quote:

Mixed Reactions to the Command’s Creation

The Pentagon has been careful to stress that Africom will partner with African countries to promote mutual interests. “This is not about a scramble for the continent,” said Theresa Whelan, deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, in a February press briefing. Yet some Africans greeted news of the command’s creation with skepticism. “Looking at U.S. alliances with authoritarian governments in Africa, one can see that what plays best to the media is not always what works best in the world of realpolitik,” wrote Fred Mbugua in Kenya’s East African Standard. The Defense Department has started a series of trips to African countries to address misperceptions about the command and solicit input on Africom’s mission statement. Thus far, Africans have been “largely positive” about Africom, says Ambassador Loftis, and have stressed their interest in working with existing security structures on the continent such as the African Union and regional economic organizations. The South African reaction to the command’s creation has been “ambivalent,” says Francis Kornegay, senior researcher at the Center for Policy Studies in Johannesburg. He says it raises questions about whether U.S. and African priorities are in sync.

Many of the experts who heralded the command’s creation seem to validate African concerns. Writing in World Defense Review, J. Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs, calls Africom’s creation “long overdue” in light of U.S. dependence on Africa’s oil, its concern over radical Islamist groups targeting the region, and the continent’s identity as “an arena for intense diplomatic competition with other states with global ambitions, like China.” Others note that Africom will help the United States secure vital sea lanes.

Council on Foreign Relations

Understanding Africom (pdf)

quote:

Some defense officials say that Africom could function like the interagency task force within Southern Command; in that structure, interagency members have the authority to make decisions without consulting Washington.'
This mixing up of military and civilian staff and agendas is an experiment at a scale not yet attempted by others.

link

Point and counterpoint on Africom.

Point:

quote:

China has similar energy needs, but how differently it is pursuing them. When George Bush announced Africom's creation last month, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, was touring eight African countries to negotiate oil-related deals and announcing multibillion-dollar aid agreements. Many commentators voiced legitimate concerns about China's intentions; none have been voiced about Africom in the major western media.

Central to Africom's mission will be tracking and crushing the growing terrorist hot spots in the vast, neglected regions with large Muslim populations, from the Horn of Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. Bush described the new military command as a vehicle to "promote our common goals of development, health, education and economic growth". Is that what huge military bases accomplish for countries whose populations are seething with anger? Hardly.

Africom will instead militarise American relations with Africa, and militarise numerous African countries. It will also tilt these countries' policies towards the use of force. And it will inflame Muslim passions and create more angry militants opposed to a US military presence in their country or region. The command's establishment will also provide the US with new bases from which to project force into the oil-providing Middle East.

The misguided reliance on force is shown by the disastrous results of the US forcibly toppling the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) in Somalia with the muscle of the Ethiopian army. In a smaller-scale reprise of the Iraq catastrophe, the military victory in January was swift, but the plan to install a client regime has quickly gone awry and a fierce insurgency is already under way.

Guardian UK

Counterpoint:

quote:

The words "combat command", when used in conjunction with the militarily ham-fisted Bush administration, don't exactly inspire confidence. Given the White House's disastrous track record of military adventurism, none of us should look the other way when Washington's sabers start rattling.

But skepticism can be taken too far. Case in point is a post by Salim Lone this morning that criticizes AFRICOM, the new American combat command for Africa. Lone makes a series of accusations that aren't supported by what we know about AFRICOM at this early date, while distorting what we do know about the command.

Lone writes that AFRICOM "reflects the Bush administration's primary reliance on the use of force to pursue its strategic interests". While I can't argue against the empty-headed militarism of the Bush administration, this is a fundamental misreading of the role AFRICOM is to play on the continent.

As opposed to being a strictly military command, the Pentagon is taking a welcome new track in putting AFRICOM together, focusing less on American "boots on the ground" than on training indigenous military and police forces to perform border security, while emphasizing health and humanitarian programs. What's more, the State Department will have a greater role in AFRICOM than it has in any other combat command, with a deputy commander position staffed by a State Department official rather than the usual military officer.

Guardian UK

quote:

The plan by the United States government to establish an Africa Command (AFRICOM), though still at the consultation stage is already generating controversies. But their resolution would re-define US-Africa relations and contribute remarkably to the re-shaping of a new world order.

