of Africa had not had peace.  And even today, in a country it is important and critical to Africa’s future is Nigeria, has severe security problems.  Ethiopia has severe security problems.  Dealing with those and a bit much smaller countries, Central African Republic and Chad have a very hard time developing because of the security threats they face.

To me, one of the things this underscores is the critically important role that peacekeeping forces are playing in Africa today.  I do not have the numbers with me; somebody here may have them.  It is a truly staggering commitment.  I think 15,000 UN peacekeepers in Liberia country of –- correct me, Ambassador, like 5 million people or less.  I think it is the highest ratio of peacekeepers per population of any place in the world.  And I think the largest peacekeeping force anywhere is in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

And the cost, by the way, of sustaining these forces is significant and worrisome to me whether the international community will sustain those commitments.  And that is without thinking about quite a few other places including Darfur, where more peacekeeping forces would be desirable if agreement could be reached on their deployment.

All of these, I think, emphasizes what, if you worked inside the Pentagon, you would realize the big concern in the US Department of Defense is not how to get involved in Africa but how to stay out of involvement in Africa and how they support others in doing the job.  And I believe that the job of peacekeepers extends beyond simply trying to maintain, if you like, externally imposed stability.  Peacekeepers can contribute directly to development.

We found in Liberia when it was initially difficult to get any construction companies in to repair roads, we talked to the UN and asked, “You have got engineering battalions.  Would you like some World Bank money for those battalions to build roads?”  We did it experimentally, I think, with the Pakistani or Bangladesh brigade of engineers.  We gave them half a million dollars and it was so successful we scaled that up, I believe, six times.  And they are trying the same thing in DRC today.

But even more important than this kind of use of peacekeepers as a kind of arm of development assistance, and it is a -- I grant you it is not the most desirable way to work, but it is a lot better than doing nothing.  But this absolutely crucial issue of what in the development business is DDR - the only place that has more acronyms than the World Bank is the Pentagon.  DDR, of course, Demobilization Disarmament and Reintegration.  I got it, which is this terrible challenge of taking former fighters and convincing them that their future does not lie in taking up weapons again.

It is not such an easy task.  In fact, it is an extremely difficult task.  John Regeno [phonetic] who is the Assistant Secretary General for the United Nations came to me early in my tenure at the World Bank and said it is going to be very difficult for us to do the peacekeeping mission if the World Bank and others cannot get development going to create jobs to get these people out of the war business.

So I believe that helping, supporting what I think is I’m hopeful is a new trend in Africa’s development is not only the central interest in the United States but it is for better and for worse something that cannot be separated from security issues.  It is the case, in fact, that in development agencies including the ones I know best, USAid and the World Bank, there is a kind of allergy that even talking to military of any stripe, including even the ones with the blue berets, much less the evil United States, but I think it is something if we want to see development in Africa and recognize that development is going to depend on peace and stability, those barriers have to be broken down.  And I’m happy to say I think they are being broken down.

So also, though worth remembering - and I think it is one of the reasons why AFRICOM has been greeted at least by publics, if not by officials with a certain skepticism - that it was not Africans by themselves that brought all this horrible conflict to the subcontinent.  The US and the Soviet Union played a fairly big role in supporting their various allies in the Cold War.  We are still, or excuse me, the Congolese are still dealing with the consequences of what was -- well, I’m not here to judge what decisions were made in the past, but clearly extraordinary support given to President Mobutu and the generals that he left behind are still a major problem for the DRC.  And, of course, it was not just the United States and the Soviet Union; Libya played its role.  South Africa played its role.  And I think the reluctance of Africans to see foreign militaries turn up is fairly understandable.

So it is a matter in a way, I think, of balancing this need for security and the essential role of security with certain images of the past.  I hope they are just images of the past.  Certainly, I think from the US point of view, they are.  And after all, not all of that history is bad.  I just mentioned Liberia.  I personally was involved in early deployment in Somalia in 1992 and I still think that was something where the US military played an extraordinary role, positive role in saving some 200,000 people from what looked like imminent starvation.  It did not end quite right.  But I still think it was better than not intervening and it could have ended better.

And, of course, Rwanda is an example of what happened when the US sat on its hands and did nothing.  Not only sat on its hands and did nothing but actually, through the United Nations, I believe, stopped other countries - or I’m not sure they were ready to act - gave them an excuse for not acting.  And in fact, I do think today as I have said a couple of times now, I think the reluctance of the US military to even think about Africa is much more of a problem than the danger of so-called militarization.  And I think if AFRICOM -- as I say I was not there at the creation.  We have got it, though, and if it gives Africa a seat at the table when these issues are discussed, I think that is a good thing.

When I was at the Pentagon, every two or three times a year, all of the four-star commanders would assemble for about a day and a half of discussions with the Secretary of Defense and the senior civilian leadership.  And there was a seat at the table for the Middle East, there was a seat at the table for East Asia, there was a seat at the table for Europe, there was even a seat at the table for Latin America.  There was no seat at the table for Africa, except to the extent that our commander in Europe would occasionally mention it at the tail-end of his comments.

