I'm from the Government and I'm Here to Help: Humanitarian Assistance in West Africa

Abstract

The U.S. military's AFRICOM Combatant Command (COCOM) has a mission to strengthen democratic institutions, spur economic growth, trade, and investment, advance peace and security, and promote opportunity and development throughout Africa. In order to accomplish these objectives in the West Africa region, AFRICOM has selected to employ a strategy that focuses on Security Force Assistance programs and military exercises. While regional security is extremely important to stability, it is ultimately an enabler of other types of operations that are designed to increase the prosperity of the people of the region and strengthen diplomatic, economic, and military ties between the U.S. and states in the West Africa region. This thesis explores the potential for AFRICOM to adopt a new strategy with additional emphasis on the U.S. military working with other organizations provide humanitarian assistance and drive social change in the region, the existence of R2P situations, the ethics and morality of responding to them, and the strategy's validity and effectiveness compared to the current plan.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 09, 2017
Accession Number
AD1038738

Entities

People

  • Marcus W. Johnson

Organizations

  • United States Army Command and General Staff College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Contingency Operations (Military)
  • Department Of State
  • Governments
  • Human Population
  • Humanitarian Assistance
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Societies
  • Students
  • Terrorism
  • Terrorists
  • Unified Combatant Commands
  • United States
  • United States Africa Command
  • United States Military Academy
  • War Colleges
  • West Africa

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Strategic Security Studies