Africom's demotion sends a signal: Africa must buckle up

Arab News

5 days ago

https://arab.news/vg8gx
US Gen. Michael Langley's blunt declaration at the African Lion 2025 military exercise — 'There needs to be some burden sharing' — resonates less as a strategic evolution and more as polite euphemism for irreversible US retrenchment in Africa. It marks a discernible shift away from the usual rhetoric of good governance and counters the underlying causes of insurgency that defined past US engagement. Instead, Washington is now signaling that its fragile African allies must prepare to stand more on their own. This is not merely a tactical adjustment; it is perhaps the opening salvo in a potential dismantling of the US Africa Command, an institution born in 2008 to symbolize Africa's rising strategic importance.
A leaked Pentagon briefing, contemplating Africom's merger back into European Command as a subordinate three-star billet, exposes the core driver: fiscal parsimony disguised as strategic realignment. After all, the projected savings represent a minuscule 0.03 percent of the Pentagon's nearly $900 billion annual budget, leading to one retired general's wry assessment that dismissed the proposed 'merger' as mere cost-cutting rather than well-conceived strategic maneuvering.
Strangely, the move contradicts the administration's almost simultaneous escalation of kinetic operations — from loosened airstrike rules in Somalia to expanded combat authorities — revealing a preference for lethal action divorced from the holistic planning a dedicated command is almost always required to provide. On the surface, this bizarre posture does not suggest outright disengagement, as alarmists would have us believe, but a cheaper, more fragmented, and ultimately less effective militarization.
'Burden sharing,' therefore, appears less a call for equitable partnership and more a precursor to transactional disengagement. The underlying calculus seems worryingly mercenary — that is, for African countries to expect enduring US security investments, Washington must first be assured of demonstrable, immediate returns.
Of course, this introduces a whole host of questions.
Will potential host nations even agree to foot the bill for bases? Will access to critical minerals such as cobalt — vital for batteries, with 70 percent of global supply coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo — be guaranteed on favorable terms? Favorable to whom? Will US energy firms secure priority contracts?
Langley's oblique reference to US support for Sudan, in further comments, hints at this new 'quid pro quo' expectation. Moreover, the systematic dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development and other soft power initiatives under previous budgets leaves the military as the primary, blunt instrument of influence, now wielded with an eye firmly on the balance sheet. This is not multilateralism but rugged transactionalism, where security partnerships exist only if they yield direct, tangible economic or strategic profit that exceeds the cost of deployment.
For now, however, the bureaucratic inertia favoring Africom's survival remains formidable. Congressional Armed Services Committee chairs issued an immediate rebuke of any plans to dismantle the institution, declaring combatant commands the tip of the American warfighting spear and vowing to block unilateral changes lacking rigorous process. Their control over the defense budget and security assistance programs grants them significant leverage. But it is unclear whether that will be sufficient to dissuade an administration convinced that a rather different set of rules are now at play across the African continent.
For African countries to expect enduring US security investments, Washington must first be assured of demonstrable, immediate returns.
Hafed Al-Ghwell
Regardless, CASC lawmakers do have a point. The proposed demotion of Africom from a four-star combatant command to a three-star entity under European Command constitutes far more than an organizational reshuffle. It represents a deliberate degradation of Africa's institutional standing within the Pentagon's hierarchy, with profound implications for how US security policy toward the continent is formulated and prioritized.
After all, the bureaucratic architecture of the US military assigns immense weight to the rank and position of its commanders. A four-star combatant commander occupies one of only 41 such positions across the entire US military — a rarefied stratum granting direct, unfiltered access to the defense secretary and the president. This constitutes a critical 'action channel,' a formal pathway enabling the commander to shape policy debates, advocate for resources, and present Africa-centric security assessments at the apex of national security decision-making.
Removing this four-star billet effectively mutes Africa's dedicated advocate in the rooms where global priorities are set and resources allocated. A three-star deputy, nested within EUCOM's bureaucracy and reporting through a superior focused primarily on European and transatlantic security concerns, simply lacks the equivalent rank, prestige, and direct access necessary to ensure Africa's complex challenges receive commensurate high-level attention, especially when competing against demands from regions such as Ukraine or the Indo-Pacific.
However, Africom's toehold on the continent, though opaque, has only become more vulnerable in recent years. The expulsion from Agadez and Niamey, two critical drone bases in Niger with more than 1,100 personnel, crippled intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities across the Sahel. This leaves Chabelley airport in Djibouti — supporting perhaps 4,000 troops and a squadron of MQ-9 Reaper drones — as the sole publicly confirmed, persistent drone hub. Estimates of total Africom personnel fluctuate wildly due to rotational deployments and classified sites, but credible assessments suggest fewer than 5,000–10,000 troops continent-wide at any time, concentrated heavily in Djibouti and Somalia.
This scattering across what are known as 'Cooperative Security Locations' and 'Contingency Locations,' potentially two dozen sites with 100-200 troops each, creates persistent entanglement risks. Furthermore, sustaining such a diffuse, vulnerable presence has become politically unsustainable given the lack of clear, publicly defensible victories against resilient groups such as Al-Shabab or Daesh affiliates flourishing in post-Qaddafi Libya and parts of the Sahel.
Yet, the confluence is undeniable.
The demand for allies to shoulder more risk coincides with a push to downgrade the command structure advocating for sustained engagement, all while expanding kinetic operations on the cheap. Thus, the 'end' of Africom as an independent entity is plausible, even likely — blamed on budgetary scalpels, but mostly due to being a casualty of a transactional worldview. However, this does not in any way signify a total demilitarization of US policy in Africa. Rather, it heralds a more incoherent, reactive, and narrowly self-interested era — and Africa had better buckle up.
Military force would remain an option, perhaps even the default option in the absence of robust non-kinetic tools, but planned and executed with less expertise, less consistent oversight, and less regard for long-term stability. Africa, in this emerging era, risks becoming a theater for opportunistic strikes and extractive deals, its complex challenges reduced to a ledger of costs and immediate benefits — a far cry from the 'smart power' aspirations that accompanied Africom's founding.