The United States After The Cold War Sub-saharan Africa Policy Research

Sub-Sahara Africa, Africa for short, is the region which contains a great number ofcountries. SSA's important geographic location, the broaden market and abundantnatural resources make it strategically important. No matter viewed from theperspective of international geopolitics or from U.S. homeland and energy security,United States has strategic interests in SSA.The United States has been involved to SSA affairs at large scale since the cold war.During this period, United States adopted political, economic and military ways to tryto control SSA, and to compete for hegemony with Soviet Union, in order to gain theabsolute advantage in SSA. Therefore, SSA gained close attention from United States.With the end of cold war, Soviet Union's influence retreated, disputes and conflictscontinued, economic development failed and the humanitarian crises frequentlyhappened in SSA. To address the situation, United States adjusted the African policy,which included arrogantly pushing forward democracy, avoiding military involvement,neglecting market development and reducing economic assistance.But as the terrorism infiltrated into Africa, European powers gradually rebuilt itstranditional advantages and Sino-African relations deeply developed, the U.S. waspressed to reevaluate the post-cold war African policy and to clarify every challengein its African security, economy and aid policy areas.In order to maintain the supreme position in SSA, the readjusted U.S. Africanpolicy contains three parts. In the security aspect, the U.S. increases the military aid,widely cooperates with African countries for counter-terrorism and establishesmilitary organization in Africa. Regarding to the economic aspect, the U.S. starts to open its market to Africans, increases the energy import from Africa, expands theeconomic and technical support for U.S. African trade and pushes forward theeconomic reform in Africa. As for the aid aspect, the U.S. reduces the debts andincreases the aid assistance, and gradually promotes American political values inAfrican countries.The readjusted U.S. foreign policy toward Sub-Sahara Africa after the Cold war hasmade some achievements including the initial success in fighting against terrorism,the increase of trade and investment volume and the improved political relationsbetween U.S. and Sub-Saharan countries. But there are still a few problems, whichinclude the difficulty in eradicating breeding ground of terrorism, the limitation of theU.S. African trade structure and the weak improvement of the America's nationalimage. This situation drives U.S. to multilateral perspective, which leads to thepossibility of cooperation between U.S. and China in Africa.