Is This The End Of The US Africa Command? – OpEd
On 18 March 2025, NBC News reported that the Trump administration is considering a plan to merge the US Africa Command—which has responsibility for US military operations in Africa—and the US European Command, as a subordinate sub-command. European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany, had responsibility for most African countries until 2007, when President George Bush approved the creation of a separate, independent combatant command for the continent.
Now, according to reports from NBC News and CNN, it may restructure the entire Pentagon, shifting resources and attention away from Europe, South America, and Africa to border security, expelling immigrants, and building up US military forces in the Pacific. Is this the end of the US Africa Command?
The news reports were based on interviews with two defense officials familiar with the plan and a Pentagon briefing document obtained by the two publications. The document, which was to serve as a guide to defense spending cuts and reallocations over the next five years, was prepared earlier this month at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for senior leaders.
But the Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees immediately pushed back, signaling that Congress is likely to modify significant parts of the restructuring plan, including the dismantling of the US Africa Command. “[W]e will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress,” Senator Roger Wicker (Republican of Mississippi) and Representative Mike Rogers (Republican of Alabama) said in a press release issued on 19 March 2025, in the wake of the press reports.
“US combatant commands are the tip of the American warfighting spear,” they declared, and “we are very concerned about reports that claim DoD [Department of Defense} is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to US forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress. Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating positions with America’s adversaries.”
According to Benjamin Hodges, a retired three-star general who last served as the Army’s senior commander in Europe, “a potential reorganization of this nature, being considered two months into the administration, appears to be motivated by cost-cutting, not a comprehensive new military strategy.” He told NBC News “when you start reducing capabilities of headquarters that do planning and intelligence—that only hurts us. What strategic analysis led them to want to do this? This has happened so early that this clearly smells [more] like a cost-cutting thing than a strategic analysis.”
And retired Admiral James Stavrides, who served as head of European Command from 2009 to 2013 as well as head of the NATO alliance, stated in an email to NBC News that “combining US European Command and US Africa Commad into a single unit, creates a mega combatant command that really is too large for any single person to manage realistically.” “Too many countries, too many people, too many disparate issues. When they were combined, before I was US European Command, there were two four-stars assigned to the command because of this. We are better off having these two commands separated and having high-quality individual four-star officers focused on leading each of them individually.”
Some military analysts do support the plan, including Michael Sweeney, non-resident fellow at the Defense Priorities think-tank. Arguing that “if the goal is to eventually reduce the US military lead in African policy, maintaining a dedicated combatant command for the continent makes less sense.” So, Hodges argues, “suggesting a dedicated combatant commander for Africa is not required should not be conflated with saying that the continent is irrelevant to US interests. Rather it is to argue that the United States does not need a military lead to demonstrate that relevance.”
And, he went on to say, “a three-star subcommand under EUCOM would still afford the United States a focused commander for planning and implementing military operations as needed. Yet, it would remove an important player—an elite four-star combatant commander—in a bureaucratic game that shapes the overall US policy approach in Africa, which currently hues toward a military focus.” Still, he insisted, “the United States went for six decades without a dedicated four-star commander for Africa. It should not be afraid to do so again.”
Of course, the demilitarization of US policy toward Africa is not what Secretary Hegseth and President Trump have in mind. And, a less militarized policy is no longer possible, since the US Agency for International Development and other instruments of American “soft power” have been systematically dismantled. But Sweeney’s analysis was published weeks before the elections of November 2024 and he may not have anticipated Donald Trump’s victory. The Trump administration clearly intends to expand both the scope and scale of US military involvement in Africa. It just wants to do it on the cheap. According to the briefing document cited by NBC News and CNN, the merger of US Africa Command, along with the proposed merger of US Southern Command and US Northern Command, would save $270 million in the first year. That savings would amount to roughly 0.03% of the Defense Department’s $850 billion annual budget.
Trump has already loosened the restrictions on US airstrikes and other combat operations in Somalia and other parts of the continent, giving US officers on the ground greater authority over targeting, force levels, and the protection of civilians. So, US military involvement in Africa is going to escalate even if US Africa Command is reduced to a subcommand. It’s just going to be less coherent, less well-informed, and even less effective than it is now.
So, there is good reason to be skeptical about the likelihood that US Africa Command is going to be come to an end as an independent combatant command. All the considerations and concerns that led to the creation of the US Africa Command are even stronger and more compelling now than they were when President George Bush created it. A demilitarized American national security policy would be preferable, but threats to US interests in Africa and the need for sustained and high-level American attention toward the continent will only be addressed if there are people in the rooms where decisions are made who see Africa—and the lives of the American servicemen and women who are deployed there—as their primary responsibility.
Africa will always be on the agenda in Washington, it will just always be the last item on the list. Dismantling the US Africa Command will only ensure, as happens at these meetings, that they usually run out of time before they “get to it” after dealing with all the things they think are more important. But President Trump is going to have to make a deal with Senator Wicker and Representative Rogers, because the Armed Services Committees have real power and will control the destiny of Trump’s FY 2026 federal budget funding request for the Defense Department as well as the international security assistance programs funded through the State Department. I don’t think they are going to let him dismantle the US Africa Command just to save a few bucks.