The US President, George W. Bush, might have anticipated the discomfort the proposal is elicitng when he laid out the mission statement of AFRICOM last February. His words: "This new command will strenghten our security cooperation with Africa and help to create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa. Africa Command will enhance our efforts to help bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa...Africa is of significant strategic and economic importance. Our focus is to build the capacity of our African partners to reduce conflict, improve security, defeat terrorists and support crisis response. US Africa Command will support US Government activities across Africa to integrate US interagency efforts and assist diplomacy and development efforts."

These objectives may appear innocuous, or even noble. But, coming from a superpower whose towering stature sometimes intimidates even other advanced countries, Africa which is clearly at the bottom of the global influence chart has cause to be apprehensive. It is doubtful if last month's tour of key African countries- Nigeria, South Africa, Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia and also the African Union (AU) Headquarters in Addis Ababa- by top American defence officials has done enough to assuage the fears. Their points of argument were simple and re-echoed Bush's earlier declaration of intent: That AFRICOM whose full operational capacity is expected to be achieved by September next year will not be a combatant command; that it will have a combined membership of both military and civilian agencies; that its primary aim is to assist African leaders in assuming an accountable and responsive control of a continent that is deficient in virile leadership.

Ordinarily, AFRICOM should not be a hard-sell as similar US-owned organisations do exist around the world, with some of them already overseeing much of Africa. Only that, through AFRICOM, the US now seeks to bring the continent under one umbrella with the exception of Egypt which is billed to remain attached to the US Central Command.
However, these are unusual times....

This Day (Nigeria)

quote:

Securing African Oil a Major Role for New Command (Update1)

By Tony Capaccio

May 18 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. military's new Africa command will help safeguard West African nations' oil and other energy production against rebel or terrorist attacks, the general organizing the command said today.

The U.S. wants to help countries such as Nigeria, its fifth- largest supplier of oil, improve its military's ability to thwart the kind of attacks by militants who in the past year halted production by about 600,000 barrels a day.

``You look at West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea, it becomes more focused because of the energy situation,'' U.S. Army General Bantz Craddock, head of the European Command, told reporters in Washington. Safeguarding energy ``obviously is out in front.''

Continuing unrest in the Middle East puts a premium on U.S. security alliances and energy resources in Africa. The continent supplied 24 percent of U.S. daily crude oil imports in February, ahead of the Mideast's 18.6 percent, the Energy Department said....

Bloomberg

CRS Report for Congress, Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa (PDF)

quote:

Originally posted by --Kate:

quote:

Securing African Oil a Major Role for New Command (Update1)

By Tony Capaccio

May 18 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. military's new Africa command will help safeguard West African nations' oil and other energy production against rebel or terrorist attacks, the general organizing the command said today.

``You look at West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea, it becomes more focused because of the energy situation,'' U.S. Army General Bantz Craddock, head of the European Command, told reporters in Washington. Safeguarding energy ``obviously is out in front.''

Continuing unrest in the Middle East puts a premium on U.S. security alliances and energy resources in Africa. The continent supplied 24 percent of U.S. daily crude oil imports in February, ahead of the Mideast's 18.6 percent, the Energy Department said....

Bloomberg

Guess we should have helped/encouraged these nations to stabilize themselves a long time ago.
Just how many military bases can the U.S. afford to maintain?

We are like a dog running after its tail...forever trying to catch up with a problem rather than just cropping the tail in the first place.

We end up spending more to cope with problems rather than in preventing their occurrance

"But we didn't know there was so much oil there!" If we'd have done the "right thing" in the first place, that wouldn't have mattered then...wouldn't matter now...the problem wouldn't exist.

Where is the next tail to chase?

Retired Monk
"ideology is a disease"

I suppose that to give this information you are presenting a context, Kate, it might be worth connecting it to the efforts on the Democracy International thread. There we raised the issue of the overall US foreign policy and global geostrategic and geopolitical features.

So we have as a master template that we now take for granted known as globalization. It's taken for granted as a "natural" process that should be unfoldinng, because it's the superior and evolved way for humans to be on the planet, an the magic marketplace is the guiding principle. It's an extension of American Exceptionalism, which was the rarified and pure extension of of the best of the selected members of the species that migrated to the North American continent in the European movement to dominate the planet. It is even rationalized as a necessary species dynamic that invoked the European version of colonialism that began over 500 years ago.

