Did you know that Djibouti is in the midst of a border conflict with Eritrea? I didn’t, and for that I blame American news outlets. According to the BBC, French troops are providing logistical and medical support to Djibouti’s forces. The United States has condemned “Eritrean aggression.”.
Eritrea, for its part, has condemned “‘US meddling’ in the Horn of Africa.”. Which presumably refers not just to the large US base in Djibouti (Camp Lemonier), but to its backing of Ethiopia and its related proxy (as well as direct) activities in Somalia.
Given the creation of AFRICOM, the fact that Africa remains one of the least politically stable regions in the world, and the growing importance of the continent to the “War on Terror,” we should expect to see more conflicts in which the United States plays some kind of role or, at least, has some stake in the outcome.
The French, of course, have often engaged in direct military action–of one form or another–on the continent.
Image from the US Department of State.
Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.
He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.
He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
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