Drafted By: Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
The Asian Tribune ‎
Date: November 10, 2005‎

As Washington's geostrategy has evolved after the September 11, 2001 airliner bombings of the World Trade ‎Center and Pentagon by Islamic revolutionaries linked to al-Qaeda, the Horn of Africa has taken on vital ‎strategic importance.‎

In the thinking of U.S. defense planners, the Horn occupies the western end of an "arc of instability" that runs ‎through the Middle East, the Southern Caucasus and into Central Asia to Afghanistan's eastern border. The ‎vast area encompassed by the arc contains the world's largest supply of energy reserves, is composed mostly ‎of states with authoritarian and quasi-authoritarian governments that are subject to instability, and has a ‎predominantly Muslim population, a disaffected portion of which provides recruits for and support of violent ‎Islamic revolutionary movements.‎

Washington's overriding interests in the arc of instability are to contain and suppress Islamic revolutionary ‎movements in order to secure strategic resources and prevent further attacks on U.S. soil, and to cultivate ‎stable and friendly governments in the area that will serve broader U.S. aims in its competition with the power ‎centers of China, Russia and India.‎

After Washington's initial response to 9/11 of invading Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban regime, it ‎set out on a course of effectively unilateral action, outlined in its 2002 National Security Strategy, which ‎announced that the U.S. was committed to maintaining global military supremacy and was ready to fight ‎preemptive wars against states that threatened its vital interests by harboring "terrorists" or developing ‎weapons of mass destruction. The generally multilateral approach of previous U.S. administrations was ‎abandoned in favor of organizing "coalitions of the willing" under Washington's leadership.‎

The test of Washington's strategy came in its invasion and occupation of Iraq that had the ambitious and ‎comprehensive aims of demonstrating the effectiveness of U.S. military might to hostile powers and creating a ‎model of regime change to serve as an example of market democratization to be emulated by regimes and ‎publics within the arc of instability.‎ The failure of Washington's self-imposed test caused defense planners to rethink their strategy. Facing a ‎Sunni-led insurgency in Iraq, Washington no longer had the military resources necessary to make its ‎unilateralist strategy credible. A shift in policy was necessary to protect U.S. interests and it was made ‎through 2005 without the publicity attending the National Security Strategy. Nonetheless, the new strategy ‎has been declared openly and frequently since it was put into place in March.‎

The "Long War"‎

At the core of Washington's new geostrategy is the explicit acknowledgment that its enemy is not "terrorism" ‎in general, but "Islamic extremism." In order to fight that enemy with any effectiveness, Major General ‎Douglas Lute, director of operations for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which has military ‎responsibility for the entire arc, said in August that the U.S. has embarked on a "long war" that -- all else ‎being equal -- will become the dominant U.S. military engagement once -- as Washington hopes -- Afghanistan ‎and Iraq are stabilized.‎

Stability in Iraq, in particular, will, according to Washington's expectations, drive the Islamic revolutionaries, ‎who are now concentrated there as parts of the insurgency, to seek safe havens and new battlegrounds ‎elsewhere in the arc of instability. The region to which they are most likely to head, in CENTCOM's view, is the ‎Horn of Africa, where large areas are not effectively controlled by central governments or, such as in Somalia, ‎where there is no functioning central government.‎

As a variety of Pentagon briefings and statements describe it under various rubrics, the long war is not a ‎conventional military conflict, but a multi-faceted campaign including military-military cooperation with states ‎in the arc, military-administered humanitarian aid and public diplomacy. The aims of the campaign are to ‎encourage governments within the arc to cooperate in suppressing Islamic revolutionary groups and, more ‎importantly, to diminish the recruitment base for those groups by winning over local public opinion.‎

