The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is a militant force formed and run by a man named Joseph Kony. In the late 1980s, Kony’s aunt led a militant group called the Holy Spirit Movement that fought against the Ugandan government. Out of the remnants of his aunt’s group Kony built the LRA. Kony and the LRA’s goals are to “establish a theocratic state based on the Ten Commandments and the tradition of the Acholi people, an ethnic group in northern Uganda.” (WaPo) Despite Kony’s preaching of the Ten Commandments, he is now widely regarded as a violent criminal. In October of 2008, the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Kony “under 33 counts of alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes” which “include 12 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, enslavement, sexual enslavement, and inhumane acts of inflicting serious bodily injuries and suffering and 21 counts of war crimes, including murder, cruel treatment of civilians, intentionally directing an attack against a civilian population, pillaging, inducing rape and forced enlistment of children.” (EU/ICC) The ICC, following its indictment of Joseph Kony, requested that all surrounding and involved governments aid the ICC in its attempts to capture Kony to bring him to trial. To this day, despite the indictment order still standing, Kony has not been captured or killed.
However, the politics of the issue have recently been shaken up by a new deployment of American troops. On October 14 of this year, news broke that President Barack Obama had already deployed about one hundred American soldiers to Uganda. Their mission, as outlined in a letter to Congress written by President Obama, is to act, “as advisors to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA.” (Obama) Despite the soldiers combat readiness, President Obama maintains that the role of the “combat equipped” (Obama) soldiers is strictly advisory, but they will fire if fired upon.
The question now, from an international relations standpoint, is why President Obama has decided to deploy troops in Africa, and why use this particular strategy. To think about these questions, I will use Graham Allison’s three lens of situational decision-making. According to Allison’s Rational Actor theory, every decision is made with reason, all decisions are intended and have a purpose, decisions are strategic, and decisions are made after a cost-benefit analysis. Following the Rational Actor theory, President Obama and his advisors had to have fulfilled all of these requirements.
The first step is to figure out whether this decision was made with reason. Jason Straziuso of the Associated Press aptly reported in an analysis piece on the issue that, “The LRA poses no known security threat to the United States, and a report from the Enough Project last year said that Kony no longer has complete and direct command and control over each LRA unit.” (AP/ABC) Obama stated in his letter Congress that, “this deployment…is in the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States.” (Obama) Part of this statement is politicking, because, as Straziuso pointed out, there is no known security threat posed by the LRA, so Obama’s statement that this action is for national security is a play to current politics, where, hyperbolically, no action can be sanctioned if it isn’t in the name of national security. However, President Obama also stated that this action was being taken in the interest of foreign policy. Under the Obama presidency, a major focus of the foreign policy has been a focus of justice and military action for humanitarian purposes. For example, the initial military strikes in Libya, were argued by the White House to be protecting the hundreds of thousands of civilians in Benghazi, who were about to be on the receiving end of Gadhafi’s artillery and tank brigades. As President Obama said in his Nobel Peace Prize speech, “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.” (MSNBC) In taking into account this White House’s foreign policy, the decision to send troops to Uganda does seem to have been made with reason. It is a foreign policy that supports military action in the pursuit of humanitarian justice and a foreign policy that views military action as a vehicle for peace. The next issue to address is whether this decision was made with a purpose, and it seems pretty clear that it does. In the letter to congress, the reason for the deployment is to have United States troops in an advisory role to aid in the “removal” of Joseph Kony. The final to parameters are that the decision is made strategically and with a risk analysis. The deployment is certainly a strategic one. The letter to Congress lays out a plan of building an infrastructure in which the partner nations can attempt to hunt down Kony. The risk analysis of this deployment is something that was most certainly conducted. Generally, decisions of this magnitude would never be made without one. But, reflecting upon the decision as it stands, the effects of the analysis can be seen, for example, the exact number of deployed troops. The number looks as if it was chosen to please the public, so it does not look as if we are invading Uganda. Also, it is a small enough number of troops for President Obama to keep a tight control over them. The last thing he wants is another Bay of Pigs or Battle of Mogadishu (i.e. Black Hawk Down).
