Such views are understandable but shortsighted. The Pentagon is right to see poverty, underdevelopment, disease, repression, human rights abuses, and conflict as likely drivers of future security threats to the United States. And if the Defense Department's job is to protect the United States, that mission must surely include preventing threats.
In some imaginary utopia, the military might work hand in hand with capable, well-resourced civilian agencies, neatly dividing up roles and leaving the "civilian" tasks to the civilians. But that's not the world we live in. Yes, the civilian sector has been eviscerated by two decades of underresourcing and has consequently struggled to attract and retain personnel with key skills. But given today's political climate, this situation is unlikely to change -- at least not in the foreseeable future. Congress shows zero interest in substantially boosting the foreign affairs budget. That's a crying shame, but it is what it is.
Inevitably, this means that the Defense Department will have to step into the breach. How could it responsibly refrain? As a State Department inspector general's report commented in 2009, Africom's role was "resented and challenged" by the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs, but the military was essentially "stepping into a void created by a lack of resources for traditional development" and other "civilian" tasks.
More importantly, the lines between "civilian" and "military" tasks have never been as clear as we like to pretend, and today they're blurrier than ever. Instead of wasting time in a fruitless effort to draw imaginary lines between civilian and military roles, the United States should focus instead on doing what needs to be done -- and doing it responsibly, transparently, and well.
That's where the country has been falling badly short. Africom has been justly criticized for failing to live up to its lofty goals. A clumsy early rollout also left Africom struggling to allay African suspicions that the United States intended to "recolonize" Africa, and for a variety of reasons (shortage of qualified and interested personnel, inadequate career incentives, a slow-moving personnel system), many civilian slots within Africom were never filled. Those that were filled weren't always put to good use, and Africom continues to struggle to coordinate its efforts with civilian agencies.
The Defense Department is a relative amateur when it comes to development and related activities, and often it shows. Lack of cultural awareness has plagued programming: The distribution of used clothes in Djibouti during Ramadan offended Muslim sensibilities, for instance, and Africom has also been criticized for failing to take local clan relationships into account when distributing assistance.
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