POLITICAL WARFARE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: U.S. CAPABILITIES AND CHINESE OPERATIONS IN ETHIOPIA, KENYA, NIGERIA, AND SOUTH AFRICA

Africa today has emerged as a continent of strategic
consequence. Domestic and international terrorism
aside, the two great powers of our time, the United
States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), are
vying for influence over African governments and
people. Not unlike the Cold War, the primary means of
exerting influence in Africa is through the use of nonviolent
instruments of grand strategy.
In this monograph, Dr. Donovan Chau considers one
nonviolent instrument of grand strategy in particular,
political warfare. Retracing the origins and mischaracterizations
of political warfare, Dr. Chau suggests that
the PRC has used political warfare as its leading grand
strategic instrument in Africa. The monograph offers a
concise, detailed overview of U.S. capabilities to conduct
political warfare in Africa. It then examines PRC
political warfare operations in four regional “anchor”
states—Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
What emerges from Dr. Chau’s analyses is the Chinese
use of political warfare intentionally targeting
U.S. interests in Africa. Unless the U.S. Government
recognizes the utility of political warfare and reorients
the federal bureaucracy to employ it effectively, he intimates
that future U.S. influence in Africa will wane—
to the benefit of a country that understands political
warfare and uses it seriously.