{"id":17783,"date":"2013-01-15T09:03:31","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T17:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=17783"},"modified":"2013-01-15T09:03:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-15T17:03:31","slug":"mali-and-the-geo-politics-of-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/15\/mali-and-the-geo-politics-of-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Mali and the Geo-Politics of Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Army

Army Major General David R. Hogg, commander of US Army Africa, inspects Sierra Leone troops, May 20, 2012.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ben Schreiner points out at CounterPunch<\/a> that the US involvement in the French-led war in Mali is more about the geo-politics of imperial grand strategy<\/a> and competing with China in Africa than it is about eliminating serious terrorist threats:<\/p>\n

According to the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the Pentagon plans on deploying soldiers to 35 different African countries in 2013.\u00a0 As NPRreports<\/a>, upwards of 4,000 U.S. soldiers will \u201ctake part in military exercises and train African troops on everything from logistics and marksmanship to medical care.\u201d\u00a0 (The Malian army officer responsible for the country\u2019s March coup just so happened to have received U.S. military training.)<\/p>\n

…as the\u00a0Army Times<\/i>\u00a0notes<\/a>, \u201cthe region in many ways remains the Army\u2019s last frontier.\u201d\u00a0 And in order to satiate the U.S. appetite for global \u201cpower projection,\u201d no frontiers are to be left unconquered.<\/p>\n

…\u201cThe U.S. currently receives about 18 percent of its energy supplies from Africa, a figure that is slated to rise to 25 percent by 2015,\u201d Hallinan writes.\u00a0 \u201cAfrica also provides about one-third of China\u2019s energy needs, plus copper, platinum, timber and iron ore.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, as Maximilian Forte contends in\u00a0Slouching Towards Sirte<\/a><\/i>, \u201cChinese interest are seen as competing with the West for access to resources and political influences.\u00a0 AFRICOM and a range of other U.S. government initiatives are meant to count this phenomenon.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Obama administration has waged several military interventions in Africa – from regime change in Libya, to a drone<\/a>\/proxy war<\/a> in Somalia, boots on the ground in and around Uganda<\/a>, covert special operations<\/a> in Nigeria<\/a>, and now Mali.<\/p>\n

Through the Pentagon\u2019s Africa Command, the\u00a0US is now training and equipping militaries<\/a>\u00a0in countries including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Tunisia in the name of preventing \u201cterrorists from establishing sanctuaries.\u201d\u00a0The strategy appears irreconcilable with recent history, however, given how the US-sponsored invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in 2006 gave rise to the militant group al-Shabaab \u2013 now ironically justifying current interventions; and the action in Libya, the consequences of which led to this latest intervention in Mali.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina-Africa trade\u00a0grew 1000%<\/a>\u00a0from $10 billion in 2000 to $107 billion in 2008,\u201d a trend Washington apparently intends to counter with persistent efforts to produce client military states throughout Africa and extend economic influence over the continent. In the context of Obama’s Asia-Pivot – which amounts to a desperate economic and military offensive aimed at containing China’s rise<\/a> – this shift in focus to Africa makes a lot more sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Schreiner points out at CounterPunch that the US involvement in the French-led war in Mali is more about the geo-politics of imperial grand strategy and competing with China in Africa than it is about eliminating serious terrorist threats: According to the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the Pentagon plans on deploying soldiers to 35 different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-17783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17783"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17789,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17783\/revisions\/17789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17783"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}