From the electronic battlefield in Vietnam to network centric warfare that was developed in the late 1990s and used in Iraq and Afghanistan, every new generation and every new war brings with it the promise of a new kind of technology that will change the nature of warfare forever.
In most cases, these technologies fail.
Today, the weapons industry is selling the American people on the Replicator Initiative as the way for Washington to gain a military edge against China.
“Replicator will begin with all-domain, ‘attritable’ autonomy to help overcome China's advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces," according to the Pentagon. These capabilities “can help a determined defender stop a larger aggressor from achieving its objectives, put fewer people in the line of fire, and be made, fielded, and upgraded at the speed warfighters need without long maintenance tails," says Kathleen Hicks, the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
If history is any guide, there is good reason to believe that these suggested technological advancements could fail, or worse.
“If we look at how AI is being used so far, it’s a very, very bad sign,” William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says in a new video produced by Khody Akhavi and Steve McMaster. “Either they’re going to sell us a bill of goods. It’s all going to fail. We’re going to waste a lot of money and create a lot of tension. Or they’ll integrate it into the war machine and then we’ll have disastrous results. The time to worry about that is now.”
Khody Akhavi is Senior Video Producer at the Quincy Institute. Previously he was Head of Video for Al-Monitor and covered the White House for Al Jazeera English, as well as produced films for the network’s flagship investigative unit.
Blaise Malley is a reporter for Responsible Statecraft. He is a former associate editor at The National Interest and reporter-researcher at The New Republic. His writing has appeared in The New Republic, The American Prospect, The American Conservative, and elsewhere.
A U.S. Special Forces Soldier demonstrates a kneeling firing position before a live fire range, March 6, 2017 at Camp Zagre, Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso Soldiers also practiced firing in seated position, standing position, and practiced turning and firing. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Britany Slessman 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) Multimedia Illustrator/released)
A U.S. Special Forces Soldier demonstrates a kneeling firing position before a live fire range, March 6, 2017 at Camp Zagre, Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso Soldiers also practiced firing in seated position, standing position, and practiced turning and firing. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Britany Slessman 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) Multimedia Illustrator/released)
Every so often I am reminded of how counter-productive US engagement in the world has become. Of how, after miserable failure after failure, this country’s foreign policy makers keep trying to run the globe and fail again. From the strategic defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan to the feckless effort to sway the excessive Israeli military operation in Gaza, the US has squandered its power, exceeded its capabilities, and just plain failed.
My reminder was a recent New York Times piece lamenting the failure of US efforts to keep terrorists out of the Islamic areas of West Africa.
For more than 25 years, spending billions of dollars, the US has been providing weapons and training for African militaries, has established a separate US military regional command for Africa, has provided both intelligence and military support for counter-terror operations, and established operating military bases or deployed forces in West Africa, including Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea. The Times report is incomplete; it does not include Chad, Somalia, or Djibouti, where the US has deployed and operated forces for more than two decades.
Ostensibly the goal of all these military efforts has been to strengthen the ability of African militaries to prevent and defeat terrorism and, secondarily, to build or strengthen democratic governance.
The Times, which has reported on these efforts rather uncritically for two decades, acknowledges that there are more terrorists than ever in these countries. Moreover, Christopher Maier, DoD Assistant Secretary for special operations policy in the Pentagon, admitted to the Times that “our general desire to promote democratic governments and having healthy governance there has not gone particularly well.”
That’s an understatement. Beyond increasing the number of terrorists and terrorist organizations, the military forces trained and armed by the US have taken over governments. This year, those new leaders began throwing the US military out of their countries, along with the French military, who have been deployed there for years. In Niger, the US military is closing down its new $110 m. operating base, from which the US used drones to spy on and attack terrorist groups in the region.
“It’s about time,” is my reaction. The US military should never have been in these countries to begin with or, if they were, only as a secondary aspect of US efforts to help strengthen governance and the economies of these impoverished nations. Even then, it is not clear the US has any capability either to stop terrorists, train other militaries to stop terrorists, or “strengthen governance” in another country. We certainly can’t do that using military force. But military force has been at the heart of US policy in Africa for more than two decades.
So what went wrong and what to do about it? Is this just a case of adjusting US policy to be more effective, as the Times article suggests? Or is something fundamentally wrong with US policy? After years of working on security assistance and cooperation policies, I think it is the latter. The US way over-militarized the security problem. The US does not do the training and equipping job particularly well – military effectiveness is uneven, at best. And US programs have proven counterproductive with respect both to counter-terrorism and democratic governance. It’s not time to reform the policy; it is time to close down US security cooperation and assistance in Africa.