I think it is not a bad thing to have that big institution thinking about Africa especially if, as Theresa put it nicely, we are flipping around the normal way of thinking about it.  And thinking about the US in the role supporting the peacekeeping efforts of others we are thinking about the US strengthening the peacekeeping capabilities of Africans themselves.  We are thinking about how the US can contribute to demobilization, disarmament and reintegration.  We are thinking about how the US can contribute to supporting military reform in a variety of African countries, which is just to pick the DRC, one of the biggest challenges the President [Joseph] Kabila faces is how restructure and reform a military that was not designed to protect the people but to oppress the people.

I do not think there is a real danger that American policy in Africa will become militarized.  We do not have resources for it or I believe the attitude for it.  There may be a danger that people will perceive it that way.  And therefore, I guess my caution will be do not do things that create new divisions among Africans.  That is not going to be constructive.  Go slow.  If the headquarters are not in Africa initially, I vote for that.  But I’m not voting.  But I do think AFRICOM is here.  It does I think represent a positive interest by the Department of Defense in, not in getting the US more engaged in militarily in Africa but helping Africans deal with those problems so that the US will not have to be engaged in.  I think that is a good thing for everybody.  Thanks.

Thomas Donnelly:  Thank you very much, Paul.  That was an excellent conclusion to our set of presentations.  One point to tweak you about though, and that is the Southern Command benefits from the fact that Miami is a capital city in Latin America.

And I will waive the rest of my moderator’s prerogatives for the moment, but with the injunction to you guys for the Q&A session for which we have about 20 minutes, that you observe the AEI ground rules.  Wait for the microphone.  I think this transcript in particular is something that we will value highly.  Make your statement in the form of a question and please try to do it as briefly as you possibly can.

So, with that we open the floor for your questions.  Yes, sir.

Greg Simpkins:  Greg Simpkins with the Leon Sullivan Foundation.  I think that, certainly, Theresa has made a very good case for AFRICOM and certainly a lot of people in this room and in this town do agree to some extent that AFRICOM is a good thing.  But surely you have to acknowledge that some of what is going on in the horn [sounds like] of Africa does seem to contradict the points that were made, even if only in perception.  For example, we were -- the US government was involved militarily in Somalia at the same time you were saying it is not a war command.  And the US government has strongly supported a government in Ethiopia that by its own admission has arrested and imprisoned tens of thousands of people, and, by the State Department’s analysis, is involved in serious human rights issues in its country.  So how do you counter this perception when these things are going on at the same time that you are making what is certainly a very logical case?

Theresa Whelan:  Damn bad timing.  Well, you know, nothing is ever -- I do not disagree with you on your perception side, I mean.  And I think the facts regarding what happened in Somalia in January were related to a long-time and long-standing objective of the United States to attempt to, in some way, bring to justice the terrorists who had attacked the US Embassy in Kenya and also in Darussalam.  And we had intelligence that led us to believe that we could go after some of the perpetrators and those that had supported them in Somalia, which, as you know, because of the nature of the Somalia clan relationship having Somali supporters, if you are an outsider, is critical to being able to operate in that country.

So that was a very narrowly focused event to address again a specific problem with regards to counter terrorism.  So I do not and certainly I mean I’m not going to try and blow smoke at you and say that if the United States were confronted with a specific situation like that again where we had the ability to go after someone that had attacked and either capture them or in some way eliminate them, we are certainly going to do that.

Now, we did do that, however, and this is not inconsistent with what, I think, we intend to do vis-à-vis the Africa Command.  We did do that in concert with the countries in the region.  We did not act unilaterally.  Yes, the specific kinetic action was carried out by a US asset; however, it was carried out in concert, to a certain extent, with our partners in the region who were working on the grounds.  The Kenyans were working on their border with Somalia because there were a number of bad actors that were attempting to flee.  The Ethiopians were also on the grounds and they were also trying to round up many of these bad actors. 

So to a certain extent we are all working together.  And both the Kenyans and the Ethiopians were very concerned about the situation in Somalia at the time they remain very concerned about it.  And they may remain concerned about the fact that you had an entity in Mogadishu at the time that it was attempting to exert its influence and its governance in such a way that posed a threat that they believed to them and to the region.

So I think that is kind of where we are in that particular region where those are specific sets of circumstances then and we reacted to them in that specific context.  I think it is difficult and it is dangerous to sort of take that and generalize and say that this would apply over the rest of the continent because each part of the continent has its own specific and unique circumstances.

I think our support to the Ethiopian military is simply no different than our mill-to-mill [sounds like] relations with any of the other countries in the region and has been intended to build the capacity of those militaries in order to manage their own security situations.  The fact that Ethiopia made a national decision, and it was Ethiopia’s decision to take action in Somalia this past December and January, that was their prerogative as a nation state had perceived a threat.

