Diplomacy & Crisis News

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Suppose one were to plot out on a map the progress of two jihadist insurgencies in Africa: the Islamic insurgency in the Maghreb and the Boko Haram insurgency. The former began in Algeria after the 2002 Algerian Civil War and has since spread east into Libya, northwest into Morocco, southwest into Mauritania, and south into Mali. The latter insurgency began in the extreme northeast of Nigeria and has since spread east into Chad, north into Niger, and west into Benin. If one were to do this, shading in each country along the way, one would see that a single, little-known country stands in the way of both insurgencies, impeding their expansion and separating their fighters in the field. That country is Burkina Faso.

Last weekend, the military government of Burkina Faso demanded that France withdraw its last 400 special forces troops from the country. France had kept the fighters in Burkina Faso after a recent series of troop withdrawals on the continent to assist in the fight against jihadist insurgents. The current Burkinabe military government took power in September 2022 in a coup against the old military government over its failure to handle the nation’s insurgency. Likewise, the previous military government took power in a January 2022 coup against former President Roch Marc Christian Kabore over his failure to handle the nation’s insurgency. The French troops in Burkina Faso had been sent by French president François Hollande in 2013 at Mali’s request after jihadist groups overran the northern half of the country. Moreover, the French troops proved effective. In 2014, France launched Operation Barkhane and, within a year, rolled back jihadist gains and confined the insurgents to a few remote pockets deep in the country’s interior. If the last French troops leave within a month, as the new Burkinabe government demanded, jihadist groups operating in Africa may be encouraged to redouble their efforts against the governments of the Maghreb and the Sahel.

It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of all of Africa might hang in the balance. As Burkina Faso goes, so will the continent.

The southern half of Burkina Faso lies in the lush Sudanian savannah. This savannah is the type of landscape that most Americans associate with Africa—a luxuriant, tropical grassland broken by trees and shrubs. Burkina Faso’s northern half, however, lies in the Sahel, which stretches across the African continent, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Sahel abuts the Sahara Desert and often features in global news cycles because of the many famines and droughts brought about by its harsh, semi-arid climate. It is important to recall that most African countries have only a wet and a dry season. In the savannah, the dry season means the trees lose their leaves, the shrubs shrink back, and the grasses dry out, only to bounce back in greater abundance when the rains arrive. In the Sahel, however, the wet season means that pastoralists hurry to graze their herds on the region’s sparse grasses before the dry season reduces the area to a desert.

Just as the Sudanian savannah teems with exotic wildlife, the Sahel brims with people; indeed, the region contains countries with some of the world’s highest birth rates. This vitality has also led to a troubling trend from which the Sahel gains most of its notoriety. Jihadist insurgent groups prowl about the region’s isolated settlements, terrorizing civilians and seeking recruits. The Sahel’s climatic volatility aids the jihadists in this latter endeavor, as desperate young men with no other source of employment can easily see in these jihadi groups a solution to their economic insecurity. When jihadism is the only show in town, an AK-47 becomes a meal ticket.

Traditionally, the Burkinabe government has handled the vast difference between its two main biogeographic regions and its peoples by applying a simple policy: in the wet season, maximize the country’s agricultural and pastoral productivity, especially in the fertile south, and use the taxes and other proceeds to employ workers in the north during the dry season, lest they become targets for jihadi groups. Under President Blaise Compaore, who took power in 1987 and resigned during a constitutional crisis in 2014, this policy smoothed over the seasonal transitions and ensured peace and stability. Compaore also enjoyed productive relations with regional Islamic organizations, managing to peacefully free many hostages. However, Compaore’s administration suffered from a failure in succession planning: he sought to cling to power with a constitutional amendment and made no provision for how to peacefully contain protests in the event of a public uprising. Within weeks of the proposed changes, Compaore had no choice but to step down and allow a military government to take power.

After Compaore stepped down, Burkina Faso went through six short-lived administrations. During that period, rival claimants to the presidency obstructed the smooth collection and spending of government funds to mitigate climatic concerns and their political repercussions. The exact chronology of what happened next is complicated due to the number of insurgent groups involved and their tendency to merge, split, and reconfigure themselves, but the upshot is that insurgents moved into northern Burkina Faso from Mali, adding a theater to the Islamist insurgency in the Maghreb and exposing a previously stable country to the ravages of opportunistic militant groups. Meanwhile, Nigeria—which had faced a devastating civil conflict since 2009, when Boko Haram launched its rebellion against the Nigerian government with the intent of establishing an Islamic state—saw an escalation in its conflict with Boko Haram when the jihadist group pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, kidnapped 276 schoolgirls, and embarked on a campaign of daily attacks against Christians and government officials. During that time, the French-led Operation Barkhane employed thousands of French and allied African troops to push back against militant groups. It proved successful until the 2021 Malian coup caused France to wind down and finally end operations in Mali.

