Strategic Implications of AFRICOM

[Flabbergasted]

Strategic Implications of AFRICOM



By James J.F. Forest



On February 6, 2007, President Bush announced the creation of a new unified military command center for Africa, and instructed his new Defense Secretary Robert Gates to get the new command up and running by the end of September 2008. United States Africa Command, to be known as AFRICOM, will work initially from existing facilities in Stuttgart, Germany, but eventually will be headquartered on the African continent. According to Secretary Gates, “This command will enable us to have a more effective and integrated approach than the current arrangement . . . an outdated arrangement left over from the Cold War,” and he noted that AFRICOM would “oversee security, co-operation, building partnership capability, defense support to non-military missions, and, if directed, military operations.”



Clearly, no single nation on the African continent poses a significant military threat to the United States or our allies. Thus, establishing a new unified military command may seem to be an unimportant policy or bureaucratic move to many observers, but in truth the creation of AFRICOM is quite important and makes excellent sense on several levels. Indeed, experts both within and outside the government, including General James Jones, the recently retired Commander of U.S. European Command, have been advocating the creation of an Africa Command since the mid-1990s. Combatant commanders—four-star generals with supporting staffs of up to 1,000 personnel—wield considerable influence in Washington, DC policymaking and strategic agenda development. Overall, the establishment of AFRICOM heralds a new recognition of the African continents’ growing strategic significance to the United States.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/global.php?id=751127

[Redstone]

1. Oh, but we DO have an "Africa Policy." We shelled Somalia a few weeks ago, and

few noticed and even fewer cared.

And how many died? And for what? Nobody knows.

And it doesn't matter, does it, because they were just Africans who got in the way of some shells from one of our warships.

Kill some brown people and go on to the next thing, THAT's our Africa Policy.

Redstone