Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Trade and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Part Two Forging Cultural Connections: America in Africa
- Part Three Forging Cultural Connections: Africa in America
- Part Four U.S. Political and Economic Interests in West Africa
- Part Five Looking toward the Future: U.S.–West African Linkages in the Twenty-first Century
- 19 The United States and Security Management in West Africa: A Case for Cooperative Intervention
- 20 Radical Islam in the Sahel: Implications for U.S. Policy and Regional Stability
- 21 Undoing Oil's Curse? An Examination of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project
- 22 U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, 2005–9: Why West Africa Barely Features
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
22 - U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, 2005–9: Why West Africa Barely Features
from Part Five - Looking toward the Future: U.S.–West African Linkages in the Twenty-first Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One Trade and Politics in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
- Part Two Forging Cultural Connections: America in Africa
- Part Three Forging Cultural Connections: Africa in America
- Part Four U.S. Political and Economic Interests in West Africa
- Part Five Looking toward the Future: U.S.–West African Linkages in the Twenty-first Century
- 19 The United States and Security Management in West Africa: A Case for Cooperative Intervention
- 20 Radical Islam in the Sahel: Implications for U.S. Policy and Regional Stability
- 21 Undoing Oil's Curse? An Examination of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project
- 22 U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda, 2005–9: Why West Africa Barely Features
- List of Contributors
- Index
- Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora
Summary
Introduction
This chapter examines the positioning of West Africa within the contemporary discourse of U.S. foreign policy. As part of its post–September 11, 2001, disposition, the Bush administration has largely defined itself through its foreign policy. This foreign policy evokes and affirms key elements of the Bush governmental doctrine. These elements are national security, the ideological value of (selective) democratization, moral certitude, and the enduring iconography of the gun-slinging Texan wildcatter challenging all comers on his own terms.
A great deal of the criticism of the first Bush administration was criticism of its foreign policy in general, and the Iraq War and occupation in particular. Critics argued that the political goodwill created by the 2001 terrorist attacks had been squandered on military adventurism that had at best a tangential connection to any Islamic fundamentalist threat. This criticism resonated in West Africa as elsewhere. But for a variety of reasons, the Iraq War has not mobilized the same popular expression of dissatisfaction in most of Africa as it did in Europe and parts of the Middle East.
This chapter considers what this foreign policy means for West Africa. It is argued that as a locus of foreign policy concern to the United States, West Africa is primarily conceptualized in three ways. It is seen as a resource supplier, a potential terrorist base, and an area in which grave abuses of basic rights are widespread.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The United States and West AfricaInteractions and Relations, pp. 443 - 452Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008