U.S. Special Ops General Sees Decades-Long Struggle in Africa by John Vandiver - Stars & Stripes

The U.S. military faces a two-decade struggle to help bring stability to Africa, where the lack of an overall government strategy is complicating operations, according to the general in charge of special operations on the continent.

“(T)here are too many conflicting perspectives when it comes to what the (U.S. government) policy should be for Africa,” U.S. Special Operations Command Africa’s Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc said in a recent article. “The problems in Africa defy solution within a single fiscal year, or the two- to four-year tour of a Geographic Combatant Command commander.”

Bolduc, writing in the Sunday issue of the online Small Wars Journal in an essay titled “The Gray Zone in Africa,” said it will take “at least a generation for a policy to become effective.”

The challenges facing the U.S. include weak central governments in Somalia and Libya, where extremists groups have sought to take advantage of the instability. Those threats amount to “gray zones,” military parlance for areas of military operation that fall short of open war for American forces.

Chaos in Libya, brought on when NATO helped overthrow dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 but failed to help stabilize the country, has caused a large migrant flow to Europe. That development has divided governments inside the European Union, America’s top trading partner. Yet the U.S. lacks a clear strategy for confronting threats emanating from Africa’s north, which now affect Europe, Bulduc said.

Adding to the challenges is the growing presence of China and Russia, which have sought to exert more influence. Beijing is poised to open its first overseas military base in Djibouti, a small but strategic country that borders Somalia and hosts U.S. forces. Russia has met with Libyan officials and has reportedly deployed small numbers special operations to North Africa in a sign of growing interest…

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The Beltway Foreign-Policy 'Blob' Strikes Back by Andrew J. Bacevich, The American Conservative

The election of Donald Trump as president last year represented, among many other things, a rebuke to the foreign-policy establishment. After a quarter-century of giving “America über Alles” a try, voters opted for a candidate who promised to put “America First.”

That establishment—which Obama administration staffer Ben Rhodes memorably referred to as the “Blob”—now offers a rebuttal of sorts. The rebuttal comes in the form of a report issued by the august Brookings Institution. Bearing the title Building “Situations of Strength,” the document is at once pretentious, proudly nonpartisan, and utterly vacuous. Yet in its way, it is also instructive. Here in a glossy 66-page publication is compelling evidence of the terminal decline now afflicting an establishment whose leading lights fancy themselves as the designated heirs of George C. Marshall and Dean Acheson. To see just how brain dead the Blob has become, Building “Situations of Strength”—hereinafter referred to Building Situations, or simply BS—is an essential text.  

Conferring the Washington equivalent of a nihil obstat, Brookings President Strobe Talbott introduces the report, which, in his estimation, “provides a deep dive” and “pulls no punches,” while offering  “in-depth analysis” and proposing an “innovative, bipartisan approach” to U.S. foreign policy. Better still, according to Talbott, Building Situations draws on the “immense intellectual capital” available at Brookings and similar institutions nearby.

Yet strip away the clichés and the self-regard and you end up with this: an exercise in avoiding critical engagement with recent U.S. policy failures, offered by a group of like-minded insiders intent on propping up the status quo…

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