Description:
In the post-Cold War period, Africa did not constitute a top strategic priority<br />for the U.S. A 1995 report by the Department of Defence (DoD) listed Africa at the<br />bottom of the world’s regions in strategic terms. In 1998, the National Security<br />Strategy of the U.S. confirmed that America’s security interests with regard to<br />Africa were limited. Hence the tendency in the past was to relegate Africa to the<br />periphery of American strategy.1<br />However, as Metz rightly argued some years ago, such an approach would not<br />be wise: the U.S. does indeed have strategic interests in Africa. After all, from a<br />U.S. point of view, serious transnational threats emanate from the region, including:<br />state-sponsored terrorism, narcotics trafficking, weapons proliferation, international<br />crime, environmental damage, and pandemic disease. Furthermore, Africa has been<br />the scene of recurrent humanitarian crises, often as a result of intra-state armed<br />conflict.