Introduction

This chapter examines the positioning of West Africa within the contemporary discourse of U.S. foreign policy. As part of its post–September 11, 2001, disposition, the Bush administration has largely defined itself through its foreign policy. This foreign policy evokes and affirms key elements of the Bush governmental doctrine. These elements are national security, the ideological value of (selective) democratization, moral certitude, and the enduring iconography of the gun-slinging Texan wildcatter challenging all comers on his own terms.

A great deal of the criticism of the first Bush administration was criticism of its foreign policy in general, and the Iraq War and occupation in particular. Critics argued that the political goodwill created by the 2001 terrorist attacks had been squandered on military adventurism that had at best a tangential connection to any Islamic fundamentalist threat. This criticism resonated in West Africa as elsewhere. But for a variety of reasons, the Iraq War has not mobilized the same popular expression of dissatisfaction in most of Africa as it did in Europe and parts of the Middle East.

This chapter considers what this foreign policy means for West Africa. It is argued that as a locus of foreign policy concern to the United States, West Africa is primarily conceptualized in three ways. It is seen as a resource supplier, a potential terrorist base, and an area in which grave abuses of basic rights are widespread.