The Senate’s 2022 National Defense Authorization Act empowers the Pentagon to establish a strategic competition initiative for the U.S. Africa Command. If the bill passes, this will be the first security initiative expressly authorized by Congress since the Cold War to funnel military aid to African forces to counter Beijing and Moscow. The proposal lays new legal groundwork for a long-term bid to expand U.S. military influence in Africa. But the security initiative it authorizes will likely be dogged by U.S. military and diplomatic negligence and sow instability in Africa and U.S.-Africa relations. It should be cut from the bill before the 2022 NDAA is signed into law.
The proposed initiative aims to fight “coercion by near-peer rivals” against African governments by strengthening their militaries and addressing myriad “sources of insecurity” across the continent. If it’s established, high bipartisan consensus around both U.S. Africa policy and the threat posed by China and Russia suggest that its scope and funding are poised to grow quickly. This proposal warrants more public scrutiny than it has received, particularly given that the United States charted a similar course during the Cold War and African reformers are still facing the aftermath. A long history suggests that the proposed military aid for Africa will escape congressional oversight while the Pentagon and State Department will do little to monitor and account for its consequences.
Near the Cold War’s conclusion, while the Reagan State Department publicly deemed U.S. military aid to Africa “measured and moderate,” a classified Pentagon memo labeled key aid programs “a tragic joke,” “not demonstrably necessary and not sustainable,” based in “intuition and popular wisdom,” with “no success stories to date and none on the horizon.” There has been progress since then but much of that memo could have been written yesterday. U.S. training for coup leaders in Mali and Guinea, funding for rampaging battalions in DRC and Cameroon, and military aid to repressive governments in Uganda and Niger tell much the same story. It’s one that reflects not only a U.S. impulse to prioritize counterterrorism over peace and democracy in Africa, but also inept monitoring and assessment of U.S. “train and equip” programs for African armed forces.
The Pentagon, for example, rarely fails to tout its human rights training for African militaries. But the Government Accountability Office recently deemed its assessments of the scope and quality of this instruction unreliable. The Pentagon has no protocol in place to assess the impact of its human rights training on the “behavior, practices, or policies” of African militaries. It simply doesn’t know, and it doesn’t have a good means of finding out.
According to a Pentagon Inspector General report released through FOIA, the U.S. Africa Command also has a “personnel accountability” problem and is often unable to track the whereabouts and status of the numerous military contractors it employs throughout the continent.
State Department surveysofU.S. defense articles and services licensed for commercial export to Africa often indicate good chances of them falling into the wrong hands. Surveys during the Trump administration revealed record highs in the percentage of these exports deemed “unfavorable,” primarily because they were delivered to “unlicensed” or “unreliable” foreign parties.
Likewise, the State Department often had little idea where military equipment donated through its flagship Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership ended up. Rather than conducting site visits or relying on satellite technology to keep track of the armored vehicles and other equipment it donated to states like Cameroon and Niger, the agency often trusted social media to determine if it was being misused. Earlier this year, the House passed a reform bill for this floundering security partnership. The bill was rightly opposed by a handful of Africa experts and progressive House members because it would’ve also formally authorized the initiative. Its key reforms were written into the House's 2022 NDAA, but they aren’t in the Senate version, and they are sorely needed.
The 2017 NDAA passed even broader reforms to improve monitoring and assessment of U.S. security cooperation programs. Two years later, the Senate Armed Services Committee deemed the Pentagon’s progress toward this goal “wholly inadequate.” Nonetheless, this year the Biden administration requested budget cuts for these activities, from a paltry $8.9 million to $7 million out of a security cooperation budget of more than $6.5 billion.
This void of oversight should be kept in mind when assessing the failures of U.S. security policy in Africa. It should be scrutinized before U.S. soldiers are killed during security cooperation missions in Africa and U.S.-trained troops commit human rights violations and overthrow governments. The Senate’s new security initiative will inherit this legacy of negligence. It's more than enough reason to discard the proposal before the 2022 NDAA reaches President Biden’s desk.
Sobukwe Odinga is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a PhD in Political Science, and his research examines African security politics and the role of race in US foreign policy.
