NEW PARTNERSHIPS FOR A NEW ERA: ENHANCING THE SOUTH AFRICAN ARMY’S STABILIZATION ROLE IN AFRICA Deane-Peter Baker June 2009 Visit our website for other free publication downloads http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/ To rate this publication click here. The views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications enjoy full academic freedom, provided they do not disclose classified information, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresent official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them to offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the interest of furthering debate on key issues. This report is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited. ***** This publication is subject to Title 17, United States Code, Sections 101 and 105. It is in the public domain and may not be copyrighted. ***** The author would like to thank the South Africa Army Vision 2020 team and the leadership of the South Africa Army for their willingness to be open to discussion and critique. The author would also like to thank Steve Metz, Steve Kidder, Kevin Smith, Joe Charsagua, Frank Hoffman, Adam Cobb, John Bonin, and Conrad Crane for insights that helped shape this monograph. Responsibility for the final product, particularly its flaws, remains entirely that of the author. ***** Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 122 Forbes Ave, Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. ***** All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications are available on the SSI homepage for electronic dissemination. Hard copies of this report also may be ordered from our homepage. SSI’s homepage address is: www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil. ***** The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail newsletter to update the national security community on the research of our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and upcoming conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research analysts. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please subscribe on our homepage at www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army. mil/newsletter/. ISBN 1-58487-396-5 ii FOREWORD Often overshadowed by areas elsewhere in the world with high-profile wars, Africa continues to be a continent blighted by slow-burning but deadly conflicts. In recent years Africans have taken significant strides towards creating African solutions to these African problems, through, for example, the creation of the African Union and the African Standby Force. The path to peace and stability in Africa is a long one, but these are important first steps. One of the principal African nations in this effort has been South Africa. That nation’s armed forces have been heavily committed to African Union and United Nations operations around the continent. In this monograph, Professor Deane-Peter Baker seeks to outline helpful ways to enable the South African Army of the future to successfully confront the challenging tasks that lie ahead. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer this monograph as a contribution to Army, Joint, and Interagency thinking about how best to partner with and assist one of Africa’s lead nations in the ongoing global quest for peace and stability. DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR. Director Strategic Studies Institute iii ABOUT THE AUTHOR DEANE-PETER BAKER is Associate Professor of Ethics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, as well as Director of the university’s Strategic Studies Group. In the winter of 2007-08, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Triangle Institute for Security Studies at Duke University. From January through March 2009, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Professor Baker’s wide-ranging research addresses topics in philosophy, ethics (particularly military ethics), and security studies. Forthcoming publications include an edited volume on counterinsurgency and the South African Army and a sole-authored book on the ethics, political philosophy, and civil-military implications of the outsourcing of force to private contractors. Professor Baker holds a B.A. (Hons), a master’s degree in philosophy, and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Natal/KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa), and was awarded his Ph.D. by Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. iv SUMMARY Since emerging from the mire of its apartheid past, South Africa has become a key player in Sub-Saharan Africa. The very significant challenge of creating a truly national military during a period in which South Africa has also wrestled with tough internal socio-economic problems has left the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in a weakened state. Despite this, in recent years the branches of the SANDF, particularly the South African (SA) Army, have made a considerable contribution to efforts to bring peace and stability to the African continent. A critical step in building a capable and confident future SA Army has been the commencement of the Army’s Vision 2020 forward planning process. Recent political changes in both the United States and South Africa have opened up a new window of opportunity for developing a productive partnership between the two nations. This monograph outlines ways in which the United States can contribute to the SA Army’s Vision 2020 program so as to help optimize South Africa’s potential contribution to the emergence of a peaceful and stable Africa. The primary product of the Vision 2020 program to date is the recently document titled The Future SA Army Strategy, informally referred to as “Strategy 2020.” Strategy 2020 outlines two central objectives for the future SA Army: • To deter potential adversaries and, where that fails, to successfully engage and defeat actual adversaries that threaten South Africa’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, or vital inter- ests; and, • To contribute to peacekeeping, peace enforce- ment, and stability operations in the continent at large. v An ancillary function for the SA Army will be to provide support to the nation’s population in response to threats to human security that are beyond the ability of the nation’s other security forces to address, and to contribute to socio-economic development in South Africa. In response to its dual mandate, Strategy 2020 outlines a future SA Army force structure composed of a mechanized division (optimized for conventional warfare, manned primarily by reservists, and kept at a sub-optimum level of readiness); a motorized division (primarily composed of active component infantry brigades and prepared for routine expeditionary deployments on peace and stability missions); and a Special Operations Brigade (designed to undertake quick-reaction and early-entry operations). While there is much to be lauded in Strategy 2020, the dual-mandate force structure it proposes is problematic for many reasons. The central argument of this monograph is that the proposed force structure will not maximize South Africa’s ability to contribute to expeditionary stability and peacekeeping opportun- ities, nor will it leave South Africa militarily prepared for a significant conventional threat to her sovereignty, territorial integrity, or vital interests. The United States and her North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies should therefore seek opportunities to enable the SA Army to design a force structure agile and flexible enough to meet both conventional threats (to its territorial integrity) and nonconventional threats (to extraterritorial stability). In addition, South Africa should be encouraged to see the nation’s army not simply as a contributor of forces to multinational peace and stability operations, vi but (given South Africa’s relative economic and technological strength) also as a critical enabler of such operations. The SA Army’s structure and capabilities should be designed accordingly, with particular attention to its capabilities in logistics; intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR); command and control; and other essential force-support functions. This monograph also proposes that the SA Army be formally connected, through the supply of trained personnel, to a newly created system of border guard and other specialized South African Police Service units. This mission offers a means by which the SA Army can significantly contribute to the task of addressing one of South Africa’s biggest challenges—crime and illegal immigration—without taking the politically unpalatable step of direct involvement in internal security operations. The means by which the United States can contribute to optimizing the design and development of the future SA Army include: • Developing closer ties between the United States Marine Corps and the SA Army. There are significant commonalities in the envisaged future missions and capabilities of both forces; therefore, potentially valuable synergies should emerge from closer connections between them. • Sharing important lessons learned from U.S. employment of reserve forces. The picture of the reserve component of the SA Army painted in Strategy 2020 is a very traditional one: citizen soldiers with conventional soldiering skills standing ready to defend the nation against external attack, and occasionally being called up to assist the active component when the vii operational tempo exceeds what the actives can cope with. It is questionable, however, whether employing the reserve component as primarily a strategic backup, i.e., one with a secondary relief role, is the best approach. • Establishing SA Army and SA Police Services links with U.S. Border Patrol and National Guard units that have recently been deployed to parts of the U.S.-Mexico border, with a view to sharing experience and ideas for the possible creation of dedicated, SA Army-trained border patrol units for the SA Police. • Offering support to the SA Army’s nascent reserve training system, which seeks to recruit and train university students as junior leaders in the future SA Army. The considerable experience gained through the operation of the U.S. Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) should be shared with the SA Army. Moreover, expanding the scope of Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance (ACOTA), International Military Education and Training (IMET), and/or similar programs to fund scholarships tied to the SA Army’s reserve training system will have a significant long- term beneficial impact on the quality of the SA Army’s future leadership. Other contributions to the SANDF’s broader education and training infrastructure (such as assisting with the establishment of distance education programs) should also be considered. • Assisting with the initiation and funding of a South Africa-based defense research center to help offset a dearth of study, data-gathering, and other investigative resources available to the SA viii Army and other SANDF structures as they seek to develop high-quality strategy, organizations, and doctrine. ix