A response to Nick Turse’s “Terror Diaspora”
When Western commentators who are supposedly opposed to militarism write
in ways that suggest AFRICOM should step up its activities in Africa,
citing the failed states index that was prepared by militarists and
lobbyists for private military contractors, it is the obligation of
people in the peace and justice movements to speak up
Why is it the case that many Western analysts and critics would oppose
global militarism but directly or indirectly fan the flame of U.S.
militarism in Africa? It is well known among the U.S. forward planners
that one of the many roles of the offshoots of the Western
military-financial-information complex is to reproduce information
conducive to supporting the Pentagon and its chokehold over the
population of the United States. In the midst of a global capitalist
crisis, some U.S.-based opinion moulders, think tanks and research
institutes are busy stoking the fires of war in order to keep the order
books for the military contractors full. Progressive Africans
understand the sweep of U.S. militarism in a context of the massive
deployment of U.S. troops and military bases worldwide to support the
global accumulation by U.S. corporations. This has been the
contribution of African scholars who have written on the linkages
between militarism and neo-liberalism. [1] Many journalists and
commentators writing about U.S. Africa Command, U.S. War on Terror in
Africa, and the broad U.S. military engagement with Africa adopt a tone
that reinforces the flimsy justification of U.S. militarism in Africa.
Commentator and writer Nick Turse of TomDispatch committed this very
error in his article, ‘The Terror Diaspora: The U.S. Military and the
Unraveling of Africa.’ [2]
Nick Turse is an award-winning journalist and managing editor of
TomDispatch.com. This platform is supposed to represent an alternative
to the mainstream reports of the corporate media. I have read Nick
Turse’s missives and enjoyed some of his publications. His book ‘Kill
Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam’ is a genuine
contribution to the ongoing debate on the violation of humanity in
Vietnam. As a progressive specialist on the military and intelligence
he, along with Jeremy Scahill, National Security Correspondent for The
Nation magazine, has been writing on U.S. military in Africa and the
U.S. Africa Command. I have also followed with interest the exchange
between Turse and the Director of Public Affairs, US Africa Command,
Colonel Tom Davis. [3]
Given Turse’s history, it was quite surprising to read his latest
article parroting the U.S. party line that Africa is a hotbed of
terrorism. The article, “The Terror Diaspora: The U.S. Military and the
Unraveling of Africa,” inadvertently supports the public relations
campaign for military engagement on the African continent. In the
article, Turse gave a somewhat superficial overview of the U.S. military
operations in Africa and concluded with the following paragraph:
“Today, the continent is thick with militant groups that are
increasingly crossing borders, sowing insecurity, and throwing the
limits of U.S. power into broad relief. After 10 years of U.S.
operations to promote stability by military means, the results have been
the opposite. Africa has become blowback central.” The tone of the
entire article oscillated between two problematic narratives: First,
the narrative of a terror-swamped Africa overwhelmed by insecurity and
instability, suggesting that the heightening of US military engagement
may be justified; and another narrative of an Africa where increased
U.S. militarism has not yielded enough success, indicating that more
needs to be done on the military front.
Because of the proliferation of negative and misleading research
currently circulating from U.S.-based think tanks and given Turse’s
influence and progressive base, a corrective response is required. That
is, Africa is NOT a hotbed of terrorist activity. Whether it is the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Center for International
and Strategic Studies (CISS), The Atlantic Council, the Brookings
Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars or the
Conservative Heritage Foundation, there is an infrastructure of
researchers in the United States who are integrated into the United
States Military Strategists Association (USMSA). These think tanks are
also integrated into the journals and platforms of the differing
branches of the US military and intelligence services. The think tanks
are the mouthpieces of the US Military and advance its agenda contrary
to the impression reproduced by the platforms of the United States
Military Strategists Association that the whole of Africa is
terror-swamped. Of the 54 countries in Africa, Islamist extremists are
active in less than six. There might be pockets of instability in places
such as Nigeria, Sudan, DRC, Somalia, Libya, Egypt and Mali, but these
few places cannot be the entire story of Africa. There are 48 other
countries in Africa. It is not that progressive activists do not
perceive threats of military destabilization, but the point needs to be
made that many of these threats are over exaggerated. One can
distinguish between the forecasts of military planners who want a full
scale external military intervention in Nigeria and those from entities
such as Renaissance Capital that are planning for the large market that
will be provided by Nigerians. Turse did not seriously distinguish
himself from the writers integrated into the USMSA and failed to give an
in-depth analysis on the complicity of U.S. military and clandestine
activities in aiding and creating instability and conditions that breed
terrorism in Africa.
