{"id":8760,"date":"2011-05-01T19:09:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T03:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8760"},"modified":"2011-05-01T19:20:05","modified_gmt":"2011-05-02T03:50:05","slug":"the-african-star-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8760","title":{"rendered":"The African ‘Star Wars’; Are We Still on an Imperial Planet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Helpful analysis about events in Africa and the U.S. anxiety about China. First from Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar writing an op ed for Al Jazeera<\/a>. The second article “China as Number One?<\/a>” by Tom Englehardt from Tom Dispatch.\u00a0 It follows his earlier article “Sleepwalking into the Imperial Dark<\/a>.” <\/em>He is not as concerned about China’s rise and asks:<\/p>\n

What if, in fact, the U.S. was indeed the last empire? \u00a0What if a world of rivalries, on a planet heading into resource scarcity, turned out to be less than imperial in nature?\u00a0 Or what if — and think of me as a devil\u2019s advocate here — this turned out not to be an imperial world of bitter rivalries at all, but in the face of unexpectedly tough times, a partnership planet?<\/p>\n

Unlikely?\u00a0 Sure, but who knows?\u00a0 That\u2019s the great charm of the future.\u00a0 In any case, just to be safe, you might not want to start preparing for the Chinese century quite so fast or bet your bottom dollar on China as number one.\u00a0 Not just yet anyway.<\/p>\n

>><<
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Source: http:\/\/english.aljazeera.net\/indepth\/opinion\/2011\/04\/2011422131911465794.html<\/a><\/p>\n

The African ‘Star Wars’<\/h2>\n

It is the Pentagon’s Africom versus China’s web of investments – the ultimate prize: Africa’s natural resources.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pepe Escobar<\/p>\n

Last Modified: 26 Apr 2011 13:54<\/p>\n

From energy wars to water wars, the 21st century will be determined by a fierce battle for the world’s remaining natural resources. The chessboard is global. The stakes are tremendous. Most battles will be invisible. All will be crucial.<\/p>\n

In resource-rich Africa, a complex subplot of the New Great Game in Eurasia is already in effect. It’s all about three major intertwined developments:<\/p>\n

1) The coming of age of the African Union (AU) in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

2) China’s investment offencive in Africa throughout the 2000s.<\/p>\n

3) The onset of the Pentagon’s African Command (Africom) in 2007.<\/p>\n

Beijing clearly sees that the Anglo-French-American bombing of Libya \u2013 apart from its myriad geopolitical implications \u2013 has risked billions of dollars in Chinese investments, not to mention forcing the (smooth) evacuation of more than 35,000 Chinese working across the country.<\/p>\n

And crucially, depending on the outcome \u2013 as in renegotiated energy contracts by a pliable, pro-Western government \u2013 it may also seriously jeopardise Chinese oil imports (3 per cent of total Chinese imports in 2010).<\/p>\n

No wonder the China Military, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) newspaper, as well as sectors in academia, are now openly arguing that China needs to drop Deng Xiaoping’s “low-profile” policy and bet on a sprawling armed forces to defend its strategic interests worldwide (these assets already total over $1.2 trillion).<\/p>\n

Now compare it with a close examination of Africom’s strategy, which reveals as the proverbial hidden agenda the energy angle and a determined push to isolate China from northern Africa.<\/p>\n

One report titled “China’s New Security Strategy in Africa” actually betrays the Pentagon’s fear of the PLA eventually sending troops to Africa to protect Chinese interests.<\/p>\n

It won’t happen in Libya. It’s not about to happen in Sudan. But further on down the road, all bets are off.<\/p>\n

Meddle is our middle name<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Pentagon has in fact been meddling in Africa’s affairs for more than half a century. According to a 2010 US Congressional Research Service study, this happened no less than 46 times before the current Libya civil war.<\/p>\n

Among other exploits, the Pentagon invested in a botched large-scale invasion of Somalia and backed the infamous, genocide-related Rwanda regime.<\/p>\n

