U.S. military expands into Africa

Simon Tisdall
The Hindu, 12 February

LAST WEEK'S decision to create a new Pentagon command covering Africa, known as Africom, has a certain unlovely military logic. Like Roman emperors of old, Washington's Caesars arbitrarily divide much of the world into Middle Eastern, European, and Pacific domains. Now it is Africa's turn.

Practical considerations dictated the White House move. With Gulf of Guinea countries including Nigeria and Angola projected to provide a quarter of U.S. oil imports within a decade, with Islamist terrorism worries in the Sahel and Horn of Africa, and with China prowling for resources and markets, the U.S. plainly feels a second wind of change is blowing, necessitating increased leverage.

Africom's advent also follows a pattern of extraordinary military expansion under President George W. Bush, not all of which is explained by 9/11. The American military-industrial complex that so troubled Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 has morphed into a boom business with truly global reach. It makes China's business-oriented People's Liberation Army look like a corner shop.

The Pentagon's total budget requests for the fiscal year ending September 2008 have swollen to $716.5 billion. That is more than double the Clinton-era spending. In contrast, Russia will spend $31 billion on defence this year and China, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an estimated $87 billion. With Mr. Bush as head of the police academy, the U.S. is becoming, de facto, the self-appointed global policeman it said it never wanted to be.

In Africa as elsewhere, this could have the unintended effect of creating U.S.-secured regions that are safe for rival countries to do business in — and exploit. Africom will advance "our common goals of peace, security, development, health, education, democracy and economic growth," Mr. Bush said. But officials say that will not involve the stationing of extra combat troops.

In practice much of Africom's work is likely to involve oversight of already extensive, U.S.-funded African capacity-building programmes, including good governance-related assistance schemes and training of security forces. In many ways it may be modelled on the Horn of Africa taskforce set up in Djibouti after 9/11. But like Africom, the Djibouti base's raison d'etre remains American security and counter-terrorism, as seen in its training of Ethiopian troops and its air and sea support for the recent Ethiopian intervention in Somalia against Islamist militants. By coordinating and expanding similar operations, such as U.S. special forces in Algeria and the 10-country Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership, Africom marks the official arrival of America's "global war on terror" on the African continent. It is a wonder it took so long.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006