• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Africom Seeks Military-to-Military Relationships

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: General William Ward, Commander, U.S. Africa Command
Interviewer: Stephanie Hanson, News Editor

May 22, 2008

Gen. William E. Ward became the first commander of U.S. Africa Command in October 2007. Since then, he has been traveling across the continent, speaking to African governments about their perspectives on the command. Media reports on Africom have focused on where it will be based, and some critics have expressed concern that it represents the "militarization" of U.S. policy toward Africa. Gen. Ward says that Africom's strategic approach is one of "active security." The command has "downplayed the notion of where we need to be to do this because it was creating so much angst amongst our African partners," he says.

In your posture statement to Congress in March, you discuss your strategic approach as one of "active security." Can you explain that idea and how you see it being executed in specific missions by Africom?

When I talked about "active security," as I mentioned in my posture statement, it's really a reflection of the day-to-day activities that go on that reflect our engagement with the nations of Africa where we have established policies that says, "There will be a military to military relationship with these organizations and nations." You are probably familiar with the term "phase zero." Phase-zero operations are those activities that you conduct in an environment where there's not conflict.

We use active security because phase zero kind of implies that maybe you will move from that to something else. Active security connotes "persistent engagement," a sustained level of activity designed to help our partner nations increase their capacity to provide for their own security. What is that? That's things like the work that we're doing with the Africa Partnership Station.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.