Now that the Burkinabe government has announced its desire for a full French withdrawal, the security situation seems poised to deteriorate further. The worst case scenario is that jihadi fighters from the Maghreb insurgency could establish a foothold in Burkina Faso, swarm across the narrow territory of Togo, link up with Boko Haram insurgents in Benin, and from there flood into southern Nigeria. The best case scenario is that these jihadi groups resume their old rivalries instead of joining forces and devote more time to fighting each other than securing areas of the Sahel and Sudanian savannah to prepare for attacks, including against Europe and the United States.

There are no easy solutions or obvious paths forward for the worsening security crisis in West Africa. The situation is made even more complicated by Ghanaian president Nana Akufo-Addo’s allegations that the Burkinabe government hired the Wagner Group to help combat jihadists.  If true, such a deal could precipitate further escalation between the West and Russia. Furthermore, the United States and its allies ought to have been humbled by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and should approach any long-term military entanglement with caution.

However, the United States and its allies might do well to employ a strategy that seems obvious but wouldn’t attract the same attention as a military response: economic incentives. So far, the French and their West African partners have sought to reduce the number of jihadist fighters in the most traditional way: killing them. By way of historical analogy, the current French war on jihadism in West Africa seems to resemble the French campaign in Egypt and Syria from 1798 to 1801. Despite a string of early successes under Napoleon, the French ultimately had no choice but to withdraw their Armee d’Orient for lack of military and material support. Operation Barkhane sought to build on the success of Operation Serval but failed for the same reasons.

Instead, the French should recall another episode: the Viking siege of Paris in the ninth century. After the Frankish successors of Charlemagne proved incapable of deterring Viking attacks, the Vikings grew bold and, for the first time, settled in for a long siege instead of launching one of their usual raids. The Frankish king, Charles the Fat, ultimately opted to pay the Vikings 700 pounds in silver to abandon their siege and attack a rebellious region of the Frankish empire instead. Though fighting and raiding played a key role in Viking religion and culture, Viking raids also had clear economic motives. In the Sahel, where an AK-47 is like a meal ticket for desperate young African men in the way a battle axe might have once been a meal ticket for desperate young Scandinavian men, perhaps it is not necessary to kill insurgents if it is possible to disincentivize insurgency itself. Direct cash payments for public service or other projects could have a deterrent effect, as might grants to establish small businesses for aspiring entrepreneurs or feed depots for herders.

Jihadist insurgency in West Africa seems like both an intractable long-term threat and a present danger. Still, the United States ought to help France formulate alternative approaches to the problem to avoid repeating the same mistake and expecting a different result. One of the key consequences of the Viking siege of Paris was the Franks’ acknowledgment of the strategic importance of Paris. Perhaps the present crisis will at least alert the United States and its allies to the strategic importance of Burkina Faso, the linchpin of security in the Sahel and West Africa.

Anthony J. Tokarz is a banker, political consultant, and amateur historian from northern New Jersey. Additionally, Anthony occasionally moonlights as a policy consultant for the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE), a Brussels-based NGO that advocates for the rights of families and children in the European Union and at the Council of Europe. The views expressed in his writing are his own.

Image: DVIDS.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of August 2022 is the cornerstone of the Biden administration’s energy and climate change policy, earmarking $369 billion for energy security and climate change. It is also galvanizing the creation of a North American Battery Belt. The matrix of battery and electric vehicles (EVs) manufacturing plants stretches from the old Rust Belt states in the Great Lakes region through Tennessee and Kentucky and into a swath of southern states. It also reaches parts of Canada and Mexico. For those states where the battery belt is expanding, this means jobs, revenues, and better infrastructure. The Battery Belt and, by extension, the EV industry, is a substantial development for the U.S. economy. But the process of developing this broad expanse—as currently envisioned—is going to be a slower and more challenging process than its promoters are portraying. 

Why a Battery Belt?

Why create a Battery Belt in North America? One of the main drivers is the EV. In making the great energy transition from fossil fuel dependence to a world powered by clean energy (or renewables), gas-guzzling autos are being relegated to the dustbin of history, replaced by the no carbon footprint EV. President Joe Biden has indicated that the goal is for the U.S. auto industry to make EVs 50 percent of all vehicles sold in the U.S. by 2030. While that target may be overly optimistic, IRA is accelerating the process. And batteries, made of lithium, cobalt, graphite, and nickel, are central to the process. No batteries, no EVs. 