It has been clear to me for nearly 15 years that these programs were doomed. As Becky Williams and I concluded in a 2011 report for the Stimson Center, the fundamental flaw in US security assistance and cooperation programs, especially in Africa, is that the Pentagon is in charge. Over the past three decades, the Defense Department and, specifically, the US military has taken over how these policies and programs are defined, what their goals are, and how they are implemented. The State Department, which once had the lead in security assistance programs, has lost a good deal of its authority to oversee and evaluate these efforts.
The military’s definition of security in Africa is a major part of the problem. I call it a “security first” approach. The focus of the military’s view is that you can’t have a functioning government unless the border and interior of a country are “secure” or safe. From this point of view, one cannot have a responsive government before there is military security. Democracy and good governance have to wait.
As the West African experience is amply demonstrating, “security first” actually leads to greater insecurity. Militaries in these countries consume more and more of the nation’s budget, impoverish their economies, and, through their operations, stimulate the very threat the military says it is trying to eliminate. Too many of these US-trained and supported military leaders seize political power, with greater arbitrary oppression the result. More terrorists and less democracy are certain to follow.
Research suggests, instead, that security depends on strong civilian governing capabilities and more effective civilian administration. The administration of a nation needs to be in place before the military can be properly controlled and used. Governance and stronger states actually come before strong militaries.
That’s a fancy way of saying militaries that are too powerful in nations where government is too weak, are a threat to security and to democracy, and are an incentive to greater terrorist activity and internal unrest.
So I have thought for some time, that if anything can be done to help other nations with a security problem, strengthening the governance of that nation and, alongside that, its economy need to take precedence over bulking up their armed forces.
Consulting with the State Department between 2008 and 2012, I made a stab at trying to link security funding to good governance, as an incentive to the African countries with which we were engaged. I wrote a paper for State that proposed a challenge fund – some of US security assistance dollars would be put in a pool. Countries that wanted help could compete for the funds, but the criteria for getting them would include such practices as a free press, legislative oversight, publicly disclosed military budgets, a civilian ministry of defense, among other things. Good governance, in other words, would be the road to support for security needs. I wish I could direct you to the paper, but like many ideas, it was killed before it made the State Department’s budget request.
I even took a shot at consulting with the World Bank to make the examination and reform of military institutions in the countries they assisted part of their regular budget reviews of those countries, something the Bank had never done before. They produced a great report, but it sank like a stone at the Bank, which has been averse to examining this growing sector of government spending in places like West Africa lest the scrutiny alienate the Bank’s more authoritarian members.
So here we are, at what could be the end of the line. Lots of money, lots of failure, and sent packing by the militaries the US supported. And today I wonder whether even the reforms I was suggesting would have made any difference. These now seem to be the reforms the policy makers are examining; the Times piece indicates that people at State and DoD are now saying “ gee, we need to integrate this military stuff with governance and economic development stuff.”
I have no doubt we are about to see lots of budget requests for programs that purport to do just that. But based on the abysmal failure of US governance and economic reform plans in Iraq and Afghanistan, I have little faith that the US civilian institutions can properly define and implement such reforms from the outside.
The world is not hungering for such reforms, especially in Africa where authoritarianism and corruption are expanding. Moreover, the Chinese and the Russians have made it clear they will provide plenty of assistance without any such governance and reform strings attached.
What’s more, the US is now at the brink of being a failed democracy itself; hardly a model for anyone else.
So I think it is time for restraint; to bring these military forces home and bury US assistance programs. They don’t work; they don’t achieve the projected goals; they waste funds; and they are counter-productive.
Real reform can only come from within. Were an outside power, say France or Britain, to intrude into the dysfunctionality of US politics and try to change things, that intrusion would be unwelcome.
As with the US, so it is with any country, the prospects for change in Africa depend on the awareness and willingness of the population in these countries to own their own change processes, demand accountable and responsive governance, and then seek the external support they need to make it happen. Then, and only then, can outside support become useful and effective.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and deputy president Paul Mashatile attend a special African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Cape Town, South Africa June 13, 2024. REUTERS/Nic Bothma
On May 29, South Africans went to the polls in one of this year’s most anticipated elections. In an outcome that shook the country’s political system, the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has governed South Africa since Nelson Mandela became the country’s president following the fall of apartheid, lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since taking power in 1994.
As a result, the ANC has been forced to form a coalition with rival parties. It has forged a political alliance with the center-right, pro-business Democratic Alliance (DA) party, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), the right-wing Patriotic Alliance (PA), and a small party called GOOD, which holds a single seat in parliament. Collectively, this coalition, which could still grow as the ANC continues to negotiate with other parties to expand its unity government, accounts for 68% of the seats in the country’s national parliament, which convenes in Cape Town. Leaning on its newly formed coalition, the ANC successfully reelected Cyril Ramaphosa as the country’s president on June 14.