Globalization is based on features we can identify as neoliberalism. It's the latest model of a specifically Western philosophical and economic movement. In examining its fundamental aspects, we can see that it is based in a dualistic form of rationalism that dates back to at least the Greeks. It's a long, rationalist development process that began with reasoned arguments, refinements such as zetetic, elenctic, and meiotic modes of dialectic reasoning that emerged and were eventually formalized in the dialectic systems of Socrates and Aristotle, and we can trace the history of that through to Cartesian dualism and the flowering of Classical Liberalism in the 1700s which expressed itself in such well known figures as Adam Smith.

Neoliberalism has taken over the now defunct colonialist strategy as the colonies faded and gave way to nation states in the peripheral regions, where much of the resouce extraction was taking place. These we have often heard referred to as "underdeveloped," with the implied racism that they are in need of "development" so they can be like "us."

Here's that nice little action map of the World Wiki has on its Colonialism page:



The process went from colonial growth, to nation states with arrangements between EuroAmerican nation states and "strong man" dictator types in fledgeling underdeveloped states, to what is now being seen as a more stablizing democratization process all as part of the effort to "develop" the "underdeveloped" regions and to make all the world like our beautiful, narcissistic selves, gazing into the pond, now polluted, at our loveliness. In the process mass social and cultural disruptions of many different types of peoples has occurred.

Democracy is a fuzzy concept attached to our beautiful, narcissistic selves. But it's really not that clear what the word is supposed to mean when its used. In the US, elections cost billions of dollars. The process weeds out all but a few of what must otherwise be considered the elite, even if they weren't to begin with. Rule by an elected elite is essentially called polyarchy. And in the democracy promotion field, that elite is expected to be pro neoliberal in its philosophy in order that a climate for business be best maintained. Most global democracies are of this sort, and the US is no exception. Democracies of a sort that might be considered "social democracies" have tended been marginalized, often categorized as socialist, or communist, both in the government policies and in the press when they are reported on, and the US does not promote such democracies with its democracy promotion programs discussed on the Democracy International thread.

Polyarchic democracy promotion is just one component of the overall U.S. foreign policy, and it is applied on a country specific basis. We can see that perhaps the application in Iraq's case may not be going so well. In that case, other aspects of the overall policy were invoked. As in this Africom policy, the military is another important tool. Along with diplomatic undertakings, CIA propaganda and its covert operations, and multilateral actions, including destabilization programs, all applied in various circumstances as a coordinated strategy of the democracy promotion program that the public never seriously questions. One such example of the favoring of polyarchy over an indigenous social democracy would be the undermining of the election of Chavez in hopes of maintaining an elite political establishment in Venezuela.

quote:

Where is the next tail to chase?

Venezuela has a lot of oil.

Good essay on how this news fits together, Ren. I'm still focusing on the "what" and here's a nice run down of exactly what the natural resources in Africa are:

quote:

Sub-Saharan Africa includes eight oil-producing countries: Nigeria, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Cameron, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan.

Nigeria is the largest producer of oil in Africa and has the 11th largest reserves in the world. It is presently producing 2.45 million barrels a day, 42 percent of which goes to the US. The three largest oil companies in the country include two US firms, ExxonMobil and Chevron, and the British-Dutch Shell.

Angola is the second-largest African oil producer and is expected to reach 2 million barrels a day by 2008.

Sudan is also rich in oil, and China has more influence there than any other country. China controls 40 percent of Sudan’s oil although Chevron spent $1.2 billion there and discovered oilfields in the south and at one point estimated that Sudan might prove to have more oil than Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Mandy Turner of the Guardian characterized both the US and China as key players in a new “scramble for Africa.” “The new entrant to the scramble is China,” she wrote. “Africa offers the natural resources vital to fuel its rapidly growing economy,” including copper and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, iron ore and platinum from South Africa, and to Cameroon, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo for timber. For oil, it has been striking deals with Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.”

blog

quote:

Geopolitical Diary: AFRICOM and U.S. Military Priorities in Africa
May 23, 2007 02 00 GMT

The Nigerian militant group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which has shuttered one-third of Nigeria's oil output with attacks since December 2005, on Tuesday criticized the U.S. proposal to create a Pentagon command in Africa (AFRICOM). The statement comes shortly after the U.S. Energy Information Administration released data indicating Nigeria has become the third-largest supplier of U.S. oil, behind Canada and Mexico and ahead of Saudi Arabia.

