Security Alliances

French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to end Operation Barkhane, the French mission to fight jihadism in the Sahel, bears some resemblance to the ongoing removal of American troops from Afghanistan.

The Quad, composed of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan, is not a formal alliance. Still, the group has intensified its security and economic ties as tensions with China rise.

On April 27, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, in a virtual meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, requested that the United States move the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) headquarters from Stuttgart, Germany to Africa. The request marks a reversal of official Nigerian opposition—first made public twelve years ago—to AFRICOM plans to move to the continent. The shift likely reflects the conclusion that the security situation in West Africa and Nigeria is out of control, spurring a willingness to consider options hitherto unacceptable. Buhari argued that AFRICOM's headquarters should be closer to the theater of operations. He also seemed to imply greater U.S. involvement in West African security, including a kinetic dimension in the context of greater Western support for West Africa's response to its security threats. The statement released by President Buhari’s office following the meeting did not indicate whether the president offered Nigeria to host the AFRICOM headquarters. When President George W. Bush established AFRICOM in 2007, a military-civilian hybrid command in support of Africa, African official reaction was largely hostile, seeing the effort as "neo-colonialist." The Nigerian government took the lead in persuading or strong-arming other African states against accepting the AFRICOM headquarters, which was thereupon established at Stuttgart, Germany, already the headquarters of the European Command. However, AFRICOM's effective response to humanitarian crises, such as quickly establishing field hospitals in Ebola-affected areas in 2014, has ameliorated—at least somewhat—African hostility. More immediately, West Africa especially is facing security challenges beyond the ability of African states to control on their own. France has been the most important outside force against jihadi terrorism, but French involvement in seemingly never-ending military operations is unpopular at home, and President Emmanuel Macron has raised the specter of a drawdown or withdrawal in West Africa as he prepares for potentially strong opposition in the 2022 French presidential election. Up to the death of dictator Idriss Déby on April 27, Chad fielded the most effective West African fighting force against various jihadi groups and worked closely with France, the United States, and other partners. However, post-Déby, Chad is becoming a security unknown, with indigenous insurrections far from quelled and opposition demonstrations to the succession in the capital, N'Djamena. In Nigeria, in some quarters at least, panic has emerged over the erosion of security, and calls on the Buhari administration to seek outside help have been growing. In addition to opposing AFRICOM in the first place, the Nigerian military authorities have been largely uncooperative with the U.S. military. Hence, U.S. military involvement in Nigeria beyond limited training operations is minimal, and the country does not host any American defense installations. Successive Nigerian governments have wanted to purchase sophisticated American military equipment but have rejected U.S. oversight. In fact, Nigerian purchases of U.S. military material have been rare, despite their high-profile, ultimately successful purchase of twelve A-29 Super Tucanos—sophisticated aircraft. If opposition to AFRICOM is now muted, it has not gone away. Former Nigerian Senator Shehu Sani, an outspoken critic of the United States, characterized Buhari's volte-face as "an open invitation for recolonisation of Africa." In his view, Nigeria should seek only "technical assistance." Buhari is promising much better multilateral cooperation; it remains to be seen whether he can deliver. From an American perspective, moving AFRICOM's headquarters after fourteen years in Stuttgart would be a major undertaking. The defense review, now underway, will likely include the AFRICOM headquarters location issue. However, should the AFRICOM headquarters move, it is unlikely—if not impossible—that it would be to Africa, with its logistical challenges. Some in the U.S. Congress support moving AFRICOM's headquarters to the United States as a cost-effective alternative. For example, South Carolina's senators, both Republican, have advocated moving it to Charleston, the site of large U.S. military installations.

In addition to undermining European unity, BRI may also work to cleave the transatlantic alliance. To head off these dilemmas, Europe will need to provide clear alternatives to Chinese infrastructure spending.

The new cooperation agreement between Russia and Iran on cybersecurity and information technology is likely to create new hurdles for the United States and its allies in the Middle East.

With fresh agreement on sharing costs for the nearly thirty thousand U.S. troops in South Korea, the Biden administration can now focus on bolstering the alliance and addressing challenges posed by China and North Korea.

