The October 4 ambush in Niger that killed four US special forces members forced the Pentagon to admit that they had been routinely carrying out ground patrols inside Niger, but African command (AFRICOM) may be cashing in on the incident.
With the revelation that there are US military operations ongoing in Niger and countless other countries, AFRICOM is noting that they’d requested a lot more military equipment than they got, and some of that might conceivably have come in handy during the ambush.
The US special forces were, after all, sent out in unarmored vehicles, with no air surveillance, and no way of evacuating if a problem happened. Instead of questioning why they sent troops into such dangerous circumstances in the first place, officials just say it proves they should’ve been given way more equipment.
Few questions are being asked about why the US is in Niger in the first place, and instead officials are focusing the investigation in such a way that the “solution” will be an even bigger military budget, to facilitate even more pointless wars.
Uh huh, they were sent to fish for more money plz. It took six months for anything to bite; is this really a war zone requiring special forces?
AFRICOM is an interesting military question in and of itself.
Halford MacKinder, with great alacrity, postulated that geography was destiny and founded modern geopolitics. All nations are hostage to their living space. Apart from the sheer size of Africa, a cursory look at African geography and history suggests African geography shoots the hostages and fosters a very tight cradle-to-grave civilization cycle that no African peoples have successfully broken.
Sub-Saharan Africa in particular has produced few enduring material civilizations. This is not because of any lack of ability and ambition on the part of Africans. Nations and empires pass through periods of wax and wane, but African geography only rewards the waxing. There are no natural geographical fortresses for a great African civilization to retreat to in periods of wane, no secureable imperial core that can be defended, from which to recover anew or at least preserve some gems of high culture to live on in successor empires. The imperial down cycle only means getting waxed by the competition, who needn’t be or desire to be more culturally sophisticated or technologically superior, just primed to wax on their opponent’s wane.
Outside the Nile river valley, Africa has no significant natural regional seats of power, and certainly no pan-African world pivot like the Eurasian Central Plains or North American Great Plains. Endless savanna intercut with rivers and patches of rainforest and swathes of desert are a pillaging paradise for warmongers.
In textbook MacKinderan fashion, AFRICOM has targeted west-central African states Mali and Niger. Western imperialism rest in sea power, and with the seas and coastlines secure from Djbouti, what they want to avoid are surprises from the interior. This region, going by the Wiki entry on African empires, is the cradle of many great indigenous African empires, so looks like a good start. It places AFRICOM with its back tight to the Sahara desert, another nominally good move, as the Sahara is a natural defense shutting out flanking or invasion from the north.
At the same time though, that region was the grave of its African empires. AFRICOM has remained headquartered in Stuttgard, Germany likely because war planners can’t decide on a good place for long-term headquartering deep in Africa. There isn’t one, or the Africans themselves would have found it already. In the meantime, the Sahara is such a vast barrier that while it can impede power from being projected into sub-Saharan Africa, it also impede power from being projected out from sub-Saharan Africa.
AFRICOM is seemingly a dead end; the Pentagon may sense this but politically can’t accept that. The mother of all warfighting money holes could bury them more surely than Afghanistan. And, Afghanistan, the opium-addled jewel in the shadow neo-Raj may be the key. Dogs of war are easily lured by glory and empire. AFRICOM has a nice ring to it, but can Africa be Afghanized into a continent-sized failed but tamed narco state generating trillions in illicit profits?
Does this mean the Empire is abandoning Eurasia?
No, only that Eurasia is to be denied Africa.
Funny thing: China offers Africa investment & development. USA offers death & destruction.
Not funny to the U.S., which is why they’re responding with death and destruction to any takers.
I agree with the parent article. The DOD is about corruption, not any kind of security. Every death around the world is somehow rolled into a story about more funding/scope for the US false flag death machine.
A good observation; the system does reward itself win+win, loss=win style.
China is offering Africa the same old colonial bullshit.
Where are the Chinese gunboats and penny packets of red soldiers to put down natives and confront rival colonial powers?
The last time the Chinese were confirmed to have sent out a ship, it was to evacuate their citizens from the collapse of Gadaffi’s Libya.
Hopefully China won’t follow Western imperialism, because the Western powers intervened against one another in defense/expansion of their investments as well as against natives.
The chinese have walked in with offers of economic growth and stability. Does that sound familiar Brockland AT
Again, where are the gunboats is a legitimate question.
Sputnik News reports China’s new naval base in Djbouti is set up like a castle built to withstand any siege. While the Chinese may be expecting trouble down the road, they express no clue as to how trouble might come about or how to prevent it in the first place.
China does not have the tools for full-spectrum projection of coercive force or deep experience in Western skullduggery except against itself (and some lessons never really stuck), to really compete against the West in Africa.
The issue is not all that complex; if China follows in the path of Western development ‘experts’, they will conveniently set themselves up to be the fall guy for ALL failed African development projects.
For example, Africa’s migrant crises even pre-Gaddaffi execution did not come out of the ether. European ‘development’ projects seem purpose-designed to destroy local economies by destroying local ecosystems.
“How Big Water Projects Helped Trigger Africa’s Migrant Crisis”, Fred Pearce, Oct. 17, 2017, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences.
China is already being scapegoated for overfishing in African waters, a crime most nations with fishing fleets are guilty of.
“Chinese overfishing threatens West African economies”, Salem Solomon, July 17, 2017.
“Saving the Seas from China’s bloated fishing industry”, Time Magazine, August 24, 2016.
Ironically, part of the answer may be in replacing the dust once blown into the ocean from land now covered by more plant life thanks to CO2 buildup. China has no part in this science; only the West understands why the oceans are starving, and deliberately turning a blind eye.
“Ocean fertilization: A dangerous experiment gone right”, Ken Whitehead, Planetsave. com
China appears neither moral enough, smart enough, or sophisticated enough to stop a global Torreon Massacre.
Source: “Torreon Massacre”, Wikipedia.
China couldn’t even prevent anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam; they are in many ways clueless. So while in the short term China appears to be giving the West a challenge, in reality they are being set up to hold the bag of imperialist sins.
Africa’s future rests in ending Western imperialism (not Western honest and legitimate business), not an induced competition with China to be the worst imperialist. The West has the experience and the upper hand to set a genuinely enlightened tone of business; is it? Not really.
China rising and yellow peril is useful to rally the troops, and the endgame is already being set. So yes, China offering economic growth and stability to Africa does sound familiar, and deeply discouraging for all of us, except, we in the West won’t suffer the way the Africans will.