So these things obviously are going to happen.  We cannot -- the fact that we have mill-to-mill relations with a country or diplomatic relations or bilateral relations does not give us control over their actions.  Hopefully, our relationships allow us to have dialogue and develop shared views of situations and act accordingly.  But we cannot -- we are never going to control countries but that does not mean that you do not try to work with their militaries and help them develop their competence to be able to manage security in their own backyard.

Thomas Donnelly:  I believe I saw a hand over here.  Yes, sir.

Tot Ban:  Tot Ban [phonetic] Reserve Officer Association.  So my question deals with the implication of AFRICOM for the Guard and Reserve and two specific points for that.  One is in the Guard, there is the state swap program where each state has a foreign nation that they go and work with that foreign nation.  And I have read some things where they are thinking about, with the new AFRICOM, changing the focus of that where now it is European centric to more in a world wide, including Africa.  And second with something the general said about the Civil Affairs Units, where 90 percent of the Army’s Civil Affairs lies in the Army Reserve.  A 100 percent of the Marine Corps Civil Affairs is in the Marine Corps Reserve.  Will the new AFRICOM create more missions for those units and will we see maybe more resourcing other civil affairs units in the reserve components?

Theresa Whelan:  I think actually the state partnership program is starting to shift to Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, as you said.  And we hope, we think that that is extremely valuable program.  I think it proved its worth in Eastern Europe in the 1990s.  And, well, we are not intent on trying to achieve or get African countries ready for NATO membership.  I think the value of the state partnership program, in terms of helping to build capacity, developing long standing relationships I think is something that we really want to tap into with regard to the way we manage our mill-to-mill relations on the continent.

As to resources for the program, it is a top priority of ours to ensure that we have the resources to utilize that program.  And I know that European command has been very supportive in terms of shifting resources as there really is no further requirement for a sort of the significant state partnership relationships.  And so we are hoping that we will be able to get more resources for specific Africa state partnerships programs and expand them.

Thomas Donnelly:  I cannot resist the opportunity to beat one of my -- push one of my favorite buttons.  I mean I would say that your anticipation of greater involvement is probably correct.  There was, and I think it still continues, a long tradition of particularly guard involvement in Latin America or in the SOUTHCOM region.  It is also a reminder as to why it might be important to get the reserve components less involved in day-to-day operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and restore them to their more traditional role of a strategic reserve and being able to conduct these kinds of measures which have actually great strategic value, but tend to be one of those things that is under resourced when the Pentagon builds its budget.  Okay, I thought I could catch you up.

James Jamerson:  A comment I would make is this kind of speaks to continuity and engagement.  And I did not make the comment about engagement because sometimes I have also beaten past us.  But for the US government it is on occasion now.  I’m a huge believer in engagement and that means you are always in there talking to people.  You do not have to love them and you do not have to agree with a lot of things they are doing.  But if you do not engage with them, you are guaranteed to have no influence on what happens.

We periodically, in my experience, I just have to talk about my experience.  We would get mad at somebody, country or leader and cut off all communications or stop going to see them and it just is not the right way to approach the world.

A classic example is Soviet Union.  We talked to them all through those years when they were our arch enemy.  Why would we not talk to other countries?  But this bit that the guard and reserve is continuity of that engagement which you miss sometimes with active duty.  I’m talking military obviously now, but active duty forces because they come and go.  But you get this kind of engagement where people get to know each other, or better is a lot more productive.  I hope we can raise the resources for those kinds of organizations.

Thomas Donnelly:  The gentleman in the red tie right here.  And I see the hand in the back so I’ll try to get to you as soon as I can.

Herb Haw:  Thank you I’m Herb Haw [phonetic] from the African Center.  And I would like to ask how AFRICOM sees working with Western allies in terms of developing peacekeeping and simple police capabilities in Africa, two points which the US presumably is not that strong on it.

Theresa Whelan:  Actually, I think one of the major benefits of the command is going to be to rationalize to a certain extent our interaction with our allies and make it actually easier for them to interact with us and thus to interact with them in terms of cooperating in the continent.  I think we all have quite similar goals.  In fact, last week I was with our principal deputy armature secretary for policy, Ryan Henry, on a trip to Europe.  We went to UK, France, Belgium, and Portugal.  And in Belgium we also spoke with both the EU and NATO about the commands and the reaction was extremely enthusiastic on the part of all our partners.  And they felt that this was very, very positive and they were very much looking forward to cooperating with us and working with us.

One of the issues that we did talk about and in a couple of places was the issue of police, and it is obviously something that US Department of Defense is prohibited by and large from becoming involved with.  I mean, there are some very, very narrow authorities that exist now in the context of counter-terrorism that allow a little bit of interaction, but for the most part, we do not play in that realm.  However, countries like Portugal, France, others have the capability to work and develop these capacities.  And this, I think, is the kind of burden sharing that we would hope that to be able to do and use the command to do in sort of our ideal approach.  We actually hope that at some point in time down the line to have foreign officers embedded not just as liaison but actually embedded into the command structures working in the command to ensure that not only are we synced up within the US government but that we are also synced up and burden sharing with those countries that are very active in this area in Africa.

