France’s Macron: If Trump Pulls US Military Out of Africa, It Would be ‘Bad News’

• France’s Macron: If Trump Pulls US Military Out of Africa, It Would be ‘Bad News’
  by Morgan Phillips | Fox News
  French President Emmanuel Macron urged the Trump administration not to withdraw troops from Africa after U.S. military officials announced they were contemplating a shift in focus to threats from Russia and China.
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  “If the U.S. decided to withdraw from Africa, it would be bad news for us,” Macron said at a news conference Monday. He was speaking after a summit in Pau, France, with the presidents of the five African countries that make up the G5 Sahel coalition: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
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  “I would like to be able to convince President Trump that the fight against terrorism to which he is deeply committed is playing out also in this region,” Macron continued.
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  Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Mille, on his way to a NATO conference in Brussels said, according to AFP, resources “could be reduced and then shifted, either to increase readiness of the force in the continental U.S. or shifted to” the Pacific. He said Defense Secretary Mark Esper had not made up his mind about what changes he would make.
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  “We’re developing options for the secretary to consider, and we are developing those options in coordination with our allies and partners,” Milley said.
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  France has led the West’s counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel region in northern Africa, and the summit was called to address increasing danger in the region. In one instance of escalating violence, suspected jihadist militants in Niger killed 89 soldiers last week.
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  Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the special representative and head of the United Nations Office for West Africa, told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday that attacks have increased significantly in frequency and in the number killed in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger since 2016.
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