The Bill Clinton administration raised hell in Liberia, Gabon, Congo and Sierra Leone, bombed Sudan, and sent “advisers” to Ethiopia to back dodgy clients grabbing a piece of Somalia (by the way, Somalia has been at war for 20 years).<\/p>\n

The September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), conceived by the Bush administration, is explicit; Africa is a “strategic priority in fighting terrorism”.<\/p>\n

Yet, the never-say-die “war on terror” is a sideshow in the Pentagon’s vast militarisation agenda, which favours client regimes, setting up military bases, and training of mercenaries \u2013 “cooperative partnerships” in Pentagon newspeak.<\/p>\n

Africom has some sort of military “partnership” \u2013 bilateral agreements \u2013 with most of Africa’s 53 countries, not to mention fuzzy multilateral schemes such as West African Standby Force and Africa Partnership Station.<\/p>\n

American warships have dropped by virtually every African nation except for those bordering the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

The exceptions: Ivory Coast, Sudan, Eritrea and Libya. Ivory Coast is now in the bag. So is South Sudan. Libya may be next. The only ones left to be incorporated to Africom will be Eritrea and Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n

Africom’s reputation has not been exactly sterling \u2013 as the Tunisian and Egyptian chapters of the great 2011 Arab Revolt caught it totally by surprise. These “partners”, after all, were essential for surveillance of the southern Mediterranean and the Red Sea.<\/p>\n

Libya for its part presented juicy possibilities: an easily demonised dictator; a pliable post-Gaddafi puppet regime; a crucial military base for Africom; loads of excellent cheap oil; and the possibility of throwing China out of Libya.<\/p>\n

Under the Obama administration, Africom thus started its first African war. In the words of its commander, General Carter Ham, “we completed a complex, short-notice, operational mission in Libya and\u2026 transferred that mission to NATO.”<\/p>\n

And that leads us to the next step. Africom will share all its African “assets” with NATO. Africom and NATO are in fact one \u2013 the Pentagon is a many-headed hydra after all.<\/p>\n

Beijing for its part sees right through it; the Mediterranean as a NATO lake (neocolonialism is back especially, via France and Britain); Africa militarised by Africom; and Chinese interests at high risk.<\/p>\n

READ THE FULL ARTICLE<\/a><\/p>\n

+++<\/em><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175386\/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_are_we_still_on_an_imperial_planet\/#more<\/a><\/p>\n

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Are We Still on an Imperial Planet?<\/h2>\n
Posted by Tom Engelhardt<\/a> at 5:20pm, May 1, 2011.<\/div>\n

[Note for TomDispatch Readers:<\/strong> A final thanks to all of you who, in response to recent TD pleas, urged others to sign up for the email notice that goes out every time this site posts a piece. If you meant to do so, but haven’t yet, now\u2019s still the perfect time! Just tell friends, acquaintances, colleagues, relatives to go to the “subscribe” window at the upper right of TomDispatch’s main screen, put in their email addresses, hit \u201csubmit,\u201d answer the \u201copt-in\u201d email that instantly arrives in your inbox (or, unfortunately, spam folder), and receive notices whenever a new post goes up. It\u2019s been a specular little drive for new subscribers and so for all of you who lent a hand: our appreciation.<\/em><\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a piece on what it felt like to be inside an imperial power in decline, \u201c<\/em>Sleepwalking into the Imperial Dark<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Consider today\u2019s post a stand-alone follow-up to that.\u00a0 Finally, special thanks go to TD copyeditor Christopher Holmes, who is always \u201cnumber one,\u201d and to Erica Hellerstein, TD\u2019s intern, for a job consistently well done. \u00a0Tom.<\/em>]<\/em><\/p>\n

China as Number One?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Don\u2019t Bet Your Bottom Dollar <\/strong>
\nBy Tom Engelhardt<\/a><\/p>\n