Where is particular deployment will go is unclear. If it stays as a strictly advisory role then the public and media will forget about it until something happens, be it the capture of Joseph Kony or the death of one of the deployed soldiers. What it is important for is the continued role in setting a precedent for the Obama White House’s foreign policy. What Obama has realized is that the decisions that he will be faced with in the future, that regard the need for possible military action, will be situations where he is facing an enemy that a large invasion ground force is not suited for. This decision will affect future decisions, as Anna Mulrine from the Christian Science Monitor reported, “The US military will likely need to become more accustomed to sending smaller groups of troops into areas where they may encounter combat – reinforced by UAV drones for intelligence and possibly armed overwatch – as budget pressures intensify, analysts say.” (CSM) The lesson to be learned here is that careful decisions, good or bad, are made through a difficult process, and that process leads to a decision that will forever effect the decisions that follow it.
Obama, Barack. Text of a Letter From the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Office of the Press Secretary. Oct. 14, 2011.
Flock, Elizabeth. "Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army: a Primer - BlogPost - The Washington Post." The Washington Post: National, World & D.C. Area News and Headlines - The Washington Post. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/obama-deploys-combat-forces-to-fight-lords-resistance-army-in-central-africa/2011/10/14/gIQAYB8KkL_blog.html>.
Official Journal of the European Union. Indictment and bringing to trial of Joseph Kony at the International Criminal Court. October 2008. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:015E:0033:0037:EN:PDF
Straziuso, Jason. "Analysis: Why Set US Troops on Africa Militants? - ABC News."ABCNews.com: Daily News, Breaking News and Video Broadcasts - ABC News. Associated Press, 15 Oct. 2011. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. <http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/send-us-troops-african-bush-fighters-14743108>.
Allison, Graham. Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The American Political Science Review.Vol. 63, No. 3 (Sep., 1969), pp. 689-718. Published by: American Political Science Association. Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1954423
"Full Text of Obama's Nobel Peace Prize Speech - Politics - White House - Msnbc.com."Msnbc.com - Breaking News, Science and Tech News, World News, US News, Local News- Msnbc.com. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34360743/ns/politics-white_house/t/full-text-obamas-nobel-peace-prize-speech/>.
Mulrine, Anna. "What US Manhunt for LRA Leaders Reveals about Obama's War Strategy - CSMonitor.com." The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com. Web. 16 Oct. 2011. <http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/1015/What-US-manhunt-for-LRA-leaders-reveals-about-Obama-s-war-strategy>.
Ethan, first of all, great topic and writing! I am not sure if you read my post about Invisible Children, an NGO focused on the Northern Ugandan situation. I believe this topic also falls under the idea of Transnational and Global Civil Society when you take into consideration the work of Invisible Children.
ReplyDeleteTo further elaborate on the question of why Obama deployed the troops, the US officially declared the LRA to be a terrorist organization in 2010 with the US Patriot Act. In 2004, Congress passed the Northern Uganda Crisis Response Act, the first piece of American legislation to address this disaster. In 2007, US State Department appointed Tim Shortley to Senior Advisor for Conflict Resolution with his immediate focus on northern Uganda. (Invisible Children) All of these actions come back to the efforts of the Invisible Children team to raise awareness of the LRA and pressure on the US government to take action.
What I have presented is merely another angle to Obama's decision to take action in Uganda. I agree that this is decision is much larger than what meets the eye. It is one thing for groups like IC to raise awareness and help the Ugandan people. Then you involve the military of a country halfway around the world, there are a lot of implications that country and it's leaders must face.
Ethan I think this is very interesting. In your research, did you find any specific explanations for why it is in the national security interest of the U.S.? You sort of passed it off as a political line (which I can see why and agree with), but did the President ever offer up an explanation for that?
ReplyDeleteRyan,
ReplyDeleteI was desperately looking for an official explanation for why this was a national security issue. I couldn't find anything, but I found plenty of skepticism with the relevance of national security in this issue. I think it is just a product of our political system these days. Not to be cliched, but in a post-911 world, military action cannot be done with the added "national security" reasoning.
HI ETHAN, I really enjoyed the your post and I find the topic quite interesting. When I first heard this I was actually surprised Obama would do this considering there is an election coming up and the fact that our track record of sending "Advisers" into heavily wooded tropical areas isn't that great. Especially since, as you mentioned, the last American military foray in Africa ended tragically in Mogadishu. I saw above about how Obama said this operation is for "national security", but perhaps instead it is done in an effort of collective security to build a better alliance with Uganda?
ReplyDelete