The ANC’s poor showing in the parliamentary election is largely the result of frustrated voters responding to the party’s inability to improve the country’s severe economic challenges and reduce widespread wealth inequality, whose roots date back to apartheid. These issues have been aggravated by the ANC’s self-admitted corruption, which has handcuffed its ability to respond to South Africa’s economic issues and undermined the credibility of its commitment to improving the welfare of the the great majority of the country’s 60 million people.
Under the ANC, South Africa’s foreign policy has made global headlines in recent months. In December, it brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) — the U.N.’s legal body charged with resolving international disputes between countries — accusing Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinian people in its war in Gaza.
The center-right DA, which was then the ANC’s main opposition party, initially opposed the ANC’s decision to bring the case. The DA has since, however, said that it will abide by the ICJ’s decision and has condemned Israel’s violence in Gaza. Despite this, the DA remains unwilling to call Israel’s conduct a genocide, thus suggesting that it remains opposed to the ANC’s case and decision to take it to the ICJ.
The ICJ case has also strained relations with the United States. While Pretoria has long been one of the world’s most vocal proponents of the rights of Palestinians, Washington has been Israel’s strongest international supporter and supplier of weapons. In response to South Africa’s ICJ case, in February, several members of the U.S. Congress joined in proposing a bill that urged a “full review” of Washington’s relations with South Africa.
The DA has also been vocally skeptical of the country’s participation in an expanding BRICS, an organization originally composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa and which has recently added several new members and seeks to act as an alternative to Western-based international forums. South Africa has used BRICS to enhance its influence globally in a world dominated by institutions built by the West after World War II.
As the ANC’s largest coalition partner, the DA will likely have a greater say in the government’s domestic and foreign policy moving forward. But given that the ANC, which has led South Africa’s case at the ICJ, still holds the presidency and will likely continue to run the country’s foreign ministry, the DA is unlikely to be able to substantially alter South Africa’s foreign policy, though it might attempt to use foreign policy as a bargaining tool in debates on the ANC’s other efforts in parliament.
Neither the IFP nor the PA — two smaller coalition partners — focused much on foreign policy while campaigning, instead emphasizing the need for the government to shift domestic policy to promote economic growth and reduce inequality. Neither party, for example, mentioned foreign policy in their respective manifestos, although PA leadership has openly questioned South Africa’s support for Palestine.
Two parties that performed well in May’s election but have stated that they will not join the unity government are the left-wing uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) and the communist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). Both parties are staunchly anti-West and see the international system, from the U.N. to international legal bodies such as the ICJ and the International Criminal Court, as having been built to serve Western interests at the expense of poorer Global South states. The MK, which is headed by former South African President Jacob Zuma, is widely seen as being more supportive of South Africa building ties with Russia than with the United States.
But Pretoria’s long-term foreign policy of non-alignment — by which the country avoids forming a full-fledged alliance or even close security partnerships with Western states, Russia, or China, and instead chooses to support whatever policies promote its own interests — is unlikely to change following the election.
Ziyanda Stuurman, a senior analyst specializing in southern Africa for the Eurasia Group, told RS that “foreign policy is likely to be a second- or third-order priority for the new … unity government.” Stuurman said that “all of the parties to the coalition have divergent foreign policy positions, (on Russia-Ukraine, the government's BRICS alliance ties, and the Israel-Hamas conflict) — and given the very sensitive balance that the alliance will have to maintain going forward — foreign policy issues will likely be dealt with on a case by case basis as opposed to forming part of the most crucial policy decisions going forward.”
She adds that the country’s current foreign minister, Nelendi Pandor, will likely continue in the role. If not, then the ANC’s Second Deputy Secretary-General Maropene Ramokgopa is likely to be her successor. Ultimately, Stuurman says that “the South African government's foreign policy positions are unlikely to significantly change in the coming months.”
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at the launch of the U.S.-Afghan Consultative Mechanism with Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights Rina Amiri, at the U.S. Institute of Peace, in Washington, U.S., July 28, 2022. Andrew Harnik/Pool via REUTERS
This year the United States Institute of Peace is 40 years old, and most Americans and U.S. government officials have little to no awareness that Congress funds an institute of peace or understand what it does.
This lack of awareness about USIP and its anniversary this year reflects a larger problem in U.S. foreign policy: the U.S. government’s strained relationship with peacemaking.