Thomas Donnelly:  Front, very front and then very back.  My only pleasure is in pulling your chain.

Barry Jacobs:  I’m Barry Jacobs from the American Jewish committee.  This is a bit of advertising.  We just established over the last year an African institute.  I have talked to some of your colleagues.  General Jamerson referred to this and I think Ambassador Wolfowitz had also, the question of where will the headquarters be.  I have heard that there will be four headquarters which means there will be no headquarters in Africa.  So it is not a question of bureaucracy but it really is a question of how you view or how the Department of Defense and how the US government views the situation in Africa.  What is the latest thinking rather than trying to pin you down on where and when there will be an on the ground headquarters somewhere, if not in multiple places in Africa?

Theresa Whelan:  We always -- yes, exactly, got to find a good real estate.  Yes, headquarters a very popular topic.  We have -- that continues to be an active discussion within the Pentagon, but the principle of having some presence on the continent I think remains the same.  We intend for that presence to be discreet, as I said.  It would be staff personnel, not troops.  The purpose of having the presence and the purpose of trying to put the four-star General who will manage this command on the continent is partly in wanting to manage the tyranny of distance.  And Africa is a huge, huge continent; 5,000 miles wide, roughly 5,000 miles north and south.  And then you add to that, either locating yourself somewhere in the United States or locating yourself even somewhere in Europe, and you have got tremendous lines of communication issues.

And there also is the issue of not necessarily looking at Africa through the lens that you get when you are 6,000 miles away and you are using the proverbial 6,000 miles screwdriver.  I have found over my years working in the continent and working on issues with the continent that if I do not pry myself out of my desk in the Pentagon and get my rear end to the continent on a periodic basis, it all starts to become almost like a video game.  And you really lose touch with the realities that are out there.

So reality is very important and we think it is going to be very important to the people who are working this command.  So consequently, we want to have some presence.  But in order to make sure that that presence is not onerous, in order to make sure that we do not sort of build Camp Bondsteel [sounds like], for those of you who are familiar with Kosovo, I think the British said there were two things that you could see from outer space: one was the Great Wall of China and the other was Camp Bondsteel.  But in any case, in order to avoid that inherent tendency within the Department of Defense, we have tried to look for innovative ways of doing business.  And one of the things that we decided was to take a page out of sort of corporate America and look at the use of distributed headquarters model.  And that we have the technology, the communications technology is in a sense to allow us to not have to have our headquarters personnel all located, physically located in the exact same spot and in the exact same building.

So this idea also lent itself to some of the feedback that we got from the African leaders that we talked to about the idea of presence and also about their priorities in terms of African security issues.  And one of the things that they told us was that if we were really serious about supporting the African Union and its African standby force concept, then we could show and demonstrate that seriousness by establishing our presence in proximity to the African standby brigades and in their region so that we could work more effectively with each brigade.

They also emphasize to us repeatedly that one size does not fit all on the continent and that East Africa’s problems and challenges are not the same as West Africa’s, and West Africa’s are not the same as Central’s or Southern or North’s et cetera, et cetera.  We heard that in each place.

So the other advantage we saw in terms of trying to manage -- and again, it is an innovation.  We have not done it before, but we think it is worth a shot is that we hope that we will avoid sort of the tendency to use a one-size-fits-all approach by getting our staff the prospective of the region that they are in.

So we are intent on moving forward with a distributed headquarters presence.  We have not, contrary to what is in the press, we have not actually spoken directly to any nation at this juncture about hosting.  We have had a number of nations indicate to us that they would be interested in hosting.  Most of those indications had been quite private.  What is interesting is the nations that have said no have done so quite publicly.  Obviously, they wanted to make some kind of domestic public point but that is fine.  We certainly do not want to be any placed that does not want us.  That is a very clear criterion on our part.

So anyway, our hope is that within the next couple of months, we will be able to begin a dialogue with some countries and see whether or not they are still amenable and interested in talking to us about presence.  And that by at least by FOC, Full Operational Capability, which is a year from this October, that we will know how we are going to manage our presence and that we will be started in that process of managing our presence.

Obviously, most of the work is going to remain in Stuttgart for at least the foreseeable future.  But our intent is to move expeditiously, shall we say, to be on the continent but we are not going to run hell-bent for leather.

Thomas Donnelly:  I would like to preserve a few minutes at the end for some closing comments on the part of the panelists, but I do want to get that lonely hand in the back so that we have time for one final question.

Cano Joni Ganijap:  Lt. Cano Joni Ganijap [phonetic] from the Embassy of Rwanda.  I am an ardent believer of security and the initiatives put across by the United States government, especially on your issues to do with AFRICOM.  But the environment in Africa may not be so conducive as perceived.  They are conflicts already in existence.  In some of these, conflicts are caused by socio-economic and under development.  I had some comments about interagency development and I would wish to know what strings are you going to interagency development?  Why especially those consigned socio-economic development because that is where the issue lies, then we can go ahead with security initiatives in peacekeeping and otherwise.

