Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War. Elizabeth Schmidt
Individual ventures have been transformed into sophisticated criminal rackets led by warlords who at times have controlled thousands of gunmen.
Economic growth and technological development outside of Africa have sparked a new scramble for African resources, which has fueled repressive governments, separatist movements, and broader regional conflicts. Corrupt politicians, military personnel, and warlords have contracted with foreign interests to extract and export valuable resources for enormous profits. “Conflict diamonds” were the object of wars in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and also helped fund those wars. In the DRC, control over coltan, tin, tungsten, gold, and cobalt was also at stake, while the Liberian war was financed by timber as well as diamonds, and cocoa bankrolled the war in Côte d’Ivoire. Competition for Africa’s vast and largely unexploited oil and natural gas reserves is likely to be at the root of future conflicts involving both internal and external interests.
China’s Growing Presence
The expanding role of China on the African continent has been the focus of considerable attention, both in Africa and in the West. The United States and Western Europe have seen their African trade and investments eclipsed by those of the Asian giant. Their leaders have warned that Beijing is exploiting African resources, taking African jobs, supporting African dictators, and demonstrating disregard for human rights, good governance, and sound environmental practices on the continent. African civil society organizations have frequently leveled the same criticisms—although many note the irony in the concerns of former imperial and Cold War powers, which historically have engaged in similar practices. Chinese involvement is primarily economic, rather than political or military, and thus falls outside the scope of this study. However, because Beijing’s practices may be laying the groundwork for future conflicts, a brief description of China’s impact on the continent is warranted.
The People’s Republic of China developed an interest in Africa during the Cold War, when it supported African liberation movements and governments that strove to build socialist societies—as well as others that opposed Beijing’s Cold War rivals. Seeking allies in the global arena, China was motivated principally by politics rather than economics. Its attitude shifted in the mid-1990s, after a massive program of industrialization and economic development transformed the Chinese economy into one of the world’s most powerful. Africa was no longer viewed as an ideological proving ground, but rather as a source of raw materials and a market for Chinese manufactured goods. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, China had surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner, and it had become the third-largest source of the continent’s direct foreign investment. In exchange for guaranteed access to energy resources, agricultural land, and other strategic materials, China spent billions of dollars on African infrastructure—developing and rehabilitating roads, railroads, dams, bridges, ports, oil pipelines and refineries, power plants, water systems, and telecommunications networks. Chinese concerns also constructed hospitals and schools and invested in clothing and food processing industries, agriculture, fisheries, commercial real estate, retail, and tourism.
Unlike the Western powers and the international financial institutions they dominated, Beijing did not impose political and economic prescriptions as conditions for its loans, investments, aid, and trade. Although it mandated that infrastructure contracts be awarded to Chinese companies and that Chinese supplies be used, the agreements did not require economic restructuring, adherence to democratic principles, respect for human rights, or the implementation of labor and environmental protections. While Beijing’s noninterference policies were often popular in ruling circles, civil society organizations frequently criticized them. African labor, business, civic, and human rights organizations noted that Chinese firms drove African-owned enterprises out of business and often employed Chinese workers rather than providing local populations with jobs. When they hired African labor, Chinese concerns paid poverty-level wages and engaged in practices that endangered worker health and safety. Most importantly, Beijing backed corrupt African elites in exchange for unfettered access to resources and markets, strengthening regimes that stole the people’s patrimony, engaged in domestic repression, and waged wars of aggression against neighboring states. Like the Western-backed autocrats who preceded them, China’s clients are likely to face popular discontent in the future.
Although China’s involvement in Africa is principally economic, the country’s economic clout has been accompanied by growing political and military influence. Beijing’s decades-long policy of noninterference in host country affairs has shifted noticeably in recent years, motivated by its desire to protect Chinese economic interests and citizens living abroad. In the early 2000s, Beijing joined multinational mediation efforts and UN peacekeeping operations for the first time, focusing on countries and regions where it had valuable investments and export markets. In 2006, for instance, China pressed Sudan, an important oil partner, to accept an AU-UN peacekeeping force in Darfur, and in 2015 it worked with an East African subregional organization and Western powers to mediate peace in South Sudan. Initially, China refrained from military involvement, preferring to contribute medical workers and engineers. It provided a 315-member engineering unit to the peacekeeping mission in Darfur, but no troops. However, as Beijing’s global stature and interests grew, so too did its military engagement. In 2013, Beijing supplied some 400 engineers, medical personnel, police, and combat troops to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali, marking the first time Chinese combat forces had joined a UN operation. Similarly, in 2015, Beijing assigned 350 engineers, medical personnel, and other noncombatants to the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. However, it also contributed an infantry battalion composed of 700 armed peacekeepers—the first Chinese infantry battalion ever deployed in a UN peacekeeping mission. Chinese military presence was also notable in UN peacekeeping missions in Burundi (2004–6) and the Central African Republic (2014–).
The trend toward heightened Chinese political and military engagement in Africa culminated in a 2016 agreement that permitted China to construct a military base in Djibouti—its first permanent military facility overseas. Strategically located on the Gulf of Aden near the mouth of the Red Sea, the base will allow Beijing to resupply Chinese vessels involved in UN antipiracy operations and to protect Chinese nationals living in the region. It will also enable China to monitor commercial traffic along its evolving 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which will link maritime countries from Oceania to the Mediterranean in a vast production and trading network.17 It will allow China to safeguard its supply of oil, half of which originates in the Middle East and transits through the Red Sea and Djibouti’s Bab al-Mandeb Strait to the Gulf of Aden. Most of China’s exports to Europe follow the same route. Because China’s growing economic interests in Africa have led to greater concern about the continent’s political stability, the projection of Chinese military power in Africa is likely to intensify in the future. Such developments will have significant implications in Africa. However, they are a topic for another book.
The Book’s Architecture and Case Studies
This book explores foreign political and military intervention in Africa after the Cold War through the lens of case studies from East, Central, West, and North Africa. Southern Africa is not a primary focus. Although that subregion was the site of significant foreign intervention during the Cold War, it was largely exempt from external political and military interference during the first two and a half decades that followed.18 However, South Africa, the subregion’s leading power, wielded continental and global influence and played an important role in international peace initiatives on the continent. Its efforts are discussed in case studies focusing on the other subregions.
Chapters 1 through 3 establish the book’s framework. This first chapter introduces the book’s purpose, historical and chronological context, and central propositions, and explains the book’s scope and limitations. Chapter 2 begins with a portrait of Africa at the end of the Cold War, when political and economic crises attracted a new wave of outside engagement. It develops the two paradigms that were used to justify foreign intervention after the Cold War—response to instability and the war on terror—and examines common Western misconceptions