Where the strategists and forward planners are unable to credibly tout
successful military activities as a basis for further militarization of
engagement, they draw upon the narrative of “terrorists overrunning the
whole of Africa” to justify increased U.S. military activities on the
continent and increased expenditures from Congress for the Pentagon. In
the midst of the preparation of this paper there was wall-to-wall news
that the United States was closing a large number of embassies in Africa
and Arabia because of a major terrorist threat. While the information
regarding the al Qaeda threats in Mideast and northern Africa are still
yet to fully be revealed, there is reason to be suspicious that the
closing of U.S. embassies in the region is another public relations
campaign to support U.S. militarism at a moment when many members of
Congress and Senators are opposing the Surveillance State – in the
aftermath of the revelations by the whistleblower, Edward Snowden. [4]
Turse’s discussion of an Africa overwhelmed by terror could be
considered a public relations gift for those who want to fight perpetual
war. Turse clearly stated that the spokesperson for AFRICOM could not
give U.S. military success stories in Africa (other than in Somalia,
whose instability in the first place the U.S. had contributed to, and
the Gulf of Guinea where U.S. originally moved to for the purpose of
easy flow of oil). Instead of using the lack of credible success stories
to probe the ineffectiveness of U.S. militarism in Africa, Turse seems
to suggest that this failure makes a case for the stepping up of AFRICOM
and U.S. militarism on the continent. By citing the discredited Failed
States Index and other statistics to prove that Africa is overwhelmed by
insecurity and instability, Turse is supporting the military
strategists. According to Turse, “After all, in 2006, before AFRICOM
came into existence, 11 African nations
were among the top 20 in the Fund for Peace’s annual Failed States Index. Last year, that number had
risen
to 15 (or 16 if you
[url=http://ffp.statesindex.org/rankings-2012-sortable]count[/url the
new nation of South Sudan).” It is no news that the failed state
narrative is popular in the talking point of those American militarists
who support perpetual war in Africa and elsewhere.
This same old narrative about "failed states" has been used repeatedly
by scholars such as Christopher Clapham, William Reno and other
Afro-pessimists. Other commentators and so-called policy wonks, such as
Robert Kaplan, author of ‘The Coming Anarchy’, have made a reputation
for themselves as foreign policy analysts with views about state failure
in Africa. This line of argument was then taken up by organizations
such as the United States Institute for Peace that carried out research
on “Collapsed States.” From these platforms there is then the
international NGO constituency that bid for resources on the basis of
the idea of “state failure” in Africa. It is a worn out idea that gained
currency when the world was still under the spell of the Global War on
Terror.
In the article ‘Failed States are a Western Myth,’ Ross noted: “The organisation that produces the index, the
Fund for Peace, is the kind of outfit
John le Carré thinks we should all be having nightmares about. Its director,
JJ Messner
(who puts together the list), is a former lobbyist for the private
military industry. None of the raw data behind the index is made public.
So why on earth would an organisation like this want to keep the idea
of the failed state prominent in public discourse?” [5]
The concept of the failed state has never existed outside a program for
western intervention but rather has always been a way of constructing a
rationale for imposing US interests on less powerful nations. [6]
European policy makers who call themselves liberal and left have a
vested interest in these forms of intervention and Robert Cooper, an
aide to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, called for a new liberal
imperialism. Regis Debray, who forty years ago sought to align himself
with the revolutionary forces of Latin America now writes that despite
the capitalist crisis, the West is not declining and that the “African
Union is up for grabs.” [7] Debray and Cooper joined the ranks of
scholars such as Jean-Francois Bayart and Patrick Chabal who made a
career out of Afro-pessimism.
Afro-pessimists have been writing books and articles about a “New
Scramble for Africa.” These writers cite the engagement of the emerging
states in Africa but these writings do not have a full appreciation of
the real effects of the scramble for Africa that destroyed millions of
African lives between 1880 and 1920. [8] When Western commentators like
Nick Turse who are supposedly opposed to militarism write in ways that
suggest AFRICOM should step up its activities in Africa, citing failed
states index that was prepared by militarists and lobbyists for private
military contractors, it is the obligation of people in the peace and
justice movements to speak up. This is very important given the
stranglehold of the militarists on global information apparatus and the
misinformation they peddle in order to ensure that those opposed to war
would support militarism in certain parts of the world. Recent
disclosures of the massive surveillance apparatus of the National
Security Agency (NSA) and the massive information gathering capabilities
of the networks should open room for new research to dismantle the
American Security Deep State. Along with this Deep State has been the
development of the AFRICOM Social Science research spending to collect
that information that cannot be scooped up by NSA’s digital fortress.