Theresa Whelan:  Well, actually, I’m going to toss that to my colleague who I think is going to follow me here shortly, principal deputy assistant secretary in the African bureau, Ms. Linda Thomas Greenfield.  Because, since I’m from the Department of Defense and we do not do development I do not want to step on Linda’s toes on that.  So with respect I will defer that question.

Thomas Donnelly:  Fair enough and very artfully done.  All right, I want to invite the panelists to make whatever concluding remarks they may have.  I would just like to say that I find this whole discussion, despite the difficult choices that the American government has to make, that the Defense Department has to make in order to begin to bring this idea into being.  And obviously the very strategic and even moral choices that we have to make through the course of engagement on the continent of Africa, I just would offer the observation that this is a conversation that has been long overdue and to simply begin it is a huge step forward.

And I would also reiterate the point that I made at the beginning that so often, these kinds of major muscle movements or these organizational movements on the part of American government and the Defense Department tend to be in reaction to big bad things happening.  So it is the principle here that an ounce of engagement is worth several pounds of intervention in a conflict or combat engagement.  That is also a huge step forward, at least for the American government and I hope for those of us who will be -- or those African states will be our partners.

But I would like to again, offer the panelists an opportunity to conclude and also to say, as a bit of administrative housekeeping, we have a panel that follows this one, so any reporters who would wish to ask follow up questions, I would ask you to do that in the lobby outside so we can have as orderly a transition as possible.  Anybody have any finals?

Theresa Whelan:  I will just make a couple of real quick comments.  First, I think it is important for everyone to understand that we do not believe that we have gotten this right.  We are firmly convinced that we probably screwed up somehow but we are not quite sure exactly how.  And so we are also convinced that what Africa Command looks like on October 1st, 2008 when it stands up fully operational and unified command will be quite different from what it looks like five years down the line.  And we are deliberately building in to the command structure an organizational element that will focus on capturing lessons learned and it will be attached to the commander so that the command can essentially be a living organization.  So I think that is one important point.

We are forging new ground, we believe.  We are trying to capture lessons, let’s say, that have been observed.  They have not been learned because they have not put them into practice but had been observed over the past decade and a half as best we can in a new and different organizational structure.  So it will be a constant learning process.

The second thing that I want to say just to get back to the first question which, of course, is it is always very difficult when occasionally - and I say very occasionally - I think it is quite rare when the United States actually has taken kinetic action on the continent and we would hope -- it is out intent that it remain as rare as possible.  In fact, it is really our intent that it would never happen that the continent and the countries on the continent would be able to manage their own security in a responsible way; in a way that would not post threats to either their neighbors or in their immediate neighbors - their regional neighbors or their global neighbors.  Because, unfortunately, in this environment, one of the things that I think 9/11 brought home to those of us in the Pentagon was that on that day, you had two dozen individuals operating out of a state whose development level was somewhere between the stone age and the middle ages, I think.  They, in a few hours, wreaked more damage on the continent of the United States than the entire Japanese Imperial Navy did in World War II.  That really changes your calculations when you are trying to figure out how to manage security challenges.  All of a sudden, places like Afghanistan which on September 10th was not really all that important to a lot of people in the US government, or places in continents like Africa where sometimes the governments and the capitals actually cannot exercise control of their territory more than 50 kilometers outside the capital, those places, all of a sudden, become relevant from a purely security standpoint.

So how do you manage a problem like that?  Well, you sort of manage it the way that we have sort of managed or began to manage the economy.  It is you become -- you globalize it.  You utilize partnerships and everybody sort of works together, watches everybody else’s back.  That worked for us in Europe and there is no reason that it cannot work for us in Africa.

So that is our hope.  It is that African nations who share our goals and to -- and we think that for the most part, they do.  They simply want peaceful stable environments in which they can develop their countries and govern themselves as they see fit.  So all we want to do is just enable them to achieve those peaceful environments, and we really do not want to have to either intervene with a peacekeeping force, major humanitarian relief operations or have to intervene kinetically to go after individuals who have threatened the United States directly.  We would rather the African nations be able to take care of that themselves.  Thanks.

James Jamerson:  The headquarters’ location, in my view, it is way overblown.  I’m a great believer in “make no decision before it is time.”  We ought to study this thing in great detail for a long time; at working with our friends and sometimes, a decision may come -- I do not know, but I worry that we will make the wrong decision about where we stick something.  So I would like the thought that says we will work our way through this but there is no rush to do this.  It is a natural question.  Everybody asked it.  I have even thought about it but there is no rush.

Paul Wolfowitz:  Well, I agree with that last comment especially since, as Theresa said, taking advantage of modern business methods, you can do an awful lot distributed and still be in Stuttgart for the time being, so I would not rush it.  But I just would say I think there are some very important signs of hope in Africa and in too many places.  It rests on peace.  It has been a hard one and it is still very fragile.  And I think in other places including Southern Nigeria as an example, there is no progress because there is no peace.  I think more attention, more engagement is needed by the US government from all the agencies. 

