Africa Command

In the current Esquire, Thomas Barnett offers an enthusiastic look at the new Africa Command. Brad Plumer's not excited nor is the Center for Global Development. A member of John Edwards team has waxed fairly enthusiastically to me about this sort of thing, but was also indicating that it would be better to develop less militarized methods of trying to do it like the "Marshall Corps" proposal he's outlined.

I get a little queasy at the idea that we have meaningful national security interests in Africa (helping people not get sick and die is good, though) since by whatever definition we've decided the Horn of Africa is a strategically significant location everywhere is crucially important.

Comments

Thomas Barnett might be excited but the African countries are not. The Washington Post reported in June that even the most U.S. friendly countries in Northern Africa don't want to host this AFRICOM because they think hosting it will stir domestic unrest more than provide security.

Posted by joejoejoe | July 24, 2007 11:56 AM

Well, it's not like we've never been here before. I remember back in the 80s it was all like 600-ship navy and Horn-of-Africa because we needed to be able to keep the oil flowing so we could keep driving in America during that nuclear war we would be fighting with Russia.

I believe the clinical term for some of our foreign policy "elites" would be "drunk with power".

Posted by serial catowner | July 24, 2007 11:56 AM

The moment British and French and Belgian colonialism began really, really failing in Africa, the US' foreign policy establishment moved to begin to control any location they could either for the British, French, and Belgians, or directly.

So, harmful and counter-productive US establishment meddling in African governance is a long-standing tradition, though fortunately it has declined since the time when Reagan was helping the South African fascists and attempting to destroy the independence of Angola and Mozambique.

The US' dreadful 'ally' Mobutu's Congo, then Zaire, now Congo again, has mostly survived the civil war produced by the tyrant's fall and by the Rwandan / Burundian / Ugandan civil war spillovers.

Somalia & Ethiopia are just as part of the Horn strategy as they've ever been.

And there's been plenty of coverage of US and Western and (once again) Chinese interest in the more oil & mineral rich of Nigeria, Angola, Sudan, Chad, Libya, Gabon, Equatorial Guineau, Congo...

...or it could all just be the US' expression of continual hope, altruism, and good will, and there are no interests seen there whatsoever.

Posted by El Cid | July 24, 2007 12:29 PM

Thomas Barnett... enthusiastic... the new Africa Command

That alone suggests that "Africa Command" is a very, very dubious idea.

Posted by sglover | July 24, 2007 1:28 PM

I see your point here, but I'm not sure it's strange (or at all vaccuous) to say that, from a national security perspective, "everywhere is crucially important." After all, I don't think anyone means to say we ought to pay more attention to problems in Africa than to similar problems elsewhere. The point is just that we ought to pay attention to problems in Africa. Of course, that there are security interests does not imply that the solution involves the military.

Posted by mfff | July 24, 2007 1:35 PM

Matt, check a map and see what lies across from the Horn of Africa (The Arabian Peninsula). That, plus the past and present presence of Al-Qaeda in the area gives us strategic interests there. That said, we are probably best off maintaining the status quo of a light footprint onshore there, working with local proxies where necessary. The last time we had troops on the ground for initially humanitarian reasons in Somalia (unless someone here wants to argue we were there under Clinton to steal some of Somalia's poverty or something), it evolved into something non-humanitarian in fairly short order.

El Cid,

France and Britain have arguably been quietly successful in Africa in recent years. It doesn't get a lot of press, but France has done a lot to keep a lid on the chaos in a number of its 'former' colonies: managing a currency (the African franc) for them, sending in troops when a local headman or rebel gets out of line, etc. Britain was successful intervening militarily in Sierra Leone under Blair (one of the reasons Blair was optimistic about Iraq).

Anyhow, it's not as if the U.S. Military didn't plan contingencies for Africa prior to the start of this African command, it's just that the European Command and the Central Command split responsibility for the region before.

Posted by Fred | July 24, 2007 1:36 PM

Somalia . . . we were there under Clinton

But of course, Bush I got us into Somalia--Clinton was simply the guy who got us out.

Not quite as bad as blaming Ruby Ridge on Clinton--but approaching it.

Posted by rea | July 24, 2007 1:42 PM

Perheps a foreign policy in Africa is not in order. Stricken by servere poverty and hunger, Africa is in desperate need of anti-poverty help. As one the nations that pledge to cut global poverty in half by the year 2015, the Bush Administration has done little to none to fulfill this UN Millennium Project Goal. According to the Borgen Project, it takes only $19 billion each year; severe poverty can be eradicated within the US as well as around the world. With a defense budge this year alone of $520 billion dollars and another $450 billion dollars poured into this fruitless war, it is time for this administration to take a real interest in the lives of the American people as well as people who are in desperate needs around the world.

Posted by Mstessyrue | July 24, 2007 2:17 PM

Fred, I'm quite aware of many other nations' involvement in Africa, including Britain and France, for the better and for the worse.

That said, it just seems sensible to me to begin with a clean, non-ideologically biased look at U.S. foreign policy interests in Africa, looking first at the past record of demonstrated interests and involvements, and secondly looking for expressed current material and other demonstrable, measurable interests, and thirdly, intelligently analyzing what other real interests may be.

I'm basically just suggesting that when US policymakers say "Hey, nothing's going on here, just a bureaucratic clean-up," we actually approach it with the sense of realist history the situation entails.

Posted by El Cid | July 24, 2007 2:39 PM

"Wax enthusiastically" is what you do to furniture. It's "wax enthusiastic." In this sense, "wax" is intransitive, synonymous with "become."

I just waxed pedantic here (not "pedantically").

Posted by Swift Loris | July 24, 2007 2:44 PM

There is a rather large amount of oil in West Africa.

Posted by Isaac | July 24, 2007 10:00 PM