AFRICOM

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AFRICOM the Air Force

• Dialogue Sort
• The conversation so far

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Recommendations Handout
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Policy Process

• 10 outcome 90 dialogue
• Dialogue always produces more than the policies
  than it is reduced to.
• Important to carry forward areas of disagreement.
  A successful dialogue brings to the surface the
  creative tensions
• New ideas/knowledge emerge from these tensions
  overtime.

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The Pearl

• Oyster does not simply create the pearl, the
  pearl emerges in the tension between the gravel
  and the oyster.

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Success!

• So far a great job bringing to the surface the
  creative tensions in AFRICOM mission those that
  would inform a deeper policy dialogue overtime.
• Think about these tensions as we continue to
  develop recommendations

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Creative Tensions

• Role
• Mission
• Knowledge
• Meaning
• Risk
• Paradigms
• Boundaries
• Peace Parks

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Role

• Question?
• The role of the Air Force in furthering the
  mission and enact the values of AFRICOM?
• Tensions
• Can or should the 17th have a lead role in
  preventing/correcting environmental degradation.
  Does it need to be in the lead for involvement to
  be feasible?
• Can/should it play a subsidiary role as a niche
  in a network of agencies/collaborators?
• Does USAF have or even want a role?

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Related Questions

• Do we initiate action or do we wait to be asked?
• How do we negotiate our role and be understood by
  other agencies?
• Will the new process ethic of AFRICOM change
  how the Air Force goes about its business? Is
  this a good or bad thing?

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Mission

• Question?
• Is the mission of AFC well understood and agreed
  upon or is it still emerging?
• Tension
• How do we move forward if the mission is not
  clear to everyone? Or since the enterprise is
  somewhat experimental can we know in advance all
  the dimensions and we have to move forward
  learning as we go?

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Meaning of Mission words supporting text

• Security freedom from or freedom too?
• Sustainability the ability of the U.S. to
  sustain a strategic presence in Africa and/or
  the conditions we can help create so Africans
  ultimately do not need us, having developed their
  capacity to sustain their citizens/culture. etc.?
• Capacity building. Capacity to do what? What is
  capacity?
• To manage and/or to govern? To fish?
• Strategic Zero-tolerance planning and
  implementation in regards to US interests or
  flexible application of core values to produce
  sustainable and actionable conditions for
  Africans?

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Paradigms

• Process
• Change originates in relationships not only ideas
  - through mutual learning and co-adaptation
  synergies
• Knowledge emerges in dialogue process as
  important as outcomes.
• Problems are indicator of imbalances in larger
  system of relationships and cannot be addressed
  alone without pulling whole system into
  management of the problem.
• Doing with
• Individual and community co-evolve.
• Solutions may be local rather than historical

• Functionalism
• Cause effect approach eradicate causes
  problems goes away.
• Individuals make change by bending events to
  their will
• Problem focus with action determined by
  problem-solving methods
• Certainty
• Dependence on expert knowledge/finite knowledge
• Subject-object focus (doing to or for)
• Inherent conflict between individual and
  collective

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Knowledge

• Question/ tension
• What is information used for?
• To control outcomes in our favor or/and to create
  opportunities and interactions from which African
  centered policies/programs/socio-political
  organizations emerge overtime.

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Knowledge Questions

• What is it we do know?
• What information do we have access to? What would
  we be allowed to share?.
• Is there an ethic that would support sharing?
• What do Africans know and how do we find that
  out?
• Who does this?
• What do we need to know?
• What do Africans need to know? How do we find
  this out?

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Risk Control

• Tension
• Need to predict and control events to achieve US
  aims and/or the need to accommodate/navigate a
  degree of uncertainty to allow for local
  solutions and decision-making and the possibility
  of learning from Africans? Do we know how to do
  this?

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Boundaries

• Tension Are Boundaries
• Conflicted space we defend against neighbors or
  do boundaries organize dialogue among neighbors?

How we perceive a problem is how we act toward it
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Environment/environmentalism

• A political issue/commodity to be addressed with
  conventional wisdom or a new mindset for
  overcoming and perceiving problems and creating
  change?
• Fixing deficits in landscape or reconnecting
  people to the land?
• Question What would an ecological approach to
  environmental degradation look like?

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Peace Parks

• Will Peace Parks emerge overtime as sustainable
  human/nature systems (i.e. open) or will their
  management reduce them to reservation/ghetto
  status (i.e. closed systems)?
• Do we initiate or wait to be asked?

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Other questions

• What can we make of the respect individuals
  military personnel have in the world?
• How do we overcome the distrust and fear of a US
  military presence in Africa. Can we be
  transparent enough to allow trust to develop?

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Others?