The first question was, I thought, very thoughtfully addressed to the dilemmas and difficulties of dealing with Ethiopia, but I also believe that in that case, engagement is the answer and not disengagement.  And if the bureaucracy of the Department of Defense is engaged, I think that is a good thing.  I think we need more engagement across the board and more recognition that relatively small investment of US time and resources could make a very big difference for 600 million people and for us as well.  Thank you.

Thomas Donnelly:  Thanks very much to the panelists for excellent presentations.  I’ll remind everybody of our mutual interests and a smooth transition to the next panel, and please join me in a round of appreciation for the panelists.  Thanks.

Theresa M. Whelan:  Thanks so much.

Paul Wolfowitz:  Thanks.  That is good stuff.

Thomas Donnelly:  Theresa, you have been great.  Hang in there.

Panel II: African Security Priorities

 Mauro De Lorenzo:  I will ask you to start taking your seats because we are a bit behind schedule.

[Audio gap]

Mauro De Lorenzo:  I would like to begin.  We have a few more people who are going to trickle in.  Thank you.  I’m Mauro De Lorenzo, a resident fellow here at AEI focusing on development issues but also on African affairs.  The next two panels will have more African focus.  We did an excellent job, I think, in the first panel of framing the discussion surfacing the important questions.  We now have a wide range of very experienced current and former African officials, and also some of the senior officials in the US State Department who have been working with the Defense Department on establishing AFRICOM.

I think one of the themes which emerged, in fact, from this morning’s discussion is that AFRICOM will succeed to the extent in which it aligns itself with African security priorities.  What are those priorities?  Those are -- our guests today will present their points of view from their national experience but also their significant experience in peacekeeping throughout the continent and, in fact, throughout the world.  But it is, I think, increasingly important that the United States articulate AFRICOM’s purpose in terms of African security priorities.  One document which is pertinent and which might serve, in fact, as a guide is the African Union Zone Security and Defense Policy which was published, I believe, in 2003 or 2004, which contains, in fact, all of the tools that we need to explain what our purpose is on the continent.  We do not have to reinvent a new security strategy for Africa because the African Union strategy is, in fact, quite robust and complete.  I will not talk for long.  We are behind schedule.

We are going to begin with -- I’ll introduce each presenter as they speak.  We are going to begin with General Tsadkan Gebretensae who may be known to some of you.  He is legendary in some places.  He was the chief of staff of the Ethiopian Defense Forces for 10 years from 1991 until 2001.  Previously, he was the military commander of Tigray People’s Liberation Front and led the army into Addis Ababa in 1991 that chased Mengistu into exile in Zimbabwe.  He is also well-known for his work on HIV and AIDS in African militaries; a problem he tackled quite directly when he was still chief of staff in the Ethiopian army, resulting in the numbers of HIV infected soldiers in his army actually falling at the same time as the national average in Ethiopia was rising.  Lately, he has been heavily involved in the transformation of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army - the SPLA in Southern Sudan in Juba.  You could call him an expert in the transformation of liberation forces international army since it is the process he managed in his own army in Ethiopia during the 1990s.  Thank you very much, General, for making the trip.

Tsadkan Gebretensae:  Okay.  Thank you very much.  I think I would like to continue with what has been presented earlier.  With regard to AFRICOM, I would like to say, at first, I’m very much familiar with the background development of the whole issue.  I was very much involved within the African Crisis Response Force -- Response Initiative when it was first initiated and was being pushed as far as I’m concerned by the Central Command.

At present, I see this as the development of all those processes that have been initiated a long time ago.  But now with AFRICOM, I would like to start at the establishment of AFRICOM has widespread skepticism well over Africa.  All countries have their own reasons for skepticism - Southern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa, the Horn of Africa - but the reasons vary, but the fact remains that there is widespread skepticism even in countries where the security policy of those countries are very much in line with the security thinking in Washington. 

I think -- the way I see it is if there is a very much coordinated effort between the security challenges in Africa and the establishment of Central Command, there is a possibility of bringing some good development into Africa.  If this is not done, then this could have a potential to be a cause for many problems, some of them even undermining the push for democratization in Africa.  It could be a cause for undermining the push towards democratization in Africa and good governance.

As far as I’m concerned, the skepticism is legitimate.  There are legitimate grounds to be skeptics.  Number one: That the timing has coincided with a very heavy engagement of the Chinese in Africa for the scramble to energy resources.  In many parts of Africa, this has raised the question why is this -- might focus -- this might attrition now to Africa at a time when certain strategy cues are being raised.  The centrality of the issue for or against terror, war on terror, which is a central element in US security policy has raised some issues.  Yes, security concerns does not necessarily always coincide with the security concerns of Africa.  I will go a little bit down to what I think are security challenges in Africa, and when everything -- every policy is very much tied to the war against terror and all other issues that are pertinent to Africa are being undermined, the possibility of undermining the whole relationship, I think, is very high. 