The Pentagon's upcoming launch of AFRICOM reveals that U.S. activities in Africa are failing to fully protect U.S. interests there, namely energy -- meaning the Pentagon likely will open a command location in the Gulf of Guinea once AFRICOM gets under way.

AFRICOM, the Pentagon's newest combatant command station, is expected to be launched in September 2008 to combine U.S. defense activities in Africa under one roof. Until now, the Europe, Central and Pacific commands have held separate responsibilities for activities in Africa. The Pentagon has so far been divided on how to operate on the continent because, unlike in other theaters, it does not face a constant threat in Africa that requires a unified military presence there. Rather, the Pentagon has a number of competing priorities, including conducting counterterrorism, humanitarian, maritime and energy security operations to keep the ungoverned parts of the continent from becoming the next Afghanistan or Iraq.

AFRICOM will begin operations from a U.S. base in Stuttgart, Germany, but will relocate to Africa once a basing model is determined. The Pentagon has yet to decide whether AFRICOM will follow a single headquarters model or a multiple location, distributive model.

Statfor

quote:

U.S. Africa Command Brings New Concerns
Fears of Militarization on Continent Cited

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A13

The creation of the Defense Department Africa Command, with responsibilities to promote security and government stability in the region, has heightened concerns among African countries and in the U.S. government over the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, according to a newly released study by the Congressional Research Service.

The Africa Command (AFRICOM) was announced in February by the Bush administration and is scheduled to begin operations in October with temporary headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. AFRICOM would have traditional responsibilities of a combat command "to facilitate or lead [U.S.] military operations" on the continent, but would also include "a broader 'soft power' mandate aimed at preemptively reducing conflict and would incorporate a larger civilian component to address those challenges," according to the CRS study.

AFRICOM raises oversight issues for congressional committees, according to the report. "How will the administration ensure that U.S. military efforts in Africa do not overshadow or contradict U.S. diplomatic and development objectives?" the report asks. Similar concerns are being raised between Defense and State Department officials over the Pentagon's plans to take economic assistance programs begun in Iraq and Afghanistan and make them permanent and worldwide, with more than $1 billion allocated to them annually.

WaPo

quote:

'soft power' mandate aimed at preemptively reducing conflict and would incorporate a larger civilian component to address those challenges...

"Incorporate a larger civilian comonent" as in Blackwater, perhaps?

quote:

Originally posted by /rén:

quote:

'soft power' mandate aimed at preemptively reducing conflict and would incorporate a larger civilian component to address those challenges...

"Incorporate a larger civilian comonent" as in Blackwater, perhaps?

Should be easy enough to transfer Blackwater's South African mercenaries from Iraq. Not too far to go. Hire a few more from the KKK to fill out the ranks...done deal.

Reductions of conflicts in Africa and full protection of oil facilities. The Administration probably has the planning fully underway.

Retired Monk
"Ideology is a disease"

I can hear the recruiters now, showing and telling about the plum assignment in Morocco:

quote:

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- Morocco has offered to host the U.S. military's new command in Africa.

The Congressional Research Service said Morocco has sought to host the new Africom, or African Command, of the U.S. military. The Defense Department envisions the launch of Africom by 2009 and has been searching for a headquarters.

"DoD [Department of Defense] officials are currently in consultations with African countries that have a security relationship with the United States, and have allegedly already received offers to host the command from several of them, including Botswana and Morocco," the report, entitled "Africa Command: U.S. Strategic Interests and the Role of the U.S. Military in Africa," said.

Authored by analyst Lauren Ploch, the report said Morocco has been one of several African countries that hosted U.S. operations in Africa. The report said Morocco has provided the United States access to the kingdom's air bases and ports.

Middle East Newsline

quote:

Left unspoken at a May 23 meeting in Washington, sponsored by USAID and including all the principals, was that a stronger U.S. footprint in Africa will counter China’s expanding influence on the continent.

