Steven Metz

A year ago, the U.S. Army was busy retooling from counterinsurgency to long term competition with China and Russia. Its focus was on what it called “multi-domain operations” particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, and on modernizing to fight large conventional operations. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. For the U.S. Army – as for every element […]

In early October 2017, a small group of U.S. troops joined local forces from the African nation of Niger on a patrol to gather information on extremists operating in that country. This was not unprecedented: as extremism spread across the northern half of Africa in recent years, American support to local security forces had become […]

American involvement in Africa carries heavy historical baggage. Until the early years of the Cold War all of the continent save Liberia and Ethiopia was ruled by Europe so Washington largely deferred to Paris, London, Brussels, Lisbon, and Madrid on security issues. But as African decolonization began in the 1950s Washington was concerned about the […]