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DJIBOUTI (May 12, 2010) Marine Cpl. Robert Wood, assigned to the armory of Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA), instructs Ethiopian Lt. Col. Sultan Ebu, a coalition officer for strategic communications at CJTF-HOA, on the proper procedures for firing an M-16 service rifle before a U.S. Marine Corps Enhanced Marksmanship range evolution at the Djibouti City Police Department gun range. Nearly 20 military members deployed to Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti participated in the exercise, which focuses on advanced tactical weapons training. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Marc Rockwell-Pate/Released)
While there are serious doubts about the accuracy of President Donald Trump’s claims about the effectiveness of his attacks on Iranian nuclear sites, the U.S./Israeli war on Iran has provided fresh and abundant evidence of widespread opposition to war in the United States.
With a tenuous ceasefire currently holding, several nationwide surveys suggest Trump’s attack, which plunged the country into yet another offensive war in the Middle East, has been broadly unpopular across the country.
Trump’s 2024 election victory, itself, provided evidence of broad anti-war sentiment across the political spectrum given the apparent resonance of Trump portraying himself as the “candidate of peace” amid a backlash against the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel’s slaughter in Gaza. In this context, Trump’s attack on Iran represented a major reversal on his campaign promises and an election night pledge not “to start wars” but “to stop wars.”
Previously unreported polling, which I helped conduct, confirms that the “pro-peace” Trump of the campaign and election night was in tune with the attitudes of much of the country. Nationwide, people understand that another in a long series of endless wars will primarily benefit weapons makers, Pentagon contractors, and other parts of the Military Industrial Complex while harming Iranians, Israelis, and, potentially, untold Americans.
Broad opposition to war with Iran
Polling both before and immediately after Trump launched attacks on Iran showed broad opposition to U.S. involvement in Israel’s unprovoked war including among Trump’s base. Most strikingly, 85% of people surveyed nationwide said they don’t want the U.S. to be at war with Iran, while only 5% do, according to YouGov polling conducted in the wake of the bombing.
The same survey showed that significantly more people disapproved of Trump’s attacks compared to those who approved. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found the same gap between those opposed to the bombing (45%) and those supporting (36%). A CNN survey revealed an even larger 12% difference between those opposed (56%) and those approving (44%). Nearly 20% more people disapprove of Trump’s handling of relations with Iran compared to those who approve. A similarly broad gap exists between those who think the attacks will make the U.S. less safe compared to those who think they will make the country safer.
Among Republicans, sharptensions emerged amid debates over attacking Iran. Nearly two-thirds of Trump voters wanted the U.S. government to “engage in negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program.” Just 24% of Republicans surveyed before the U.S. strikes on Iran favored using the military to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, according to a University of Maryland poll. Amid celebratory reporting on Fox News after the actual attacks, Republican support for Trump’s strikes significantly exceeded that of Democrats and the general public.
Americans support ‘anti-war’ Trump
These patterns of anti-war sentiment are unsurprising for many reasons including the popularity of Trump’s anti-war messaging during the 2024 presidential campaign. “We’re going to end these endless wars,” Trump said on the campaign trail. After winning, Trump doubled down: “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” he promised in his victory speech.
Candidate Trump went even further to embrace a populist critique of “war profiteering” and the Military Industrial Complex. “I will expel the warmongers from our national security state and carry out a much needed clean-up of the Military Industrial Complex to stop the war profiteering and to always put America first,” he promised during a speech in Wisconsin in September.
“We have these people, they want to go to war all the time,” he said of people embedded in the Military Industrial Complex. “You know why? Missiles are $2 million apiece. That’s why. They love to drop missiles all over the place.”
Before he started firing those very missiles, Trump clearly understood popular anger at the kind of corporate profiteering endemic to the Military Industrial Complex — that powerful system connecting weapons makers, the Pentagon, and Congress, which continually encourages increased spending on endless wars fueling profits for the Complex that President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about in his 1961 farewell address.
Research that I helped design after the election showed that Trump was onto something: An overwhelming majority of the country — 77% — agrees with Trump that “war profiteers” and “war profiteering” are a problem in the U.S., according to a nationally representative online poll conducted by ReThink Media.
Similarly, nearly two-thirds of people nationwide (64%) believe the Military Industrial Complex “profits from the continuous involvement of the US military in wars, combat, and other deployments in foreign countries.” More than half think the Complex “has too much influenceon the country’s foreign policy decisions because of its lobbying and campaign contributions.”
Echoing the Trump who vowed to “clean up” the Military Industrial Complex, more than twice as many people (44%) agree “it’s in our best interest as a nation to reduce the power” of the Complex as opposed to those who disagree (19%).