Equally important in the great energy transition and driving demand for batteries is the development of stationary energy systems. These are needed for the national power grid to store energy storage when wind and solar power generation may not match demand. 

A major challenge for the U.S. energy transition is the heavy dependence on China for batteries, especially in regard to the EV industry. In 2022, Chinese companies dominated the top 10 suppliers of batteries for EVs, accounting for 56 percent of world production. Chinese battery makers are also major suppliers to Mercedes-Benz, Tesla, Volvo, and Volkswagen.

China has been relentless over several decades in knocking other producers out of the industry, making adept use of a lighter environmental regulatory regime, considerable state support, and an innovative cadre of business leaders. Equally important, China’s economic statecraft is supportive of those companies that provide the raw material for batteries: its lithium mining companies are now active in South America’s lithium triangle of Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, which account for around 30 percent of the world’s lithium. China also provides considerable support for its other mining companies securing supplies of cobalt and nickel. 

If You Build It, They Will Come

The U.S. response to China’s dominance is a combination of protectionism and government support policies to develop the local battery industry (built up around gigafactories which combine lithium-ion battery and EV component production), the development of alternative battery chemistries, and battery recycling. While the latter two options are being pursued, they require long development periods before they become cost-efficient to meet demand from EVs and other battery users. 

Earlier efforts to support the United States had a mixed record. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, an initial wave of investment came after the Great Recession, driven partially by $2.2 billion of funding allocated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. However, the early battery plants were of relatively modest size, following relatively low sales of EVs. U.S. capacity fluctuated through the next decade—as China’s industry boomed. 

Three factors changed the EV battery business landscape. First, U.S.-Chinese relations soured during the Trump administration. This forced a major reassessment of U.S. supply chains and the need to bolster domestic production, including batteries. In 2022, the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act (from the Korean War era) with the intention of boosting the domestic supply of battery metals, with $2.8 billion going to companies working on EV battery supply chain projects in the United States. The Biden administration also entered into a pact to invest in critical mineral projects with allies such as Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the UK.

The second factor was that EVs began to sell in greater numbers, hitting record numbers globally in 2021. This was due to growing concern over climate change as well as the major U.S. auto companies recognizing that change was inevitable and that they need to compete with not only Tesla but a growing range of Chinese EV automakers, such as Great Wall and Aiways. 

The third factor was IRA, which has raised investment in the battery sector to new levels. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, since IRA’s signing around $13.5 billion worth of investments have been announced, most of them clustered in the south up through the Midwest and Northeast.

The geography of the Battery Belt is being determined by proximity to auto production facilities, namely with the major U.S. companies, GM and Ford, as well as foreign companies like Toyota, Stellantis (Fiat Chrysler-PSA Group), and Volkswagen. This benefits states like Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Illinois, and Michigan—as well as Canada and Mexico. States outside of the new Battery Belt include California and Nevada. 

Clean Energy, but…

While the development of a Battery Belt is a positive development for the U.S. economy, there are challenges. These include environmental concerns, indigenous peoples’ rights, finding enough skilled workers, and energy supply. In January, it was announced that the Australian lithium company Ioneer had secured a conditional commitment for a loan of up to $700 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a lithium site that, when fully operational, will supply 400,000 EVs per year. Ioneer has already secured agreements with Ford and Toyota. While this indicates a degree of momentum in developing the U.S. battery and EV business, the permitting process for new lithium mines is lengthy. What could kill the project is a rare wildflower, Tiehm’s buckwheat. The Center for Biological Diversity is arguing that the lithium mine represents an “existential threat” to the flower.

Another proposed lithium mine in Nevada, Thacker Pass, is also being opposed by conservation groups. In North Carolina, another proposed mine has been stalled over regulatory issues. Currently, the United States has only one operational lithium mine, which cannot possibly meet American battery demand. This means that U.S. EV batteries will use Canadian, Argentine, or Chilean lithium. 

One last consideration is the issue of financing. For all the Biden administration’s enthusiasm for the development of a Battery Belt, ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) represents a challenge to the mining part of Battery Belt development. Mining runs into a wall of concerns over biodiversity, ecosystem services, water management, mine waste, carbon footprint, hazardous substances, indigenous peoples’ rights, vulnerable people, and mine closure/after use. 

The U.S. battery belt is already having an impact on state and local governments in terms of jobs, revenues, and infrastructure. But Americans should be careful about the sales pitch – there is not going to be a rapid and easy transformation of energy generation and transportation. The push-pull of national security and economic needs vis-à-vis environmental concerns is part and parcel of the process. Indeed, the battery belt (and by extension critical metals mining) faces the same challenge facing wind and solar power; people support it, but don’t want it in their own backyards. There are tough choices to be made: do we keep a rare wildflower alive for future generations and not build a mine… or do we develop the mine, make batteries and EVs, and herald in a new energy age? Once the flower is gone, it cannot be replaced. 

