The ACRI Command and Control Challenge - African Crisis Response Initiative

Parameters, Winter, 2000 by Scott E. Brower, Anna Simons

The African Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI) was launched in 1996. Its aim has been to help develop African countries' capabilities to keep the peace on the continent. Having grown out of the international community's reluctance to intervene in the genocide and fighting in Rwanda in 1994, ACRI's existence tacitly acknowledges that the United States is unable and unlikely to intervene everywhere. However, this does not mean the United States will not support such efforts undertaken by others. Indeed, US funding of ACRI is proof that the United States is willing to offer certain incentives and assistance to African countries to step into the breach. This has been most recently demonstrated by the deployment of US Special Forces to Nigeria to train Nigerian peacekeepers for deployment in Sierra Leone.

Currently, ACRI is funded only through Fiscal Year 2001. What happens beyond that time will depend on several factors. One is the US presidential election (which has not yet taken place at this writing). Depending on who assumes office in 2001, there may be a shift in American foreign policy. Another issue which is likely to affect future support for ACRI is the performance of the African countries that have already received US training (Senegal, Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Benin, Cote d'Ivoire). For instance, the Cote d'Ivoire military recently staged a coup. Will the US Congress continue to look favorably upon an initiative whose participants have engaged in such anti-democratic behavior? Or, if the countries which have received training do not step up to the plate and volunteer for peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations, will American taxpayers continue to support the idea that this is a worthwhile program? Why train countries to a capability they are then unwilling to use or, worse, too willing to misuse?

Support ACRI?

Despite questions such as these--and this article will raise more--the reasons to continue to support ACRI are compelling. In an ideal world, the desire to provide humanitarian assistance should be reason enough. But the United States also has a self-interest in promoting regional stability efforts in Africa. More than 16 percent of the oil used in the United States comes from Africa, with some experts predicting that "oil imports from Africa could surpass those from the Persian Gulf by 2010." [1] Plenty of other strategic minerals also stream out of Africa, as do a range of profitable raw materials, from diamonds to timber and gold to rubber. In fact, fighting over control of these natural assets is the reason for most of the continent's conflicts. To put it even more bluntly, if there were no corporate buyers fewer battles would be fought.

Without question, transnational syndicates of all kinds manage to profit despite (and arguably because of) rampant corruption and instability in Africa. US citizens, in stark contrast, do not. Narco-traffickers and terrorists have increasingly found safe havens in countries like Nigeria and Sudan. Diseases that no one had heard of two decades ago now threaten people just a plane ride away. Americans can try to bury their heads in the sand and presume that their modernity offers sufficient protection from such dangers. But family members of the victims of the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam embassy bombings would rightfully argue otherwise. And just the name "West Nile fever" should serve as a wake-up call.

Yet those committed to bettering conditions in Africa have tried to prick the consciences and scare sense into the American public by sounding similar alarms for years. Theirs remains a Sisyphean task. [2] Whatever American goodwill there was toward Africans in the aggregate dissipated in Somalia. Also, truth be told, there isn't enough of a political constituency in the United States to support expansive peacekeeping efforts in Africa--which also explains the development of ACRI. [3] In many regards, ACRI represents the living, breathing embodiment of the American national ambivalence. Standing it up is an admission that the United States is unlikely to commit forces to Africa in the face of future unrest--US forces are already stretched too thin, Africa has too much unrest. Yet Because the United States is the world's sole remaining superpower, US leaders feel a responsibility to do something to help Africa relieve its many conflicts and problems. Thus ACRI embodies the US desire to train Africans to keep the peace among themselves.

As a consequence of the US ambivalence toward Africa, however, not even ACRI's future is secure. Critics of the program can correctly point to a number of shortcomings. Also, the sudden decision to train Nigerian soldiers outside the scope of ACRI will no doubt raise a number of questions among those who have signed on for what has been touted as a multilateral effort. The real problem ACRI's existence presents, however, is that not just the United States has committed to it. Numerous African countries have put their faith and trust in the United States to support this initiative over the long haul. It is hard to imagine how it can now be bypassed or discontinued without repercussions.