These findings seem to reflect growing awareness that the weapons manufacturers and other Pentagon contractors at the core of the Military Industrial Complex have been the main beneficiaries of the nearly quarter century of continuous wars that the country has fought since the George W. Bush administration invaded Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003. “Who Won in Afghanistan? Private Contractors,” a Wall Street Journalheadline said succinctly in 2021.
More than half of the annual Pentagon budget now goes to private contractors. Five companies profit most: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon (RTX), Boeing, and General Dynamics. Within hours of Israel attacking Iran, weapons stocks were on the rise despite a sharp decline in the overall stock market. A day after Israel’s attacks started, stock in Northrup, Lockheed, and Raytheon, which sell weapons to the Israeli and U.S. governments, were up between 3% and 4%. Weapons makers’ stocks were up immediately in early trading after Trump’s attacks.
Trump’s empty promises
Trump’s bombing campaign represents the complete shattering of his promises to stop wars rather than start them and to “clean up” the Military Industrial Complex. Of course, he had already embraced the path of endless war by making the United States a combatant in Israel’s illegal, unprovoked war on Iran: the U.S. government played an active role in defending and armingIsrael, sharingintelligence, and coordinating the war.
Whether the ceasefire with Iran will hold or not is a major question, especially given Israel’s attacks on Lebanon on Friday, which broke a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah. No matter what Trump boasts about his bombing campaign and no matter what evidence actually shows about its impact on Iran’s nuclear program, the long-term consequences of the war will be impossible to know: the war could help propel Iran toward acquiring nuclear weapons. It could embolden an already unrestrained Israeli government as well as Trump toward the wider use of illegal acts of war against Iran and other nations. It could generate myriad unforeseen forms of violent blowback against and other unanticipated consequences for the United States and Israel.
While Trump may want to call it a “12-day war,” it’s clear the effects won’t be confined to 12 days. So too, Trump’s embrace of yet another in a series of endless wars has provided fresh new evidence that large numbers of people in the U.S. are opposed to war. People understand all too well that when bombs start dropping, ordinary people suffer while war profiteers get rich.
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Top photo credit: Foreign Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, left, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, and Foreign Minister of Rwanda Olivier Nduhungirehe, right, during ceremony to sign a Declaration of Principles between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, at the State Department, in Washington, D.C., on Friday, April 25, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA)
There may be a light at the end of the tunnel as representatives from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda are hoping to end the violence between them by signing a peace deal in a joint signing ceremony in Washington today.
This comes after the United States and Qatar have been working for months to mediate an end to the conflict roiling the eastern DRC for years.
As a corollary to the peace accord, the United States is also in the process of negotiating a minerals deal with the DRC and a separate deal with Rwanda, which is expected to bring billions of dollars of American investment to the region. For the U.S. government, access to precious minerals in the region has been an incentive for helping to end the war.
Many of the minerals essential to modern technology flow from the troubled region. In the DRC, vast deposits of coltan, cobalt, and gold that power smartphones and electric vehicles, among other technologies, have become a driver of the decades-long conflict. This resource-driven struggle has transformed the eastern DRC's extraordinary mineral wealth into a source of persistent violence and instability.
The strategic importance of these resources has placed the Congo at the center of U.S. geopolitical calculations in Africa. Washington has increasingly recognized that securing reliable supply chains for these materials represents a national security imperative.
The DRC holds 60% of global coltan reserves. It is also the world's largest producer of cobalt, amounting to approximately 70 percent of the world’s production in 2024.
Coltan and cobalt form the backbone of the global digital economy and clean energy infrastructure. For example, cobalt extracted from Congolese mines powers the rechargeable batteries in smartphones, laptops, and electric vehicles. Meanwhile, Congolese copper is critical to the electrification of energy and transport. These minerals can be found in everything from electrical vehicle batteries to solar panels and wind turbines.
Beyond cobalt and copper, the country's coltan deposits provide tantalum, a metal crucial for manufacturing capacitors used in virtually every electronic device. The DRC also possesses significant reserves of other rare earth elements that support technology manufacturing and are of major interest to the United States.
Currently, the DRC mining sector is largely dominated by Chinese companies, particularly in the production of cobalt. Chinese state-owned enterprises and policy banks control approximately 80% of the total output from cobalt mines. China’s increasing ownership reflects broader investment strategies across the continent, where various joint ventures and infrastructure deals by Chinese companies are now a common occurrence.