Neil Edwards is an Open Source African Media Analyst at Novetta. Media analysis for this piece was enabled by Novetta’s Tracker for Foreign Investment in Africa (TFIA). In the Central African Republic (CAR), outside the capital Bangui, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra exerts little to no authority. Armed rebel groups control two-thirds of the country, including access to mining sites. Political instability is deeply rooted: CAR has endured four successful coups and two failed coups since 1979, including the unsuccessful attempt ahead of the presidential election in December last year. MINUSCA, the UN peacekeeping mission deployed in CAR since 2014, has helped bolster security but remains overstretched and under-resourced. Amid insecurity and competition for power, Russia has positioned itself as a partner to the Touadéra regime—at a price to CAR. The opening for Russia’s entry into CAR came in December 2017, when the United Nations granted Russia an exemption to provide light arms to the Touadéra government in order to strengthen the military’s campaign to regain rebel-held territory. Ties between CAR and Russia quickly deepened. By March 2018, Valery Zakharov, a former official in GRU, the Russian military’s intelligence arm, became the national security advisor to President Touadéra. Months later, President Touadéra appeared in public with a personal protection detail that included “Russian Special Forces troops,” widely believed to be part of the Wagner Group, a shadowy band of mercenaries controlled by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, a member of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. President Touadéra’s decision to employ Wagner to train CAR’s army is an effort to “coup-proof” the regime. In exchange for protection, Lobaye Invest, a mining company also owned by Prigozhin, gained exploratory mining rights to seven gold and diamond mines approximately eighty miles from Wagner’s military training headquarters outside Bangui. The tradeoff reflects a Russian strategy of finding, securing, and extracting natural resources abroad. Russia’s economy relies heavily on natural resources, which have accounted for an increasingly large share of Russian output since 2016. Given the high cost of building infrastructure in the vast, far-flung corners of Siberia, Russia’s military expansion into CAR is likely part of a strategy to spur economic growth by securing access to resources beyond its own borders, including in the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa. Russian adventurism in CAR aims to replicate Wagner’s success in Syria. Since 2015, Wagner—just one arm of Russia’s military ground presence—has helped prop up the Bashar al-Assad regime by increasing its manpower and training the Syrian regime’s military personnel. Assad’s survival has benefited Russia's military, providing it with rights to operate Syria's Khmeimim Air Base on the Mediterranean Sea and explore potential offshore oil reserves. The resources-for-protection arrangement is also clearly at play in CAR. Novetta’s Tracker for Foreign Investment in Africa (TFIA), launched in 2020, dissects publicly available traditional media in all fifty-four African countries to identify, track, and trace Russian-linked energy and military investments across the continent. TFIA currently tracks sixty ongoing energy projects in thirty-three African countries and Wagner Group’s operations in fourteen African countries. One of TFIA’s primary objectives is to determine if Russia’s coup-proofing in CAR will be a blueprint for expanding the Kremlin’s military presence, by way of the Wagner Group, into providing protection for other African leaders—especially those with close ties to Russia and a history of military coups or insurgencies. Media analysis from Novetta’s TFIA uncovered that Wagner Group and Lobaye Invest have access to a variety of assets in CAR. Wagner Group, which has an estimated 1,500 troops in the country, along with Sewa Security Services, another Russian-linked military contractor, control three airfields near Berengo, N’Délé, and Birao—all strategically located to export natural resources extracted from mining sites and conflict minerals purchased on the black market. In addition to Lobaye’s receipt of exploratory rights in six mines following the initial deal with President Touadéra, in September 2018 the New York Times reported that “Russian contractors” were digging in diamond sites near Birao. Russian protection proved its worth—at least to Touadéra—in responding to the apparent attempted coup by former President François Bozizé in December 2020. After CAR’s constitutional court rejected Bozizé’s bid for the presidency due to his failure to fulfill the “good morality” candidacy requirement, Bozizé organized an alliance of six rebel groups—usually at arms with each other—to form the Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC). The coalition quickly began a violent reign of terror across the country, with the aim of disrupting the presidential election. Russia was the first among an assortment of international actors to mount a military response; within days of President Touadéra’s call for international assistance, Russia sent an additional three hundred Wagner-linked “military instructors,” along with helicopters. These forces, joined by Rwandan troops, MINUSCA, and the country’s Russian-trained military, retook three towns and major roads near the capital, successfully repelling the coup and allowing the election to move forward. Touadéra won the election with just over 53 percent of the vote, despite CPC’s violent campaign, in which it burned ballot boxes, ransacked polling stations, and prevented the vote in fifteen percent of polling stations across the country. The violence displaced nearly 120,000 people, half of whom sought refuge in neighboring countries. The electoral victory granted Touadéra five more years in power and, for Russia, signaled a continuation of business as usual: military training, regime security, weapons shipments, and mining exploration—all through Kremlin-linked private companies. Wagner Group’s success in ensuring Touadéra’s safety suggests CAR, like Syria, has the potential to serve as a blueprint for Russia’s resource-intensive economic strategy. Russian efforts to expand and reinforce its presence in Africa through private contractors will likely focus on countries wracked by political instability and gifted with abundant natural resources. The TFIA lists five countries as the most likely targets for future Russian involvement: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Sudan’s December 2020 deal permitting Russia’s establishment of its first naval outpost on the continent—for twenty-five years—is a clear signal of Russian intentions to become a lasting presence on the continent and reinforces the need to understand how foreign investment is influencing Africa.

