The Trump administration is pushing African nations to take on a greater role fighting the terrorist groups that threaten them, White House national security adviser John Bolton said Thursday.
“What we’d like to do is empower the African countries to do more of their own security, to do it in coordination with one another,” Bolton said during an address on the Africa strategy at the Heritage Foundation. “They’re the ones who know the neighborhood rather than have the deployment of American forces who are comparatively very well paid and well equipped.”
The Pentagon announced last month it will draw down the roughly 7,200 U.S. military personnel in Africa by 10 percent over the next several years, even as it continues support counterterrorism operations and airstrikes in places such as Somalia.
The U.S. has a main base in Djibouti and conducts military operations including advice and assistance to partner forces across Africa. The operations, often conducted out of the public eye, sparked controversy last year when four U.S. troops were killed in an ambush in Niger.
Bolton pointed to the G5 Sahel Joint Force as a model for the continent’s new independent counterterror operations. Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad formed the joint force last year to fight terror groups and curb organized crime.
President Trump’s new Africa strategy focuses on countering growing Chinese and Russian influence and takes a hard-line approach to years of what Bolton described as failed U.S. aid and United Nations peacekeeping support.
“Unfortunately, billions upon billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars have not achieved the desired effects. They have not stopped the scourge of terrorism, radicalism, and violence,” Bolton said. “They have not prevented other powers, such as China and Russia, from taking advantage of African states to increase their own power and influence.”
“From now on, the United States will not tolerate this long-standing pattern of aid without effect, assistance without accountability, and relief without reform,” he said.