The misinformation about the need for increased militarization of Africa
could be bought into by otherwise credible analysts who are made to
believe that Africa is becoming a “Ground Zero” for terrorism. This
notion of ground zero is echoed in Turse’s narrative:
“A careful examination of the security situation in Africa suggests that
it is in the process of becoming Ground Zero for a veritable terror
diaspora set in motion in the wake of 9/11 that has only accelerated in
the Obama years. Recent history indicates that as U.S. “stability”
operations in Africa have increased, militancy has spread, insurgent
groups have proliferated, allies have faltered or committed abuses,
terrorism has increased, the number of failed states has risen, and the
continent has become more unsettled.”
This kind of analysis fits into the narrative of those sections of the
foreign policy establishment who would like to deepen the US
militarization of Africa. I would like to suggest that Nick Turse widen
his sources of information about the U.S. military activities in Africa.
SURGING AFRICA IS NOT A GROUND ZERO FOR TERRORISM
It is misleading to state that militants are everywhere crossing borders
in Africa and sowing instability. Such sweeping assertions reinforce
the criminalization of the broader movement of the workers, youths and
market women in Africa, which has been part of the long Pan-African
traditions that do not respect the borders that were instituted at the
Berlin Congress that partitioned Africa in 1884-5. Such a broad
characterization of Africans ropes in Africans who cross borders on a
daily basis as part of ordinary lives. This position on “terrorists”
crossing borders does not distinguish those who are legitimate from
those who are illegitimate. From Southern Africa to East Africa, West
and North Africa, people move across these artificial borders for many
legitimate reasons, including trade and maintenance of social/family
ties. Yes, a few of these numerous borders are also crossed by some
people with criminal intents, but it is a stretch to cast almost all
cross border interactions in Africa in terms of militants and jihadists
everywhere crossing borders on the continent. Dangerous anti-social
elements are also crossing the borders and need to be stopped. In most
border communities in Africa the traders and ordinary people can ferret
out these elements if the states trusted the people. From the point of
the law enforcement and counter-terrorist planners, there is a benefit
to keeping the characterization as nebulous and unspecific because it is
part of the propaganda to make the issue of terrorism in Africa bigger
than it really is. The majority of these Africans believe that Africa
is for Africans. They should not be criminalized or broadly labeled as
militants.
Such a narrative about Africa becoming a ground zero for terrorists has
no place at this moment when the collective actions of Africans have
delegitimized the U.S. military operations and the African activists
have turned the corner in focusing on economic reconstruction and
transformation.
Apart from military engagement, in an era of economic crisis and
sequestration, the U.S. establishment has little or nothing substantial
to offer in its relations with Africa. There is desperation among the
U.S. militarists to expand operations in Africa and for African
governments to use scarce resources to purchase outdated U.S. ordinance.
Recent experiences of the U.S. government rushing to sell 20 F-16
fighter jets to Egypt is only the latest indication of the desperation
of the militarists to control the weapons market in Africa. In Africa,
the U.S. cannot compete economically with emerging economies, such as
China and Brazil, so they manipulate the ideas of terror and brute force
to sustain their influence. China’s “resource for infrastructure”
initiatives signed with 25 countries have undermined the bullying powers
of the IMF and the World Bank, two institutions that have been a tool
of U.S. capital equity forces in Africa.
At the last Chinua Achebe colloquium in Brown University, in December
2012, Mo Ibrahim, the African billionaire, spoke out the loudest against
AFRICOM. It was at that same colloquium where I stated to General
Carter Ham that AFRICOM has been a failure and that it is time to
dismantle it. [9]
THE CACOPHONY OF U.S. MILITARISM IN AFRICA
In all imperial centers there are factions and the U.S. is no different;
there are real struggles within the military establishment and some of
these internal struggles are played out in the context of the military
planning for Africa. There are some basic features of U.S. militarism
that many Americans, even progressives, do not appreciate: the efforts
to dominate the research agenda in African institutions, the development
of a digital dossier to control pliant leaders, [10] and the
ideological struggle between the Rocks and the Crusaders inside the U.S.
military establishment [11] The Crusaders are those who benefit from
war, either ideologically or through the military revolving door, [12]
and thus want to fight perpetual war. They search for any little
evidence to make a case for intervention and continuous militarization.