There is fear that US military will mainly focus on its own interests.  It could be security; it could be economic, but there is this fear as well.  I think it seems there is no enough consultation on the issue.  What happened this morning, as far as I’m concerned, it makes a lot of sense, but the perception now in Africa on the establishment of AFRICOM is not in line what -- whatever.  So for me, it is on a crossroads.  There is a potential to have a very constructive engagement and there is a great deal of potential for a very negative effect in the relationship of Africa.

After having said this, in my opinion, the most important security concerns in Africa are, number 1, there are interstate -- internal conflicts in Africa and civil wars and instability.  This is a central security challenge that we have had in Africa.  It is that there are internal conflicts or there are instability where there is no fully blown conflicts within Africa, and the main concern for those conflicts are social, economic and political.  Those conflicts and instabilities in Africa are caused mainly either by ethnic and religious diversities, and there is no proper way of managing those diversities within the Governance Agreement in African countries.  There is a great deal of denial of access to strategic resources and political power.  There are poorly developed state institutions and, generally, the root cause of -- those are the root cause of conflicts in Africa, and I think those causes could only be addressed by having sound social, political, economic programs and programs in place.  I think any security assistance in Africa should have conflict prevention, conflict resolution and managing conflicts as a central element in its program. 

I know all those problems are not -- could not be solved by military means.  The main direction of resolving those causes of conflicts are social, political, economic.  But I think the military -- the security structure has a role to play, a very important role to play in creating a conducive environment for those causes of conflicts and instability to be resolved.  Any security assistance has, to a very great extent, take this situation in Africa into consideration and put it as part of its element.

The other second challenge I see in the security environment in Africa is post-conflict reconstruction.  Countries, some of them are in a conflict situation or in a very unstable condition or some of them have just come out of conflict and they are trying to reconstruct their state structures to tackle the socioeconomic problems.  This is another very pertinent problem.  Post-conflict reconstruction shall have economic and social recovery, peace and stability, law and order, and predictable and stable government institutions as its objective.  One cannot think of conducting effective post-conflict reconstruction programs without a legitimate and popularly supported government and security structures in place.  This requires establishing effective security institutions side by side with other government structures of the state and establishing effective security structures and make those structures comply with acceptable democratic principles: civil oversight, transparency, accountability, all those very important principles. 

At the same time, it is a very huge undertaking.  An institution where there are poorly developed state institutions to undertake such kind of activities is a very huge challenge.  This is in regard to the development of appropriate security policies which has been alluded earlier, and programs that could provide the necessary vision, direction and objectives is critical.

Currently, I’m very much engaged in assisting the SPLA in transforming themselves from an irregular force into a regular force.  I have done this in my country, and you cannot do this and you cannot achieve the necessary objectives without having a properly considered security policy in place, and developing this kind of security policy and programs takes a lot of knowledge, experience and it is not readily available in many African countries.  This could give guidance to designing structure of the forces.  Of course, designing and implementing effective security sector reform programs and DDR programs - Demobilization, Demilitarization and Reintegration programs - create a stable and conducive political security environment for economic development.  AFRICOM should be prepared to assist in those challenge.  Those, I think, next to interstate conflicts and instability.

Post-conflict reconstruction, in my opinion, is the second huge challenge that Africans face at present, and it has a multifaceted nature.  You have to have security sector reform.  You have to have an effectively working security structure in place in countries like South Sudan, for example.  You have to have a properly functioning security structure in place.  And at the same time, you need to do this in such a way that it will be gradually up to the democratic standards that are being discussed and being acceptable worldwide.  This is a very huge challenge.  At the same time, you have to right side your forces.  To do this would mean to demobilize ex-combatants and let them go to civilian life.  This demands not only huge resources but a lot of knowledge and input.  I’m not saying all those things are programs and activities that have to be undertaken by the security sector alone, but this is the challenge that the security sector is facing, and it has to contribute its share for an effective implementation of those programs.

The third important challenge as far as I see is peacekeeping missions and African Standby Force arrangement.  It is very clear that there are several peacekeeping missions in Africa.  There is a need for a peacekeeping mission in Africa, but there is no credible independent African peacekeeping operations capability.  In May of 2003, African Chief of Defense Staff produced a draft policy on the establishment of an African Standby Force arrangement which would be able to rapidly deploy when mandated to do so by the African Union Peace and Security Council.  I think these are very important defense architecture.  I see it as a work in progress.  It could develop through time, but it is a very important initiative.  I think AFRICOM should involve itself in creating the capacity of African Union on all those arrangements.  It is not only the African peacekeeping mission and the African Standby Force arrangement is not the only task that is being taken in Africa Union.  Conflict prevention, conflict management, conflict solution is another part of the African Union.  So this is then the security environment that African Union is operating.

There are several critical challenges that range from logistics and management to operational planning, executing and monitoring.  AFRICOM can and should make a concerted effort to assist the African Union in overcoming those critical capacity gaps.  It could bring the various disjointed programs support the African Union into an integrated and properly planned program.