Complicating this landscape further, Rwanda has gained significant influence over mineral extraction in eastern Congo through its backing of the M23 rebel group that’s fighting the DRC’s army. The M23 has monopolized the export of coltan to Rwanda, which is then sold on the international market. It is estimated that rebels in eastern DRC fraudulently exported at least 150 metric tons of coltan to Rwanda last year, representing what UN experts described as the largest contamination of the region's mineral supply chain.
The United States has pursued its interest in establishing supply chain resilience and ensuring American access to these critical minerals. In fact, the U.S. has pledged about $4 billion to the Lobito Corridor project, an infrastructure initiative linking Angola's Atlantic coast to the DRC through Zambia.
Even before the reemergence of M23 as a serious security threat, financial challenges and short-sightedness led several leading American mining companies to decrease their footprint in the Congo. For example, following poor investment decisions in the oil industry, Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan, one of the largest American mining companies, sold its stake in the Congolese mine Tenke in 2016 to Molybdenum, a Chinese mining company.
Despite being aware of the importance of the region's critical minerals, successive U.S. administrations have largely failed to provide sufficient incentives to encourage American mining companies to stay active in the region.
By working to end the conflict, the Trump administration is seeking to reverse this trend. Ending the war would remove one of the biggest disincentives to investing in the region, opening the door to greater American private sector investment in central Africa.
Among the companies poised to take advantage of sustained peace in the region is KoBold Metals, which uses artificial intelligence to explore new mining sites. KoBold recently announced that it will expand its operations into the DRC. And just last month, it was reported that KoBold had reached a tentative agreement to buy the stake of an Australian mining company in a Congolese lithium deposit.
KoBold’s interest in the Congo is significant because major investors in KoBold have contributed to Trump’s political efforts. Marc Andreessen, whose firm holds the largest stake in KoBold Metals and who has worked with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), as well as another KoBold financier, Ben Horowitz, each donated $2.5 million to a Trump-supporting Super PAC during the last presidential election.
Other wealthy and influential backers of KoBold — Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates — each contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration.
Beyond supporting the business dealings of those who contributed to his campaign and inauguration, augmenting a peace deal with mineral agreements also provides Trump the opportunity to promote key American industries that rely heavily on critical minerals whose deposits are found in great quantities across central Africa.
An effective peace deal and subsequent mineral deals would also allow Washington to respond to Beijing’s growing global economic footprint without risking a direct military escalation between the two in central Africa; instead, using economic competition with China to deliver beneficial results for Africans and Americans.
Realizing this, Trump’s team has already played a hands-on role in trying to maintain American mining presence in the region. In March, when the M23 rebel group was bearing down on the Bisie tin mine, which produces approximately 6% of the global tin supply and is operated by a partially US-owned company, Alphamin, the U.S. government reportedly stepped in to negotiate a deal, allowing Alphamin to continue operations without fear of an attack.
Still, though, this intervention was not enough to retain the American stake in one of the world’s largest tin mines. In early June, Alphamin reportedly agreed to sell its U.S. stake to an Emirati firm.
Trump’s team hopes greater access to Congolese mines will accelerate American-based manufacturing of certain technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and semiconductors. Trump has argued that onshoring the manufacturing of these technologies is both a national security imperative and economically advantageous to the country, creating jobs for many of the Americans who voted for him in part because they believed he would deliver them from financial strain.
But before all of these economic opportunities and benefits can happen, the war must end. Today’s signing ceremony will be the first step.
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Top photo credit: President Donald Trump (White House/Flickr) and Steve Bannon (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
On the same night President Donald Trump ordered U.S. airstrikes against Iran, POLITICO reported, “MAGA largely falls in line on Trump’s Iran strikes.”
The report cited “Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and critic of GOP war hawks,” who posted on X, “Iran gave President Trump no choice.” It noted that former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, a longtime Trump supporter, “said on X that the president’s strike didn’t necessarily portend a larger conflict.” Gaetz said. “Trump the Peacemaker!”
Republican Senator and Trump supporter Tim Sheehy (R-Mont), was quoted as saying that ordering the strikes was the “right decision.”
The first U.S. airstrikes on Iran on Saturday happened at 6:40 p.m. Eastern time. The timestamp on the POLITICO story was 9:48 p.m., a mere three hours after the first bombs were dropped.
In fact, MAGA did not largely “fall in line” with Trump’s airstrikes. The real picture is more complicated, and less categorical than the mainstream media has allowed.
Some have come out loud and clear against the strikes from the first. You don’t get more MAGA than devout Trump loyalist, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose first X post addressing the strikes on Saturday night read, “Every time America is on the verge of greatness, we get involved in another foreign war. There would not be bombs falling on the people of Israel if Netanyahu had not dropped bombs on the people of Iran first. Israel is a nuclear armed nation.”