Because liberals such as Barack Obama do not have an alternative to the
projection of U.S. military power, the Democratic Party of the United
States is constantly steamrolled into supporting military deployments
such as the fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Since last
year (2012), the Crusaders have been campaigning for the State
Department to brand the deadly Islamist group in Nigeria, Boko Haram, as
a foreign terrorist organization. Such move has the implication of
internationalizing and further complicating a local problem, creating
room for full fledged U.S. intervention in Nigeria.
Nick Turse stated in the article that in 2012, General Carter Ham, then
AFRICOM’s chief, added Boko Haram to his own list of extremist threats.
What Turse should have added is that the Nigerian government, along with
the White House and the State Department, refused to agree to label
Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). When Johnnie
Carson, the then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
testified before Congress last year, he named three individuals from
this organization as “specially designated global terrorists” (SDGTs).
There is a crucial distinction because in this way the U.S. State
Department stopped short of designating the group as an FTO under U.S.
law, a step some conservative Republican have long been urging. More
recently, the U.S. government offered financial rewards for the capture
of these leaders of Boko Haram.
This was an explicit rejection of those sections of the Pentagon who
wanted open intervention by the U.S. military in the current struggles
over Boko Haram in Nigeria. However, the sections of the Nigerian
government understand the implications of the U.S. government labeling
Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization – a blank check for U.S.
militarists and private military companies to turn the country into an
open playground for unhinged militarization.
Even conservative and repressive African military personnel resent the
deep racism of the Crusaders. Hence, when one is dealing with the
relationship between the U.S. military and Africa it is necessary to dig
deep to grasp the contradictions within contradictions. Racism and
arrogance of white supremacists alienate all but the most servile of
African leaders. African generals and top military personnel grasp the
entrenched racism of the Crusaders. The Crusaders are the elements from
the Dick Cheney/ Donald Rumsfeld/ David Petraeus/Jack Keane/John Bolton
branch of the establishment who want perpetual war. These Crusaders
surround themselves with likeminded fellow travelers all over the world,
including a few token African Americans who share their social values
and ideology. Therefore the Crusaders believe that they are colourblind
because they have friends such as Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia. Yet,
it is precisely the racist and classist attitudes that exposed how out
of touch these elements are with the realities of the lives of millions
of Africans and other oppressed peoples of colour.
The Crusaders are supporting the religious fundamentalists who are
penetrating the villages in Africa and creating conditions for terrorism
to thrive. It is now known that conservative militarists in the U.S.
intelligence and military establishment have an alliance with the
Wahabists and Salafists sects of Islam from Saudi Arabia, Sudan and
Qatar. These conservative Islamic sects are known for financing
Islamists in Northern Nigeria and some other parts of Africa.
WHO ARE THE ROCKS?
The Rocks are those who oppose the Crusaders. They are not from the
peace and justice forces but they have contradictions with the raw
jingoism of the Crusaders. The fall of General David Petraeus was a big
blow to the Crusaders and in my own writings I have argued that these
Crusaders have maneuvered General David Rodriquez as the head of AFRICOM
to advance their global agenda while they wait and plan. One can get a
sense of how the Crusaders are linked to the military journalists by the
way Thomas Ricks responded to the firing of General James Mattis. [13]
General James Mattis was the Head of Central Command and it is reported
that he wanted immediate war against Iran.
When President Obama wanted to place loyal military personnel, General
Michael Harrison, as the Deputy of Central Command, the army high
command demoted him on the basis that he had tolerated sexual
harassment. General Harrison already had been selected to become deputy
commander of the Army component of U.S. Central Command, based in
Kuwait. General Lloyd Austin was appointed the Head of CENTCOM and the
Crusaders could not bear the thought of two black generals running the
Central Command.
Of course, progressives have been at the forefront of opposing sexual
harassment in the armed forces, and progressives must continue to oppose
sexism and homophobia; but the top brass of the Army would like the
world to believe that it is only the black generals who are tolerating
sexual harassment under their watch – two top black generals have been
suspended. Indeed, decisive action must be taken against those who
commit or tolerate sexual assaults in the military; and similarly those
perpetuating and tolerating racism within the military should be dealt
with as well. It has now been revealed by CNN that military leaders
tolerate blatant display of white supremacy in the U.S. military. [14]
Racism, sexism and sexual assault must not be tolerated in the larger
society; neither should they be condoned within the military.
