Strategic Background The word “Africa” conjures vivid images in the minds of many, with most unaware non-Africans reactively recalling stereotypical images of war, famine, and poverty that they were introduced to on a wide scale during the 1990s “African World War” in the Congo, but the present-day reality is markedly different than what most people…
An international scandal has been unfolding over the past month due to supposedly outgoing President Jammah’s flip-flopping remarks, with even the UN Security Council asking him to respect the democratic vote of the people and step down like he promised. Just yesterday, in fact, the regional military-economic integrational bloc of ECOWAS launched an invasion in…
Rwanda and Burundi straddle the African highlands in the central part of the continent, occupying an ultra-strategic position along the transregional border between East and Central Africa. Overpopulated, mostly agricultural, and plagued with a past of ethnic violence, these two similar neighboring states are bound to share an interrelated destiny due to their near-identical demographic…
The days of post-World War II pacifism in Japan are more or less over. The Japanese government has announced it will bolster its coast guard capabilities to defend disputed islands in the East China Sea. China also claims and regularly patrols these islands. The coast guard budget is expected to reach a record of 210 billion…
Al-Qaeda doesn’t care about borders. Neither does the Islamic State or Boko Haram. Brigadier General Donald Bolduc thinks the same way. “[T]errorists, criminals, and non-state actors aren’t bound by arbitrary borders,” the commander of Special Operations Command Africa (SOCAFRICA) told an interviewer early this fall. “That said, everything we do is not organized around recognizing…
Sitting astride the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which separates the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean and sees 30 percent of the world’s shipping traffic, Djibouti has become the center of geostrategic competition in Africa in recent years. China’s bid to build its first military base in the small desert nation made headlines late last year,…