“This is not our fight,” Greene said. “Peace is the answer.”
On Sunday, Greene followed up with a lengthy anti-war post that asked why the U.S. was fighting abroad instead of dealing with America’s border problems. Greene wrote, “Neocon warmongers beat their drums of war and act like Billy badasses going to war in countries most Americans have never seen and can’t find on a map.”
Other major voices — including non-MAGA conservatives and libertarians — have challenged the legality of the strikes, like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). Others, once the ceasefire was put into place overnight Monday, have chosen not to dwell on Saturday’s bombing operations or their efficacy, but have focused on the risk of regime change, U.S. ground action, or being lured into a long war by Israel.
Tucker Carlson, Trump supporter and arguably the most high profile conservative pundit today, reflected this strategy on Monday. He had been out front and center against a possible war with Iran. In his first appearance on Emily Jashinsky’s new show, he did not indicate that his views had changed.
“I don’t want to relive Iraq,” Carlson told Jashinsky in the interview, referring to the dynamics that led to the protracted Iraq war. He said he was grateful that Trump “took this in for a landing” and appeared in no mood to continue strikes or engage in the regime change that neocon voices were demanding.
“I know the people who did it,” he said, referring to the Iraq War architects. “I’ve lived among them, and defended it. I’m not doing that again,” he said. “We came very close to doing that again because of Mark Levin, Laura Loomer and the rest of these morons.”
Former Trump senior adviser Steve Bannon is not criticizing the strikes outright but has supported the president declaring the war over and making sure the ceasefire works. In repeated episodes of his “War Room” podcast, Bannon has warned against getting sucked into a regime change war and has turned his ire on Israel’s role in encouraging Trump’s involvement, saying, “my issue isn’t whether Iran has a nuke. My issue is that (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, for his own political dilemma, created a false sense of urgency.”
He called neocon voices like radio host Mark Levin, "town criers for Netanyahu."
For his part Gaetz has shifted his focus to Israel, too, suggesting “Israel doesn’t want peace” but only “regime change.”
Meanwhile, Christian conservative Matt Walsh of the Daily Waite has been a blunt non-interventionist, writing Tuesday that “I want the U.S. to back out of (the Middle East) completely and focus on its own problems. Call that simplistic or ‘isolationist’ if you want. I don't care,” he said.
“Our country is in a state of existential crisis on multiple fronts internally. We don't have the time, resources, manpower, will, or ability to fix problems for other countries right now. We need to focus on ourselves and let them handle their own disputes.”
“America first,” Walsh added.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who was not supportive of prospective strikes before Saturday, told Bannon that “the president getting a cease fire is a big deal,” he said, noting he hoped this would be the first step in extricating the U.S. from the region. “We need to have less presence in the Middle East. This is not a sustainable posture for us.”
Joe Rogan, the most popular podcaster in the world, who many might consider MAGA or at least MAGA adjacent, said during an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), “I think the whole MAGA thing right now is very divided, particularly because one of the things they voted for was no war.”
“Well now it seems like we’re in a war,” he added. “And it’s quick. We’re six months in and that’s already popped off.”
Rogan is half right. You can find those who identify as MAGA who outright support the strikes — some early polls appear to bear that out — but there is still a collective resistance to war, especially a long, regime change war that resembles anything like the 20 years of protracted conflict that loomed over the youth of America's youngest generations.
Arguably the truly great divide now is between these aforementioned conservatives — MAGA and those who MAGA support — encouraging Trump’s instincts for restraint, and the neoconservatives who are likely upset that Trump didn’t go further militarily, or better yet, that he had forced Israel into a ceasefire with Iran on Monday.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board certainly wasn’t happy, suggesting Trump was treating Israel and Iran equally, and giving Iran a “reprieve.”
“I hate this word ceasefire, the president hated it a few days ago too,” exclaimed Levin, calling it a “life line” and saying the Iranians should have been “forced to sign a surrender document” instead. “Does this mean the regime survives? I guess so.”
The epitaph for MAGA restraint is not only premature, it is inaccurate. Some would even suggest that meetings that Trump had before the strikes Saturday, particularly with Bannon, had reminded him that his base had certain expectations and would not support an Iraq 2.0. They hope, at least at this moment, that the U.S. has avoided that fate and that it is important to keep pushing Trump in the right direction.
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