For now, there are more pressing issues in getting AfriCom off the ground. Officials are trying to figure out where to put a headquarters in Africa — the current headquarters element is operating out of Stuttgart, Germany — and might spread it out over several nations.

There are complex legal issues to resolve, such as Status of Forces Agreements for troops and families living in nations on the continent, and defense cooperative agreements for use of land and facilities, Moeller said.

The chain of U.S. diplomatic authority within each nation, however, is beyond dispute. While one of AfriCom’s two deputies will likely be a senior U.S. civilian, that official “won’t be able to give orders to the [U.S.] ambassador,” Loftis said. “That authority rests with the president.”

DefenseNews.com

Kate, in recognition that the strategic ellipse dips into Africa, and that China is in competition for the resources there with the U.S., an interesting complication to foreign policy making for this most inept of administrations in that area is also unfolding at the other end of the strategic ellipse:

Russia says U.S. launching new arms race in Europe May 30, 2007, 11:58PM

quote:

POTSDAM, Germany — Russia's top diplomat accused the United States of launching a new arms race as the two nations traded barbs today over U.S. plans to erect a missile defense system in countries formerly under Moscow's influence.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov complained that the U.S. rationale for the shield is thin and suggested that U.S. assurances to Russia amount to a brush-off.

"All they are saying is, 'Don't worry it's not aimed at you," Lavrov said. He called the plan a threat to Russia and added, "the arms race is starting again."

Bush Reaches to Putin as Relations Continue to Slide Thursday, May 31, 2007

quote:

The White House has grown increasingly alarmed lately with the harsh tone coming out of Moscow and its hardening positions on issues that include Iran's nuclear program, Kosovo statehood and missile defense. Administration officials said privately that the situation has reached a crisis stage and needs to be reversed before it gets worse.

---

Michael A. McFaul, a scholar at Stanford University, said U.S.-Russian relations have reached the lowest point in 20 years. Administration officials "are apoplectic" and "it feels to them like a crisis," McFaul said. A year ago, administration officials disagreed about how to interpret Russia; today, the debate is over. But McFaul added: "Nobody has a good idea of what is to be done."

The new Embassy in Iraq only cost $592 million, and the Empire staggers on...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: /rén,

Guess there is money to be made in a new arms race. Biggest waste of resources of the last century. Guess Pinoccio wants it to be the biggest waste of this one.

Can't make a "profitable" dime with diplomacy.

Retired Monk
"Ideology is a disease"

quote:

[T]he Navy is scheduled to have either a ship or maritime aviation presence in the Gulf of Guinea region for 360 days this year, up from just 12 days in 2004, but he said that many of those days would be spent by smaller ships traveling from port to port, training African maritime personnel during port calls.

“I find that to be very inefficient and not nearly as effective as I would like to be,” Ulrich said. “The idea is to take a different type of ship, in this case a large amphibious ship, load it with more concentrated training teams and focus, laser-like, on building maritime capability and capacity.”

The first amphibious ship to deploy to the Gulf of Guinea is scheduled to arrive in the region this fall and remain there until spring 2008.

The ship, which has not been named, will carry between 200 and 300 trainers in addition to its normal crew, Ulrich said.

Ambassador Peter Chaveas, director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said that it was important that the Navy’s interest in West Africa be perceived as long term.

NavyTimes

quote:

The Gulf of Guinea mission dovetails with U.S. Africa Command's mandate, [Navy Adm. Henry G. Ulrich III, the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe] said.

"If you look at the direction that the Africa Command has been given and the purpose of standing up the AFRICOM, you'll see that (the Gulf of Guinea initiative) is closely aligned," the admiral said.

The African continent currently is divided among three combatant commands: U.S. European Command, U.S. Central Command and U.S. Pacific Command. U.S. Central Command has responsibility for Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya. U.S. European Command currently has responsibility for the rest of the nations in the African mainland. U.S. Pacific Command has responsibility for Madagascar, the Seychelles and the Indian Ocean area off the African coast.

Details of the new command are still being worked, and its transition team is based at Kelley Barracks, in Stuttgart, Germany. DoD eventually would like to place AFRICOM's headquarters in Africa.

BlackAnthem.com