Barnett on Africom

Esquire has published planetary-futurist theorist Thomas P.M. Barnett's most recent article, "The Americans Have Landed".

The article's lead promises:

A few years ago, with little fanfare, the United States opened a base in the horn of Africa to kill or capture Al Qaeda fighters. By 2012, the Pentagon will have two dozen such forts. The story of Africa Command, the American military's new frontier outpost.

Some quotes:

The Horn of Africa was supposed to be Washington's bureaucratic mea culpa for the Green Zone, a proving ground for the next generation of interagency cooperation that fuels America's eventual victory in what [General John] Abizaid once dubbed the "long war" against radical Islam. But as its first great test in Somalia demonstrated, the three D's [defense, diplomacy, and development] are still a long way from being synchronized, and as the Pentagon sets up its new Africa Command in the summer of 2008, the time for sloppy off-Broadway tryouts is running out. Eventually, Al Qaeda's penetration of Muslim Africa will happen -- witness the stunning recent appearance of suicide bombers in Casablanca -- and either the three D's will answer this challenge, or this road show will close faster than you can say "Black Hawk down."

After being ignored since the beginning of time (save for its slaves and its treasure), Africa just got strategically important enough for us to care about. And the Bush administration's decision to set up Africa Command is historic, but not for the reasons given or assumed [not because of current "Islamic terrorists", oil, or China].
[...]
America is going to have an Africa Command for the same reason people buy real estate -- it's a good investment. Too many large, hostile powers surround Central Asia for the radical jihadists to expand there, but Africa? Africa's the strategic backwater of the world. Nobody cares about Africa except Western celebrities.
The U.S., through its invasion and botched occupation of Iraq, has dramatically sped up globalization's frightening reformatting process in the Middle East, and with Africa on deck, the United States military is engaging in a highly strategic flanking maneuver.
Africa Command promises to be everything Central Command has failed to become. It will be interagency from the ground up. It will be based on interactions with locals first and leaders second. It will engage in preemptive nation-building instead of preemptive regime change. It will "reduce the future battlespace" that America has neither intention nor desire to own.
It'll be Iraq done right.

Barnett has penned, or typed, yet another provocative article. It's recommended reading material for all.