Category: Journal ISSN 1078-1935

My latest screed on US pol-mil policy, a shorter version of this appeared on 27 Feb in the Time Battleland Blog here.

Africa and AFRICOM:Neo-Imperialism and the Arrogance of Ignorance

Most Americans do not realize the extent to which the U.S. is becoming involved militarily in the welter of conflicts throughout Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa (check out the chaos as mapped here).

Although recent reports have tended to focus on the French effort to kick Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) out of Mali — an effort that may now be devolving into a far more complex guerrilla war, that French operation is just one operation in what may be shaping up to be a 21st Century version of the 19th Century Scramble for the resources of Africa. It’s a policy that, from the U.S. point of view, may not be unrelated to the pivot to China,  given China‘s growing market and aid presence in Africa.  Together, the scramble and the pivot will be sufficient to offset the near term effect of an sequester in the Pentagon with a torrent of money flows in the future.

Last year, Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post provided a mosaic of glimpses into the widespread U.S. involvement in Africa.  He authored a series of excellent reports, including here, here and here.  The map below is my rendering of the basing information in Whitlock’s report (and others), as well as the relationship between that basing information to distribution of Muslim populations in central Africa. Consider the distances involved in this swath of bases loosely portrayed by the red dots: the distance between these bases along the axis from northwest to southeast on the African continent alone is greater that the distance from New York to Los Angeles.  Think of the ethnic and tribal differences between Burkina Faso and Kenya, not to mention the differences within those countries!  And remember, virtually all of North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt is over 90% Muslim.

While the correlation between Muslim populations and our intervention activities in this variety of cultural mosaics will suggest a welter of differing messages to different audiences, one generalization is certain, given our recent history of intervention: Africom’s continuing presence and involvement will further inflame our relationship with militant Islam and perhaps the far larger number of moderate Muslims.

But think of the other possibilities for one’s imagination to run wild.  For example: In view of the recent Libyan adventure, conspiratorially-minded North African Islamic radicals (and moderates?) with a penchant for seeing visions in cloud formations may well interpret the swath of Africom’s bases in Sub-Saharan Africa as early bricks in the construction an anvil, against which, they will be smashed by a new generation of European neocolonialists, attacking from the north in obedience with the new “leading from behind” doctrine of President Obama.  Of course, given the distances involved and the porosity those distances imply, such divagations of the paranoid mind are silly from a military point of view.  But given the US’s murderous track record of lies in Iraq, incompetence in Afghanistan, and our blatant disregard for the Palestinians by constructing a peace processes that facilitated the growth of settlements in a thirty-year land grab by Israel, that kind of characterization nevertheless will be grist for the propaganda mill as well as the fulminations of a paranoid mind.  And remember, just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Neo-Imperialism and the Arrogance of Ignorance with Extended Comments and Additional Readings”