The U.S Defense Department is planning to create a new command headquarters in Africa by 2008. With this, "the Defense Department will be able to coordinate better its own activities in Africa as well as help coordinate the work of other U.S. government agencies, particularly the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development". President Bush claims that "Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa.”
All this sounds great, but is the military route really the way to go in order to help Africa? I would like to hear your comments about this.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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“Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa.”
President Bush said this in his press release about creating the AFRICOM command. The idea of a centralized command in order to coordinate all, ALL US intervention and projects in Africa has both positive and negative aspects. I tend to view this rather suspiciously. What does the US government get out of forming this new command? It is unlikely that a country would act in another country for purely humanitarian reasons. (Look at our lack of action in Rwanda or Darfur as an example). It seems to me that the US aims to have more influence in the African region. The quote above can be seen as grossly ethnocentric. Perhaps by being in the region, the US hopes to have a greater influence over the development of African countries. By having a stronger presence, it will be able to ensure that African countries develop along western lines of thought. By pushing to keep these countries a part of the liberal economic order, the US can ensure that its factories will continue to recieve cheap commodities which can then be sold back to Africa at a profit.
Although this is a mere speculation, I think that there is merit in this argument. It will be interesting in the future to see what projects the AFRICOM undertakes.
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