Using Sustainability to Build Stability in Africa: Strategic Policy Issues for the Army

摘要

The Center for Strategic Leadership hosted the second Using Sustainability to Build Stability in Africa: Strategic Policy Issues for the Army workshop at the Collins Center on 2-4 October 2007. This workshop series is sponsored by the Army Environmental Policy Institute and its partner organizations. The workshop series aims at to examine how the Army can leverage sustainability as an approach to engaging African nations. Working within the context of U.S. Africa Command's (USAFRICOM) strategic vision, sustainability provides an approach to engagement that will support the capacity of African militaries so that they may help civilian governments address sustainability issues and maintain the legitimacy necessary to prevent state failure and instability. Sustainability in Africa is a national security issue because it relates directly to the stability of the respective nations. States that can sustain their economic growth and diversification, social development, democratic maturation, and their natural resources and service base will maintain their legitimacy and be more stable than states that have difficulty managing these same issues. Sustainability is a catalytic concept with the potential to build partnerships of NGOs, militaries, other governmental agencies, and the private sector to achieve the strategic effect of stability; it is key to protecting U.S. strategic interests in Africa. Political instability is the primary challenge to the United States in the post-Cold War strategic environment, in part because it feeds the root causes and underlying conditions of issues such as terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and other illegal activities that erode and degrade the human condition.