Time is a factor in dealing with the environment. It is also a factor in geopolitics; China has little hesitation in securing access to critical metals even if the process includes environmental degradation both at home and abroad. And China wants a highly competitive battery and EV industry. This can cost the United States both jobs and revenue, as well as leave the country dependent on a rival power. America is putting the right tools on the work table to enhance its competitiveness with both batteries and EVs, but time is slipping away. Americans should remember the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Lost time is never found again.”

Dr. Scott B. MacDonald is the Chief Economist for Smith’s Research & Gradings, a Fellow with the Caribbean Policy Consortium, and a Research fellow with Global Americans. Prior to those positions, he worked for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Credit Suisse, Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette, KWR International, and Mitsubishi Corporation. His most recent book is The New Cold War, China and the Caribbean (Palgrave Macmillan 2022).

Image: Shutterstock.

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The Air Force has been clear about its plans to retire the F-22 Raptor in the 2030s, seemingly drawing a parallel between it and another legendary air-to-air fighter that flew into the sunset sooner than many had hoped — the Navy’s F-14 Tomcat.

You may be asking yourself, how are older jets like the F-15 and F-16 still in service if the F-22 is aging out of relevance? It’s a fair question — and like the Tomcat in the early 2000s, the answer comes down to a simple matter of cost versus capacity.

Unlike the Raptor, which has been out of production for more than a decade, the F-15 and F-16 never really stopped rolling off the assembly line floor. America’s new F-15EX, for instance, benefits from a breadth of avionics upgrades that required the same sort of hardware changes that seem prohibitively expensive for the Raptor — but most of those upgrades were actually funded over time by foreign customers like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Importantly, because these aircraft are widely operated and still in production, sustainment costs are lower, logistics are simpler, and parts are much easier to come by. The F/A-18 Super Hornet is also an older platform that remains in service, but it too is now expected to retire sometime in the 2030s.

The balance of cost versus capacity

The Air Force has to make some tough decisions about cost because it has very little leeway when it comes to requirements for capacity — or the number of jets needed to fill America’s defense obligations. The fact of the matter is, no matter how capable a single fighter may be, it can still only be in one place at a time — and that means ensuring the Air Force has enough fighters to meet its needs.

One Raptor may have a decent shot at downing three F-16s in a single sortie, but it can’t actually do the jobs of those three F-16s all at once. In other words, capability is sometimes just not as valuable as capacity. If you need 400 fighters to fulfill your mission requirements but can only afford 200 stealth jets, you may need to operate just 100 stealth jets and 300 cheaper 4th-generation fighters in order to get the job done.

This question of cost versus capacity isn’t a new one. In fact, it was presented as justification for the early dismissal of another dogfighting dynamo that was beloved by just about everyone (except by its maintainers and the DoD’s accountants) — the Grumman F-14 Tomcat.

The Raptor and the Tomcat

Entering service in 1974, the F-14 has been called the world’s first 4th generation fighter by some, and while that title is subject to debate, the F-14’s sheer combat potential coupled with its wild popularity following its appearance in 1986’s Top Gun could be seen as a parallel to today’s Raptor. While all of America’s fighters have fan clubs of their own, few are as widely beloved among aviation fans as the Tomcat or the Raptor.

In fact, the F-14’s $38 million price tag back in the early ’70s may seem like a bargain today, but when adjusted to 2022’s inflation, it comes out closer to $230 million per airframe — only a million more than the F-22’s per-unit price of $150 million per airframe when also adjusted to today’s inflation. And while the troublesome radar-absorbent coating and limit-pushing performance of the Raptor reportedly require between 40 and 43 hours of maintenance for every flight hour, the Tomcat reportedly needed as many as 50 hours of work or more for each hour in the sky, thanks to its complex variable geometry wings and… well, its limit-pushing performance.

Like the Tomcat, the Raptor was built to win a global conflict that never came and that would have justified its immense expense and maintenance requirements against a backdrop of looming nuclear annihilation. When these threats passed, the high costs of these fighters became harder to justify in political debate, resulting in the early retirement of both in comparison to their peers.

It’s entirely likely that, like the F-14, the F-22 will retire without ever seeing the war it was designed to fight. And like the Tomcat, some of the credit for deterring that terrible war rests squarely on the Raptor’s wings.

This article was first published by Sandboxx.

Alex Hollings is a writer, dad, and Marine veteran who specializes in foreign policy and defense technology analysis. He holds a master’s degree in Communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

Image: DVIDS.