Washington's blueprint for the long war marks an abandonment of its former unilateral approach in favor of a ‎region-based multilateralism in which Washington partners with governments in the regions comprising the ‎arc and attempts to get them to cooperate with one another in the common effort against Islamic revolution. ‎The new strategy represents a step back from the ambitions of unilateralism. It further represents an ‎acceptance that Washington is dependent on regional powers to satisfy its aims and must negotiate with them ‎while expecting only partial success.‎

The new multilateralism must adjust to the fact that regional partners have their own agendas that may differ ‎from Washington's. They often have conflicts with their neighbors and are split by domestic divisions. The ‎danger of the new strategy is that Washington will be drawn into choosing sides in regional and domestic ‎conflicts, and will face backlashes if it supports the losing side. Yet, given the failure of unilateralism, the new ‎fall-back strategy appears to be the best that Washington can do to protect its perceived interests.‎

Washington's Engagement in the Horn of Africa

As the region in the arc that has attracted Washington's most immediate concern and one in which it does not ‎face rivalry from other great powers, the Horn of Africa has been the site of the fullest development of the new ‎strategy. Washington's instrument in the region is the Combined Joint Task Force - Horn of Africa (C.J.T.F.), ‎which is based in Djibouti and comprises 1600 troops from all branches of the armed services, half of whom ‎are available for civil affairs and military training missions outside the base. According to a Defense ‎Department release, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has called the C.J.T.F. "a model for the future ‎of D.o.D." [See: "Intelligence Brief: Djibouti"]‎

At a wide ranging September 21 press conference, C.J.T.F. commander, Major General Timothy Ghormley, ‎explained that the command had evolved from a "crisis response force" with a military focus to a unit of ‎unconventional war concentrated on fulfilling the new Pentagon strategy. In a frank appraisal of his mission, ‎Ghormley said that the major requirement for its success and his major difficulty was gaining access to the ‎region's countries, except for Djibouti. Among the four core states of the Horn, the C.J.T.F. is barred from ‎Somalia because Washington has ceded responsibility there to the African Union; it is unwelcome in Eritrea, ‎which accuses Washington of backing Ethiopia in the border dispute between the two countries, and it has ‎achieved solid footholds in Ethiopia and Djibouti.‎

Although Washington's wish is to execute its strategy in an environment of tightly knit regional cooperation, it ‎also insists that it is committed not to back any parties in regional conflicts. Ghormley's remarks show that ‎even where Washington is not opposed by another great power, its access is severely limited and it is ‎constrained, if only by default, effectively to take sides in conflicts.‎

In the power configuration of the Horn, Ethiopia is far and away the dominant player and its agenda is to ‎isolate Eritrea, play the major role in determining a future government in Somalia and keep its access to ‎Djibouti's port. Thus far, Washington has been constrained to back Addis Ababa by refusing to pressure it to ‎honor an international boundary settlement awarding the Badme region to Eritrea and by allowing it to provide ‎military support to one of the factions of Somalia's deadlocked government. In doing so, Washington has ‎alienated Asmara and the other Somali factions, and has supported a regime in Addis Ababa that has become ‎increasingly authoritarian as it contends with a noncompliant opposition that has refused to take its seats in ‎parliament and has threatened to escalate its protest demonstrations into civil disobedience. [See: ‎‎"Intelligence Brief: Ethiopia"]‎

The U.S. presence in the region has also been unable to stop the rise of Islamism in Somalia and to suppress ‎a reported al-Qaeda cell there, to prevent a renewed military build up on both sides of the border between ‎Ethiopia and Eritrea, and even to influence Djibouti's regime to refrain from actions that threaten to reignite ‎ethnic-based civil war in that country.‎

Conclusion

After having failed in its unilateralist short-cut strategy in the arc of instability, Washington has opted for a long ‎war that inserts it into the briar patches of regional balance-of-power politics where it faces being drawn into ‎taking sides with dubious partners with their own agendas. This is not to say that any other course, save ‎withdrawal, is open to Washington, but only that the long war is going to be tortuous and is likely to have ‎limited success.‎

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