Africa’s principal security challenges are, as I indicated earlier, conflict prevention, managing conflicts and post-conflict reconstruction programs, and to be a credible player in peacekeeping missions in the region outside -- in the region and outside the region.  Obviously, it is not an activity that has to be undertaken by security sector alone.  The socioeconomic political component is fundamental.  For a security sector to play its share and contribute to the success, it requires the mobilization of sufficient resources and know-how to provide a secure, stable and well-governed environment characterized by the rule of law with emphasis on human security.  The contribution of the envisioned structural and strategic environment to international peace and security, including the fight against terrorism is enormous.

In conclusion, I think the establishment of AFRICOM could enhance and contribute toward this resolving security challenges in Africa or it could be a negative factor.  It is understandable to adhere to US interests but it could take African interests and concerns onboard as well.  AFRICOM -- as a senior government official, I can understand that countries are very much concerned with their national interests.  And I can see from the regional perspectives that I’m very much familiar with the Horn of Africa, there is an overlap of interests in both countries; both the national interest of, say, America and the national interest of, maybe - as far as I know - Ethiopia on matters of security issue could come together. 

It is not because there is one particular government in place that this is happening.  It is because of the socioeconomic and historical factors that push this to happen.  The way I see it is it so happens that Ethiopia and, maybe, the Sudan are on, if I may call it, on the historical fault lines of where -- I know the Middle Eastern civilization and culture and African civilization and culture confluence.  I think this kind of historical fact is going to stay there.  Because of this, there are overlapping security interests, but from my experience, I do not see proper coordination and working together on interests that bring both together.  But in my perception, I think the issue has to go beyond that.  Beyond that in the sense that as much as African interests are not directly in contradiction with the national interests of the United States, they have to be seriously taken into consideration and planned and be part of the whole element. 

If these are not taken, then I think the potential for AFRICOM to be a negative contributor factor is huge, and in fact, the fears of most Africans could be realized.  At the same time, I do really recognize that the engagement takes both sides.  It is not one side trying to attract the other side to be engaged.  I strongly believe that African governments and regional institutions like the African Union have to engage in the shaping and bringing together of these collaborative arrangement to be beneficial for both Africa and the United States.  This is regard, I think -- I will strongly advise to start the program with a very low level.  Start with common interests of Africa, and then develop the whole program with the development of trust and confidence between the two partners.  I think it has been clearly addressed.  I think it is good to avoid a very huge presence, particularly, a very huge military presence.  Not only it might be very costly and very expensive to manage, but I think it will bring the memories of colonialism to Africa as well.

So I think starting with the capacity creating activities of African command and gradually develops the trust and confidence of the people of Africa on the basis of real concrete programs and activities will be the best approach.  This is my opinion, and thank you.

Mauro De Lorenzo:  General, thank you very much.  I want to turn now right away to the current Chief of Staff of the Ghana Armed Forces, Brigadier General Robert Winful, who in addition to his responsibilities in his own national army has very significant peacekeeping experience in Lebanon, in Cambodia, and is the head of Ghanaian contingent to the MONUC operation - the UN mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Thank you, General, for taking the time to be here with us today.

Robert Winful:  Thank you very much.  I think I have an equally difficult task, like AFRICOM.  Coming to speak at this time after so many brilliant expositions, and one from my fellow African.  And also looking around seeing certain heads nodding, honestly I have a very huge task to keep your attention.  Having seen the entire hall, let me lighten it a bit.  You will have to listen to me, and you will hear a lot of all these things I’m going to say.  You would have heard of them already, but you still have to listen to me because the people, the same subject, people telling it in different tones, different languages and so on. 

For example, people say terrorists and others say freedom fighters.  Back home, when a rich man drink so many he cannot control himself, they say he is an alcoholic, but when a poor man does, he is a drunkard.  I know from this part of the world, you have somebody like a domestic security engineer who is simply a watchman.  So that is why you should listen to me the way I say it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have this topic beyond the controversies on AFRICOM: Nature and forms of cooperation opportunities and challenges for US and Africa.  Being a serving military personnel, I would have loved the PowerPoint like Ms. Whelan.  But unfortunately, I came in a bit late yesterday in the flight, so I did not have.  Therefore, what I write down to keep within the time, I have put everything down like the obedient soldier.  So please, bear with me that I go right on.

Let me first of all thank the organizers of this event for inviting me to share my thoughts on the ongoing debate on AFRICOM.  I do not wish to dwell on the purpose of AFRICOM because I assume that everyone invited to this forum is aware of its stated objectives.  Hence, what I would seek to do is to deal with two interrelated issues concerning AFRICOM and Africa.

First, I will talk about the possible forms of cooperation that could benefit both Africa and the United States of America through the AFRICOM project.  Then I would discuss the opportunities and pitfalls it presents, and I will try to be very frank because in some of the issues, we were told that to be partners, let’s be open to ourselves.  In Africa, we say that your best friend is the mirror.  It can never tell you lies.  It would not tell you, “Darling, you are looking sweet” when you are not.  So it is part of it to be very frank.

In m