Yes:
U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper has hinted at the possibility that the U.S. will reduce its military presence in Africa, suggesting recently that European partners could “offset” changes to the U.S. posture. Such a shift would be part of a rebalancing effort to compete globally with Russia and China while reducing U.S. resource commitments to the counterterrorism fight.
It is a mistake. In terms of bang for the buck, America’s small military footprint in Africa buys more than just security from terrorism threats, it buys American influence on the fastest-growing continent, and does so cheaply. ...
The U.S. military spends close to $2 billion — only 0.3 percent — of its more than $700 billion budget to sustain its African operations: funding U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) headquarters in Germany, intelligence support, operations on the continent, and security assistance programs for U.S. partners. It supports about 6,000 personnel on the entire continent, including 3,000 based in Djibouti, 800-1,000 in West Africa, and 500 special operations forces in Somalia.
I've argued that being the economy-of-force front makes sense but it is not a reason to squeeze every bit of force out of AFRICOM to face Russia and China:
We need to be careful in allocating combat resources to our unified commands. With the small numbers involved, will reductions in AFRICOM in favor of EUCOM or INDOPACOM provide significant reinforcements to the latter two regions?
Or will those transfers simply cripple AFRICOM's ability to defend our interests and prevent big problems from emerging in Africa?
I lean heavily to the latter effect as likely.
There may be sentiment in Congress to avoid the latter problem:
The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee warned Wednesday that any drawdown of U.S. military forces in West Africa would have “real and lasting negative consequences” after visiting the continent.
“The takeaway from our meetings over the past few days was clear: any reduction in U.S. military presence in West Africa would have real and lasting negative consequences for our African partners,” Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said in a statement. “At each meeting, they reiterated how helpful the U.S. presence has been to building their own capacities to defeat the growing radical Islamic terrorist threat in West Africa.”
Let me suggest The AFRICOM Queen (as I advocated in Military Review) as an offshore platform that can move around the continent to quietly reinforce our small footprint from a discreet distance.
In a crisis or in order to carry out a specific mission, reinforcements could quietly stage through that modularized auxiliary cruiser equipped for a power projection mission.
AFRICOM is already an economy-of-force front. Further reductions risk making it an ineffective front. And it gets worse than just our reduced capabilities, as I warned in a data dump about this urge to withdraw:
The United States is thinking about reducing our small military commitment in West Africa. Be careful. Yes, this is an economy of force front. We have bigger problems elsewhere in Europe and Asia. But AFRICOM is trying to prevent potential big problems from developing. And keeping the French actively killing jihadis there is a good mission to keep. We have a small footprint to do that. Don't risk bigger problems in a shortsighted move to deploy relatively small forces to higher priority fronts.
I mean seriously, are we going to live in Bizarro World where SOUTHCOM's unofficial motto going to be "Thank God for AFRICOM!"?
UPDATE: I'm sure this decision is about freeing up special forces as well as combat brigades for missions in higher priority regions:
As part of this review and in order to better compete with China and Russia in Africa, the Secretary is directing the deployment of elements of the Army's 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade (SFAB) to the continent to conduct train, advise, and assist missions in spotlight African countries. This is the first of many decisions regarding AFRICOM's mission.
Freeing up special forces is the basic mission of an SFAB. The news is old (12 FEB 20) and I've meant to link to it. But it seems appropriate here. We'll see if the SFAB can replace special forces in their training roles. Will enough operators be left to conduct offensive missions against jihadis?
