Ltg townsend bio

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How do those different variables fit together? But in Africa, what you see is a quickening of that phenomenon. Townsend advocated for a balanced approach between military action and governance reforms, underscoring the importance of U.S. influence and strategic discipline in Africa. It’s not true about al-Shabaab.

Then in the West, the Sahel—that’s the number-two area that I’m concerned about [for] U.S.

interests— it’s al-Qa`ida there, in the form of AQIM and JNIM. Although probably more numerous, they have less capacity today in my view in West Africa.

Then you’ve got competing groups in the north. We should not abandon the region. The threats there from terrorism, the threats from China, the threats from Russia all kind of boil down to ‘do the Africans believe that we care’ and convincing them of that.

It’s not so much security. Don’t adopt that name.” So they have a deliberate playbook: Don’t attack in cities for now; don’t plant a flag and declare yourself a caliphate. He graduated from Griffin High School in 1978. How do you think that climate change may ultimately impact the rise or evolution of extremism on the continent? First of all, the acute threat is Russia.

I don’t think people expect a whole lot from the U.S. because the U.S. has not really demonstrated a willingness to invest a whole lot.

And the U.S. doesn’t want to get drawn in so that we’re responsible for solving that. Now, I tried to get the junta in Mali to shy away from increasing their ties with Russia. Maybe they are in other places of the world.

General Townsend's operational experience includes Operation Urgent Fury, Grenada; Operation Just Cause, Panama; Operation Uphold Democracy, Haiti; Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan; and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq.

And in Africa, I rank al-Qa`ida as a higher threat than ISIS. Once, a senior diplomat in Washington was in a meeting that I was in, and they said, ‘You know, General Townsend, there seems to be great interest and support for all things Africa in Washington, D.C. Everywhere except in your department, the Department of Defense.’ And this diplomat hit the target exactly in the center.

As we shifted in our NDS [National Defense Strategy] focus from counterterrorism to global power competition, and preparation for fighting near peer adversaries and major large-scale combat operations, as that became our shift and our focus, all things counterterrorism were deemphasized.

From 2004, he was Director of Operations, C/J3 for Combined Joint Task Force 180 during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Townsend was appointed commander of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team at Fort Lewis. Across the entire continent, unless we’re having a big exercise like African Lion or something like that, there are less than 5,000 [U.S.] troops on the continent of Africa on a given day.