Can Pentagon Keep Up ‘Asian Pivot’ While Scrambling Into Northern Africa?

Africom Pushes for Ever More Resources

by Jason Ditz, February 14, 2013

For the past couple of years, the Pentagon has made much of its “Asian Pivot,” planning increased deployments in and around the Pacific Rim with an eye toward expanding US power in the region and “containing” China.

This was a change of pace after pouring massive resources into the Middle East for the past decade, but as the military continues to grow and foreign policy ambitions grow with it, the US is finding that just one surge isn’t enough.

That’s because even as they look to get the pivot off the ground, the US is also dramatically escalating its presence across Northern Africa, and Africom officials are scrambling for ever more resources, complaining they only receive about seven percent of what they really need to deploy across the continent properly.

Between the Libyan War and the new French invasion of Mali, interest in getting US troops on the ground in Africa is greater than ever, since Pentagon officials seem to feel that any time there might be a war of some sort they want to be right in the middle of it. One would think that with the budget crunch officials might take huge new commitments with a bit of care, but that seems not to be the case.

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