White House Pushes Military Might Over Humanitarian Aid in Africa<br />If Congress passes Mr. Trump’s proposed Pentagon budget for the 2018 fiscal year — it calls for an additional $52 billion on top of the current $575 billion base budget — the United States will spend more money on military affairs in Africa<br />but reduce humanitarian and development assistance across the continent.<br />Or as Mr. Mattis told Congress in 2013, when he was a general overseeing American military operations in the Middle East as head of United States Central<br />Command, "If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition.’’ Military leaders today echo Mr. Mattis’s sentiment.<br />"How do we operate in an environment when we are willing to send peacekeepers," asked Alexander M. Laskaris, a State Department official with Africa Command, "but we’re not willing<br />to take the steps necessary to make peace?" An earlier version of this article gave an incorrect rank for Joseph P. Harrington, the head of United States Army Africa.<br />Malawi Defense Forces said that We have statements out of Washington about significant reductions in foreign aid,<br />Maj. Gen. Joseph P. Harrington, the head of United States Army Africa, gave a shout-out to the West African military leaders<br />who helped prod the former Gambian president, Yahya Jammeh, out of office after he lost his bid for re-election last year.<br />There may also be more funding for Camp Lemonnier, the American base in Djibouti, where visitors are greeted with a video of American and East African troops parachuting out of planes and rolling on the dirt together, to the screaming howls of AC/DC’s "Thunderstruck." The Trump administration has proposed slashing programs<br />that buy antiretroviral drugs for people who are infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, by at least $1.1 billion — nearly a fifth of their current funding.
