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Abstract
The twenty-first century has seen a continued evolution of the US military’s strategic interest in socio-cultural knowledge of (potential) adversaries for counterinsurgency strategies. This paper explores the implications of the reinvigorated and expanding (post-9/11) relationship between social science research and US military strategy, assessing the implications of US Africa Command strategies for preventive counterinsurgency. Preventative counterinsurgency measures are ‘Phase Zero’ or ‘contingency’ operations that seek to prevent possible outcomes, namely threats to ‘security’ in Africa. The research initiatives of US Africa Command illustrate a culture-centric approach to this strategy, which seeks to draw from detailed socio-cultural knowledge in the prevention of possible populist or popular uprisings. Recent such uprisings, resistance actions and strikes in the continent illustrate a problematic tendency to interpret various forms of populist resistance as ‘terrorist’ actions, thereby condoning the bolstering of African national military capacity. The article considers the implications of these culture-centric counterinsurgency strategies as a means of anticipating and repressing the variety of mobilisations encapsulated within the ‘terrorism’ catchall. We conclude by urging social scientists to reject and disconnect from US Africa Command’s missions and knowledge acquisition efforts in Africa.
Notes
1. Priest, “cia Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons.” Journalists and bloggers critique coalition forces and private security forces’ disregard for the international rule of law, illegal night-time raids, massacres of innocent people and use of torture. See J. Scahill, “Killing Reconciliation.”
2. Leaked documents (published by Wiki Leaks) show that the cia maintains spy lists for UN representatives and conducts surveillance on the telephone and internet use of Iranian and Chinese diplomats.
3. For an analysis of the military and intelligence failures of the US military in Iraq, see Ricks, Fiasco. Within the military there have been studies on the failures of US military ventures. See Hendrickson and Tucker, Revisions in Need of Revising.
4. Ploch, Africa Command, 21 (emphasis added).
5. Vandiver, “africom Building Research Center,” n. p.
6. For a detailed account of the internal struggles in the military over the compilation of this Field Manual, see Kaplan, The Insurgents. For an examination of possible plagiarism within the manual, see Price, “Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus’s Counterinsurgency Manual.”
7. US Army/Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual, 153.
8. Varhola, “Guiding Principles and Operating Procedures,” 1.
9. A small portion of these efforts is publicised on the Africom webpage, available at www.africom.mil. Despite African popular criticism of the establishment of Africom, the US military conducts activities (from building schools in Togo, to upgrading weather instruments in Djibouti, to training Ugandan military personnel for engagements in Somalia) in every African country.
10. See Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare.
11. Tilghman, “dod Quietly Expanding africom Missions.”
12. Rodriguez, “Statement of General David M. Rodriguez, USA, Commander, United States Africa Command,” 3.
13. We oppose the endorsement of greater US military presence in Africa arising from discussions of the supposed ‘spread of terrorism’, which simultaneously feed into the US security establishment’s popular line that renders ubiquitous terrorist acts, uprisings, protest, anti-state factions, violent and nonviolent nationalist movements, popular revolution and peaceful political demonstrations. See Campbell, “Beyond the Fanning of US Militarism in Africa.”
14. See Keenan, The Dark Sahara. See also Klare and Volman, “The African ‘Oil Rush’ and US National Security.”
15. Quoted in “African Leaders to Wage ‘Total War’ on Boko Haram.” (emphasis added).
16. Forte, “The Human Terrain System and Anthropology”; Gusterson, “Anthropology and Militarism”; and Price, “Anthropological Engagements with Military and Intelligence Agencies.”
17. A special edition of Political Geography (29) was devoted to a discussion of the controversial Bowman Expeditions, an indigenous mapping project in Oaxaca, Mexico funded (to the tune of $500,000) by the US Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office. See the Guest Editorial by Bryan, “Force Multipliers.”
18. Mayer, The Dark Side.
19. American Anthropological Association (aaa), “aaa Commission on the Engagement of Anthropology with the US Security and Intelligence Communities.”
20. A two-part panel discussion on ‘Geography and Militarism’ was convened at the Association of American Geographers 2014 annual conference in response to the lack of institutional action within the aag to engage with the role of geography in military efforts.
21. Soldz et al., “Torture, and the Strategic Helplessness of the American Psychological Association.”
22. Chatterjee and Maira, The Imperial University.
23. Conferences were held at Dar es Salaam in 2011 and Arusha in 2012 with African social scientists hand-picked for participation by Africom’s Intelligence and Knowledge Development Social Science Research Center. Similarly, the Africom Public Affairs Office in Garmish, Germany, held a weeklong symposium in May 2014 (the second of such symposiums), with more than 60 journalists and military public affairs officers from Africa gathering to discuss ‘opportunities and challenges to African and US interests’. Owolabi, “Symposium Brings African Militaries, Journalists Together,” n. p.
24. For an extensive accounting of the South African institutes and institutions funded, see Hearn, “Aiding Democracy?” 815. See also Stacey and Aksartova, “The Foundations of Democracy.”