War is required to keep the US as the super power in the transition
period after the Cold War. In order to keep the military machine
turning over and dominate the U.S. social system, the warfare state has
to be oiled and greased. Hence, the Crusaders understand the full long
term implications of Obama's May 23, 2013 speech that the perpetual war
must come to an end. The recent announcement for the U.S. to expand
overt operations into Syria is part of a desperate measure by the
private military contractors to ensure that they have work after the
U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan. Where is the peace movement when the
military and foreign policy establishment pressure the executive and the
legislative branches of the government to provide arms to the
Jihadists in Syria and then proclaim that they are fighting the same
Jihadists in Somalia and Mali? Al Qaeda operatives were recently
arrested in Spain while recruiting fighters for the rebels in Syria.
America’s support for Syrian rebels thus shows that the U.S. might be
supporting in Syria groups with links to the same Al Qaeda it seeks to
kill elsewhere.
We have seen the results of Petraeus arming the Jihadists in Libya.
Vijay Prashad in excellent articles in Counterpunch has documented the
horrors of the ordinary citizens so much so that even those women from
civil society who supported the rebellion have now gone into hiding.
[15] There is such a vast difference between the analysis of Prashad and
the analysts from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
writing about Building Libya’s Security Sector. [16] I have explored the
failure of the US military planning in Libya in the book, ‘Global NATO
and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya’. Ambassador Stevens was caught in
this duplicitous planning and it will now backfire on a grand scale in
Syria unless the peace movement intervenes more decisively. This is a
dangerous moment and Turse did not mention the link between U.S.
complicity in terror in Africa and this support of terrorists and
Jihadists in Syria. Ultimately, it must be the role of the peace
movement to diminish the massive expenditure on the military and to rise
beyond the contradictions between the Rocks and the Crusaders.
CRUSADERS, WAR PROFITEERS AND INSTABILITY
In opposition to Africa's economic reconstruction, the Crusaders and
conservatives in the U.S. military and intelligence establishment are
doubling down on the intelligence fronts and their alliance with some
forces in the Middle East and Gulf States, including Saudi Arabia and
Qatar, to covertly keep some societies unstable. Take Algeria for
example. This is one state that is manipulating the U.S. military for
its own interest. The regime is in a delicate situation and what
progressive peace activists should do is to expose how the U.S.
conservatives and elements in the Algerian military and intelligence
services fabricated terrorism in the Sahel to justify the expenditures
of the Trans Sahara counter terrorism Initiative. This fabrication of
terrorism has been exposed in the book ‘The Dying Sahara’ by Jeremy
Keenan.
Recently the business papers reported that “Somalia Could Become World's
7th Largest Oil producer.” [17] Dubious “NGO” contractors such as
Bancroft Development have established themselves in Somalia in order to
reap the benefits of reconstruction or to profit from warfare. These
“humanitarian actors” want to be in a win- win situation. One major
contribution that can be made by the peace and justice forces is for the
U.S. government to expose the insurance companies and lawyers who have
been complicit in the piracy in the Indian Ocean. Nick Turse mentions
the same growth of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. These so-called pirates
are small cogs in a big wheel of international insurance and private
military contractors. These militarists are in turn integrated with the
humanitarian actors who dominate the so-called aid and NGO enterprise in
Africa.
The Crusader, Erik Prince, founder of the private military company and
CIA front Blackwater [18] (later renamed Xe/Academi), is one good
example of militarists who gain contracts from the Pentagon and are then
implicated in the massacre of 17 innocent civilians in Iraq. Erik
Prince is one of such Crusaders active in East Africa. Prince once
suggested that the U.S. deploy private military companies to countries
such as Nigeria and Somalia to deal with terrorists. [19] After his Iraq
debacle, Prince relocated to the United Arab Emirates in 2010, from
where he became involved with the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto
ruler of UAE, Sheik Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, to set up private
military “anti-piracy” network for East Africa. [20] Erik Prince’s
destabilizing activities in East Africa, reportedly supported by some in
Washington DC, [21] have received a scathing critique in reports by the
United Nations monitoring group in Somalia. One of such reports
categorically referred to one of Prince’s front companies, Saracen, as a
company that has committed in Somalia “the most brazen violation of the
arms embargo by a private security company.” [22]
AFRICANS ARE NOT PASSIVE TO THREATS
Characteristic of many Western commentators on African issues, the
narrative by Turse is cast as though Africans were passive to or
incapable of tackling security issues. This narrative is well fitted for
the justification of U.S. military expansion in Africa. Since the
emergence of China, Brazil, India, Russia and other economic behemoths
in Africa, the plan of US militarists has been the expansion of its
militarism there. But they overplayed their hands through the Libyan
intervention. Africans reacted by removing Jean Ping as the head of the
African Union. Nick Turse can still be an ally of Africans by using his
position within the intellectual apparatus in the United States to point
to African progressives and intellectuals the agencies that are at the
forefront of casting the digital net over Africa. Within the ranks of
social scientists, there are those who exposed the Human Terrain Systems
planning of the Pentagon to foment divisions across ethnic and
religious lines. [23]
The aggressiveness and resilience of Africans on matters relating to
security challenges should never be disregarded. Post-colonial Africa
has hardly ever witnessed any security challenge greater than apartheid.