Prime Minister Suga will keep working to upgrade Japan’s military amid increasing pressures from China, North Korea, and Russia.

Democracies should ask themselves whether forming yet another elite club of wealthy states represents the best means to counter China’s and fellow authoritarians’ digital rise.

Alexander Noyes (@alexhnoyes) is a political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Ashley Bybee is a research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. Paul Clarke is an adjunct research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. In August, jihadists in Niger killed six French aid workers and two Nigeriens just outside of the capital, Niamey. Terrorist attacks have increased by 250 percent over the last two years in Africa's Sahel region, according to the State Department. To help counter the threat of terrorism and build the capacity of African militaries, the U.S. government spends over $1.5 billion a year on security assistance to the African continent. Does this support work?  Reliable security cooperation and assistance data are scarce. But the existing evidence suggests that the current U.S. focus on training and equipping African partners, without due attention to governance and institutional-level reforms, has been insufficient at best and counterproductive at worst.  Focusing solely on increasing the operational capabilities of security forces in Africa runs the risk of strengthening unaccountable, corrupt, and predatory security sectors, throwing away U.S. taxpayer dollars on equipment that will not be sustained, and undermining U.S. governance and human rights priorities.  The deficiencies of the traditional train and equip approach in Africa are well documented, including anecdotes of U.S.-supplied equipment rusting on runways due to neglect, investments swallowed by corruption, and U.S.-supported militaries being used for government repression or launching coups.  A 2018 RAND study found that prior to 1990, U.S. security assistance to Africa in fact did more harm than good and was associated with an increase in civil wars. The impact of more recent efforts has also been paltry, as U.S. security assistance since 1990 in Africa "appears to have had little or no net effect on political violence."  The study found, however, that a more holistic focus on governance and institution building showed more promise. Such assistance can be a more effective way to achieve both U.S. and partner country objectives, leading to "durable improvements" in the security environment. Our research in Niger – where we served as subject matter experts for U.S. defense-institution building initiatives – supports this finding. Niger is a key partner of the U.S. in West Africa. The United States provides a range of assistance to Niger, but the country stands out because strategic-level reforms have been taken seriously by both the United States and the partner country.  Niger continues to suffer from corruption, serious allegations of abuse, and often tumultuous civil-military relations. Yet our research found that the country has made strides over the past five years toward building better defense institutions and improving its defense management practices. Niger's political leadership – at the highest levels – appears to be genuinely interested in reforms aimed at improving the professionalism and performance of their defense and internal security forces.  Our experience in Niger points to four main lessons for how to build better military institutions in low-capacity countries facing a host of threats in Africa (and beyond).  Generate high-level political will. Local buy-in and senior level political will are crucial to all security sector reform efforts, but are particularly important for institution building. Identifying and cultivating change agents to take the lead in devising and implementing potentially disruptive reforms is key to ensuring gains are made and progress is sustained. In Niger, a full-time senior-level coordinator, with excellent high-level access and working relationships with senior leaders, was critical.  Codify shared commitments. Where U.S. and partner interests align, successful reforms are more likely. In Niger, an official Joint Country Action Plan – essentially a memorandum of understanding between senior leaders on both sides – helped establish and codify shared priorities and goals, and lay out tangible ways to achieve them.  Focus on the institutional as well as the operational. Niger conducts myriad military operations and hosts U.S. defense-institution building teams concurrently. Identifying opportunities to apply defense-institution building principles to current operations is a sweet spot where partners' operational effectiveness can be enhanced while simultaneously building more effective and accountable defense institutions.  Engage holistically – support military and police reforms equally. In many African countries, police forces are just as important to security – and in need of reform – as the military. With Nigeriens in the lead, U.S. teams helped create a unified interministerial structure that allowed the military and police to work more effectively and streamline joint reforms. Institution building and reform processes are long-term endeavors where progress should be measured in decades, not years. Even where clear progress is made, defense institution building is surely no panacea for fledgling democracies struggling with recent coup legacies and allegations of abuse.  While Niger still has a long way to go, the country's recent experience suggests useful ways to help build more effective, affordable, and accountable defense sectors in other low-capacity countries facing similar challenges and threats.