25. Quoted in Hearn, “Aiding Democracy?” 815.
26. Eichengreen, Exorbitant Privilege.
27. Ibid.
28. Gowan, “Crisis in the Heartland,” n. p.
29. Greenwald, No Place to Hide.
30. Amin, The Liberal Virus.
31. Ibid.
32. Biel, The New Imperialism.
33. Panitch and Gindin, Global Capitalism and American Empire.
34. Goodman, “The Militarization of US Foreign Policy.”
35. Zack-Williams and Mohan, “Editorial,” 419 (emphasis in the original).
36. We do not have the space for a detailed examination of the complexity, diversity or contradictions within the US Department of State and the US Department of Defense, which indicate that there is no uniformly followed unilateral decision-making process or singularly enforced hegemonic power. For such an analysis, see Stokes, “The Heart of Empire.”
37. Ham, “Senate Armed Services Committee Statement of General Carter Ham,” 5.
38. Obama, “Sustaining US Global Leadership.”
39. There is no unanimity of interests between US capitalists and others, such as the European Union, Brazil, China or Turkey; our interest here is the perception of increasing competition within the US corporate and security establishment and the military protectionism that develops as a response.
40. Chomsky, Profit over People.
41. Petras and Morley, Empire or Republic? 220.
42. Osborn, “Noam Chomsky and the Realist Tradition,” 352 (emphasis added).
43. See Herschinger, Constructing Global Enemies; Mueller, How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats; and Chomsky, 9-11.
44. Acampora, “Agonistic Politics and the ‘War on Terror’,” 8.
45. Mueller, How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats.
46. Al-Amin, “Tunisia.”
47. See Acampora, “Agonistic Politics and the ‘War on Terror’”; Obama “Sustaining US Global Leadership”; Byman, “Understanding Proto-insurgencies”; and Toscano, “The War against Pre Terrorism.”
48. Barnett, “The Pentagon’s New Map.”
49. Verhoeven, “The Self-fulfilling Prophecy of Failed States.”
50. Ham, “Senate Armed Services Committee Statement of General Carter Ham,” 5.
51. Gonzàlez, “Militarizing Education.”
52. Anderson, “Facing the Future Enemy,” 234.
53. Joint Vision 2020, “America’s Military,” 10.
54. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 44
55. Kitson, Low Intensity Operations.
56. Acampora, “Agonistic Politics and the ‘War on Terror’,” 7 (emphasis in the original).
57. Scales, “Culture-centric Warfare,” para 2.
58. Ibid., para 8.
59. González, American Counterinsurgency.
60. Ibid.
61. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare.
62. Ploch, Africa Command, 5.
63. Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare, 53.
64. Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 71.
65. Ricks, The Generals (emphasis in the original).
66. Ibid.
67. Kilcullen, an Australian, was the senior counterinsurgency advisor to David Petraeus for operations in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. Nagl, an American educated at the University of Oxford, was a social science professor at West Point and later served a tour in Iraq. He was the military assistant to the former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, and helped to author the US Counterinsurgency Field Manual. Sepp, a former US Army Special Forces Officer, was also a professor at West Point and was a strategist for the US invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Metz, an American counterinsurgency specialist with a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University, has been a professor at the US Air War College, the US Army Command and General Staff College and at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. Cohen, an American counterinsurgency specialist with a PhD from Harvard, co-founded the Project for the New American Century and served as Counselor to the State Department under Condoleezza Rice. He is a professor at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
68. Information Operations Roadmap.
69. See Ake, Social Science as Imperialism; Mafeje, “Anthropology in Post-independence Africa”; and Washington, Medical Apartheid.
70. Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent.
71. Solovey, “Project Camelot and the 1960s Epistemological Revolution.”
72. Lewontin, “The Cold War and the Transformation of the Academy.”
73. In a 1965 African Studies Bulletin article authored by the Robert D. Baum, then Acting Director for the Office of Research and Analysis for Africa for the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a classified study is cited as revealing that, between 1949 and 1964, the US government invested $76 million in some 400 social science research studies. Lewontin, “The Cold War and the Transformation of the Academy.”
74. Marchetti, “Propaganda and Disinformation.”
75. Diop, The Cultural Unity of Black Africa.
76. Amadiume, Reinventing Africa.
77. See McFadden, Plunder as Statecraft; Daley, “Problematizing the International Discourse on Sexual Violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo”; Shepherd, Gender, Violence and Security; and Sutton et al., Security Disarmed.
78. Cabral, Unity and Struggle, 141.
79. Diop, Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology.
80. Rare Earth Elements are a group of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table. Heavier than iron, they include scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium, lutetium.
81. These subjects are all from a list of 32 US Africa Command research topics for 2010 obtained by email correspondence with Africom representatives.
82. Daley, “Problematizing the International Discourse on Sexual Violence in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.” For sexual violence within the US military, see Turchik and Wilson, “Sexual Assault in the US Military.”
83. Downie and Cooke, “Assessing Risks to Stability in Sub-Saharan Africa,” 2 (emphasis added).
84. Ibid.
85. Ibid., 16.
86. Ham, “Senate Armed Services Committee Statement of General Carter Ham,” 18.
87. Campbell, Global nato and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya.
88. Rees and Daher, The People Demand, 96.
89. See note 85.
90. Some examples include the US support for the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo; support for Jonas Savimbi in Angola; for the Mozambican National Resistance (Renamo) formed by white, anti-communist Rhodesian officers; for Charles Taylor in Liberia; and for anthropological work to assist in provoking tribal warfare and ethnic animosity.