But at that epoch in history when the U.S. and Western powers threw
their military might behind apartheid, Africans united and aggressively
defeated, both morally and physically, the seemingly gargantuan and
nuclear armed apartheid system. Though hardly acknowledged by western
analysts, Africa is still up to the task. Less than fifteen years ago
there had been over 20 countries in Africa where the international arms
manufacturers were stoking the fires of warfare and destruction (from
Charles Taylor in Liberia to Foday Sankoh in Sierra Leone down through
all of Central Africa to Southern Africa and up to Eastern Africa).The
figures of the U.S. military expenditure in Africa today cannot compare
with the monies that had been spent during the period of U.S. military
support for apartheid. In those days, the U.S. military, through Foreign
Military Financing (FMF), the International Military Education and
Training (IMET) and State Department through USAID, spent large amounts
of money from apartheid South Africa, Zaire, Angola (on Jonas Savimbi),
to Morocco, Egypt and Somalia under President Siad Barre. Mobutu in
Zaire was the link for much of these military expenditures. Yet,
Africans defeated the apartheid/Savimbi alliance.
THERE ARE SEISMIC CHANGES GOING ON
This is a long response, but I wanted to alert readers to the fact that
many in the media in the U.S. would want to have a monopoly on the
discussion on Africa but they are so out of date. At a recent conference
on ‘Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Forty years on’,
Firoze Manji, (formerly of Pambazuka) made the observation that there is
no other continent where Europeans and white Americans feel they have
the right to have a monopoly on the study of society as they do about
their control over the narrative about Africa. Hence, there is a degree
of unanimity from the liberals and conservatives on the need for
humanitarianism and fighting terrorism and these ideas feed into plans
like the Kony 2012 video of Invisible Children. The USMSA and the
journalists inhabit the same world where they uncritically reproduce the
press releases from the information centers that fit into the
propaganda war against Africans by AFRICOM. Africa is past the stage of
failed states. Wall Street is looking at the mega deals between Brazil,
China and Africa and wants to find a way in.
The military calculation of the Crusaders and war profiteers is better
understood when viewed within the larger context of the global planning
by these elements for the kind of war that is intended at the
perpetuation of U.S. military management of the international system.
The capitalist crisis that started in the U.S. in 2007 has exposed
further the weakness of the U.S. as a global economic power, putting the
dollar in a more precarious position as currency of world trade.
China, a country that finances America’s debt, is a rising global
economic power seen as a threat to U.S. global hegemony and competitor
for strategic resources in Africa and elsewhere. America’s militarists
are planning for war with China, and the attempt to heighten U.S.
militarism in Africa through AFRICOM and private militaries is part of
the broader strategy to stretch and reassert U.S. military might across
the globe in the face of its declining economic clout and forward
planning for war. This plan for war with China without the authorization
of the U.S. president or Congress was recently called out by George
Washington University Professor Amitai Etzioni in an article titled,
“Who Authorized Preparations for War with China?” [24]
Instead of reproducing the view that Africa is a hotbed of terrorism in a
bid to shore up support for AFRICOM and militarism, there is need to do
thorough research on Africa, beyond the talking points of U.S. military
and intelligence apparatus, and independent of the of the old worn out
narratives about Africa. Western analysts who oppose militarism
elsewhere must do same with regards to Africa. We must eschew the
arrogance of narratives that tend to portray Africans as being passive
about their own challenges. The forces in Africa that defeated apartheid
are still alive.
* Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political
Science, Syracuse University. Campbell is also the Special Invited
Professor of International Relations at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He
is the author of ‘Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya:
Lessons for Africa in the Forging of African Unity’, Monthly Review
Press, New York 2013.