Tired of Afghanistan and all those messy, oil-ish wars in the Greater Middle East that just don\u2019t seem to pan out?\u00a0 Count on one thing: part of the U.S. military feels just the way you do, especially a largely sidelined Navy — and that\u2019s undoubtedly one of the reasons why, a few months back, the specter of China as this country\u2019s future enemy once again reared its ugly head.<\/p>\n

Back before 9\/11, China was, of course, the favored future uber-enemy<\/a> of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and all those neocons who signed onto<\/a> the Project for the New American Century and later staffed George W. Bush\u2019s administration.\u00a0 After all, if you wanted to build a military beyond compare to enforce a long-term Pax Americana<\/em> on the planet, you needed a nightmare enemy large enough to justify all the advanced weapons systems in which you planned to invest.<\/p>\n

As late as June 2005, neocon journalist Robert Kaplan was still writing in the Atlantic<\/em> about \u201cHow We Would Fight China<\/a>,\u201d an article with this provocative subhead: \u201cThe Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was.\u201d \u00a0As everyone knows, however, that \u201cblip\u201d proved far too much for the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Finding itself hopelessly bogged down in two ground wars with rag-tag insurgency movements on either end of the Greater Middle Eastern \u201cmainland,\u201d it let China-as-Monster-Enemy slip beneath the waves.\u00a0 In the process, the Navy and, to some extent, the Air Force became adjunct services to the Army (and the Marines).\u00a0 In Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, U.S. Navy personnel far from any body of water found themselves driving trucks and staffing prisons<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was the worst of times for the admirals, and probably not so great for the flyboys either, particularly after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates began pushing<\/a> pilotless drones as the true force of the future.\u00a0 Naturally, a no-dogfight world<\/a> in which the U.S. military eternally engages enemies without significant air forces is a problematic basis for proposing future Air Force budgets.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no reason to be surprised then that, as the war in Iraq began to wind down in 2009<\/a>-2010, the \u201cChinese naval threat\u201d began to<\/a> quietly reemerge. \u00a0China was, after all, immensely economically successful and beginning to flex its muscles in local territorial waters.\u00a0 The alarms sounded<\/a> by military types or pundits associated with them grew stronger in the early months of 2011 (as did news of<\/a> weapons systems being developed to deal with future Chinese air and sea power).\u00a0 \u201cBeware America, time is running out!\u201d warned retired Air Force lieutenant general and Fox News contributor Thomas G. McInerney while describing China\u2019s first experimental stealth jet fighter.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Others focused on China\u2019s \u201cstring of pearls\u201d<\/a>: a potential set of military bases in the Indian Ocean that might someday (particularly if you have a vivid imagination) give that country control of the oil lanes.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Kaplan, whose book<\/a> about rivalries in that ocean came out in 2010, was back in the saddle<\/a>, warning<\/a>: \u201cNow the United States faces a new challenge and potential threat from a rising China which seeks eventually to push the U.S. military\u2019s area of operations back to Hawaii and exercise hegemony over the world\u2019s most rapidly growing economies.\u201d\u00a0 (Head of the U.S. Pacific Command Admiral Robert Willard claimed<\/a> that China had actually taken things down a notch at sea in the early months of 2011 — but only thanks to American strength.)<\/p>\n

Behind the overheated warnings lay a deeper (if often unstated) calculation, shared by far more than budget-anxious military types and those who wrote about them: that the U.S. was heading toward the status of late, great superpower and that, one of these years not so far down the line, China would challenge us for the number one spot on the seas — and on the planet.<\/p>\n

READ THE FULL ARTICLE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Helpful analysis about events in Africa and the U.S. anxiety about China. First from Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar writing an op ed for Al Jazeera. The second article “China as Number One?” by Tom Englehardt from Tom Dispatch.\u00a0 It follows his earlier article “Sleepwalking into the Imperial Dark.” He is not as concerned about … <\/p>\n

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