As violent conflict increases and the rules-based international system continues to buckle, U.S. foreign policymakers must urgently reckon with their approach to peacemaking. Since the end of the Cold War, successive U.S. presidents have attempted their own spin on how to mitigate, prevent, or resolve violent conflicts. The U.S. government’s investment in the military as a Swiss Army knife after 9/11 to solve global problems and promote U.S. (and Western) interests accelerated, while institutions devoted to the diplomatic arts faded into the background.
As we enter a multipolar world, the U.S. government needs to reinvigorate its thinking and actions around peacemaking.
From Cold War to the American unipolar moment
The push for a peace institute took off in the 1960s and 1970s as the U.S. reckoned with the country’s role in the world and involvement in wars. Members of Congress and parts of the American public exerted pressure on the government to develop its capacity to resolve conflicts nonviolently. In response, Congress passed a law to study the creation of a peace academy.
The 1981 report from the U.S. Commission on Proposals for the National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution served more as a meditation on the meaning of American democracy and the values the U.S. should project globally than just an exploration on whether the U.S. government should establish a peace academy.
In an effort to ensure that the U.S. government would finally launch such an endeavor, supporters in Congress attached the bill creating the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) to the National Defense Authorization Act for 1985. From its inception, USIP has operated with several challenging constraints that were built into its legislation and reflect the uphill battle in promoting nonviolent options to prevent or end wars.
During the unipolar moment in American foreign policy after the Cold War, the U.S. government had a cadre of officials who actively participated in peacemaking activities from Northern Ireland to the Balkans and Israel and Palestine. Although those agreements had persistent shortcomings (see Israel and Palestine today), the U.S. government made use of its leverage to try to end conflicts while relying on organizations such as USIP to support civil society and governments on the ground to help with implementation. These efforts were at their height during the 1990s.
The ‘War on Terror’ and beyond
The launch of the “war on terror” in the early 2000s tipped the scale in favor of military intervention and force firmly pushing nonviolent conflict resolution possibilities to the margins. It also ruptured the interconnections between U.S. peacemaking and peacebuilding from the 1990s. Instead, organizations such as USIP served to address the nation building aspects of the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but had nothing to do with resolving the wars through nonviolent options.
USIP actively supported the U.S. government in Iraq and Afghanistan after the invasions providing training to Iraqi government officials in truth and reconciliation, human rights, and dialogue. In Afghanistan, USIP awarded grants to civil society organizations to promote the inclusion of women, and conflict resolution.
But USIP’s work did not move the needle nor did the increase in funding for USAID’s development work. The war on terror was a juggernaut that led to the reorientation of U.S. diplomacy and development aid around counterterrorism, which did little to stop the war.
The 2010s opened with the Arab Spring and debates about the extent of potential U.S. support for protestors, NATO’s military campaign in Libya, and the acceleration of the U.S. government’s drone program. USIP’s activities reflected the U.S. foreign policy emphasis on the war on terror and addressing the security and societal challenges in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Meanwhile, experts such as University of Exeter Professor David Lewis referred to the rise of competing thinking among autocratic or democratic backsliding countries as an example of an illiberal form of peacebuilding which “seeks to establish political order through top-down, state-centric methods, including the use of violence, while tactics of co-optation, corruption, and patronage are used to encourage compliance.”
A peace agenda for US foreign policy
A peace agenda for U.S. foreign policy would not break the bank and could span whichever party is in power in the presidency or Congress. One easy structural action a presidential administration could take is creating an office under the National Security Council to coordinate U.S. government efforts around peacemaking. It would not return the U.S. government to nation-building, but would focus on countries where there are U.S. interests and offer nonviolent negotiation and mediation options to resolve conflicts by working across the federal government, USIP, and relevant conflict prevention and resolution organizations.
There is a plethora of U.S.-based organizations to assist such as Search for Common Ground and Mercy Corps. Congress will need to increase USIP’s budget, which with even tens of millions of more dollars is still significantly small in comparison to funding for USAID, the State Department, and the Pentagon. The institute should become a prominent hub within U.S. foreign policy focused on nonviolent options for conflict resolution. Although the State Department’s Conflict and Stabilization Office is supposed to provide these services, the complexity of the current violent conflict landscape requires the U.S. government to invest more.
Congress should adjust USIP’s legislation to require Senate confirmation of its leaders, not just its Board. By not requiring Senate confirmation of the USIP president or senior leaders like other government funded agencies, the American people are not able to have the opportunity for these professionals to outline and articulate a vision and would enable the institute’s peace work to be more visible to the American public.
As foreign policy expertsnote, active or potential wars pose challenges for the U.S. and its allies and their ability to respond. There is a need for the U.S. government to rethink how and where it becomes involved, especially in the use of its military or support for force. Peacemaking offers a potentially useful tool the U.S. government could employ. This could reduce the scale of the U.S. government’s reliance on the military or use of force.