No power in history has exercised such global reach. With brutal immediacy, forces from the United States may be dispatched and deployed within hours to combat any designated adversary. From its webbed network of bases official, semi-official and undeclared, Washington’s imperium can exert heft in a number of military domains with a ruthlessness the envy of any of its rivals.
In the aftermath of NATO’s attack and destabilisation of Libya in 2011, France and the United States entrenched their military involvement across the Sahel. The French focused on creating G-5 Sahel spanning Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, including expanding or opening new bases in Gao, Mali; N’Djamena, Chad; Niamey, Niger; and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The United States, for its part, negotiated an agreement with the government of Niger in 2015 to permit the construction of a drone base in Agadez, eventually valued at $100 million but slated to have an annual price tag of almost $30 million. While initially valued at $50 million with the sole purpose of operating surveillance drones, the greedy proved to be in the ascendancy, not only increasing the cost of building the base, but adding a lethal facility to it in the form of MQ-9 Reaper drones. According to US Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa spokesperson Richard Komurek, the building effort behind the base was one of the largest undertaken by US Air Force personnel.
Such a mighty effort took place under the aegis of Africa Command (AFRICOM). When it came into existence in 2007, it was described much as you would a toy miniature. The body’s spokesman, Pat Barnes, explained it as follows: “When AFRICOM was stood up, one of the key components of it standing up was we would have something called a very small footprint.” Why not a bigger one? “Given the history and colonialism and things, you maybe wouldn’t want to have a large standing presence on the continent.” Sharp as a tack, was old Barnes.
AFRICOM’s website provides its own rambling explanation for the US presence. “The creation of US African Command has advanced [a vision of working with African partners for a secure, stable and prosperous Africa] through a whole-of-government, partner-centric lens building partner capacity, disrupting violent extremists, and responding to crises.” Raking through the clutter, and one finds the hegemon’s agenda laid bare: Africa, through clients and proxies (partner-centric, no less), needs policing and a roving eye.
Such a milky credulous tone has not convinced various regional organisations on the continent. In 2016, the African Union’s Peace and Security Council (PSC) could only note its concern about “the existence of foreign military bases and establishment of new ones in some African countries, coupled with the inability of the Member States concerned to effectively monitor the movement of weapons to and from these foreign military bases.”
To date, little has been done to address such concerns. Washington continues to insist that its presence is not only justified but comparatively small relative to other global engagements. Imperial – but on the petite side. The US military presence is casually described by officials in the Pentagon as minor but relevant. It is only remarked upon in passing at various press conferences and the odd publication. An example of the latter was a piece covering the exploits of the National Guard in its flagship publication in September 2022. There, we were told of members of the Kentucky Army National Guard and its presence in the Republic of Djibouti. There are also Guard soldiers from Virginia and Tennessee.
The bulk of the thousand-member task force, however, was from Virginia, constituted by the 116th Infantry Brigade Combat team. Virginia Army Guard Lt. Col. Jim Tierney described the scope of the US deployment: “We provide to and are prepared to support pretty much most of Sub-Saharan Africa.”
Tierney’s language is instructive, an amalgam of paternalism, messianic charity and haughty self-confidence. The US imperium is not oppressive and governed by dictates but instructive and popular through example; not a traditional occupier of native savages but a large gift store with a seemingly endless supply. “Our experiences here are that the host countries that we work with really look to the United States for opportunities to partner and train.” They want us here – or so that false logic goes.
Behind such training, and opportunities, the violence, the bodies, the reminders of undeclared conflicts to which the US adds its daily complement, are plentiful. Across the African Sahel, US commandos have been paying with their lives even as they have taken those of others. Aerial attacks are regularly staged. Such strivings, even by the Pentagon’s own assessment, have been to little avail.
In language typical of a military accountant keen on balancing ungainly books, AFRICOM even euphemises civilian killings through its “Civilian Casualty Report” scheme. Triumphantly, it recently announced that, “In the latest quarterly civilian casualty assessment report ending Jun. 30, 2023, US Africa Command received no new reports of civilian casualties and there were no open reports carried over from previous partners.” What a relief it must be for the armchair analysts to itemise, catalogue, and examine the consequences of such a small strategic footprint.
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Western leaders for far to long have acted like shivers looking for a backbone regarding the US’s terrorism and Mafia like actions over small sovereign nations. The world needs leaders with a backbone and stare down the worlds bully.
Any country having the USA (United States of Apartheid) as an ally has no need for any other enemies.
Thanks Mr Kampmark for providing yet another informative gobbet re the perditions of the US imperium.
What a frightening place the world has become.
The 2013 American documentary God Loves Uganda “explores connections between evangelicalism in North America and in Uganda, suggesting that the North American influence is the reason behind the controversial Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, which at one point raised the possibility of the death penalty for gays and lesbians.” That piece of cinematic exposure into the ongoing meddling in other countries by American evangelistic organizations intent on stamping their idiosyncratic take on reality onto other cultures which, if viewed rationally & dispassionately, are utterly & absolutely none of their damn business, has been followed by a more recent exposé, the currently screening HBO series, Savior Complex, a searing dissection of yet again another God-bothering American do-gooder who has done far more harm than good to the people ostensibly under her care in Ugandan hospitals.
This compulsion of Americans to trot off overseas to ‘improve the lives’ of people in third-world countries, while in the main no doubt well-intended, is also in the main a function of the deep ignorance that permeates the American psyche when it comes to its dealing with the citizens and cultures of other lands, an ignorance born of hubris, arrogance, a sense of cultural superiority, a sense of ‘we know better than you,’ and as we know, this so often ends in tears and heartache for those at the receiving end of the ‘aid.’
In earlier times I spent several years living & working in South Korea, a country that has been utterly Coca-colonised by America since the Korean war and its omnipresent and ongoing presence in that country and the influence it has wielded which has led to many aspects of that ancient and beautiful culture being irrevocably degraded. The same observations apply to Japan, and in particular, Okinawa, where the majority of citizens have futilely agitated for years for the complete removal of the United States military presence. The same could be said of South Koreans, who by & large tolerate the American presence but are not thrilled by it. Incidentally, prior to the Korean war, that country was close to 100% Buddhist, with a smattering of ancient Korean animism still extant. The pervasive swarms of American missionaries have now decimated the followers of the ancient and noble path of Buddhist practice such that around 50% of the country now follow some form or other of American Christian creed, materialistic, soulless, and useless in any true psychological sense of the deepening of one’s humanity and being.
Thank you Dr Kampmark and…everything that Canguro said…
Yeah, thanks for the article Dr Binoy.
Canguro, your observations I am well familiar with. The despotic American corporate evangelists wreaking havoc via the most vulnerable.
It is notable that the Wagner Group (proxy for Russia) is heavily entrenched in the region from the West coast right through to the East coast.
Not only America and Russia, but everyone has had and is having a go, from England, France, Germany, Belgium, the Dutch, Portugal, and China. They can’t resist Africa, set to grow by population by about 2 billion, the last huge growth area remaining, and to become the most populous continent / sub-continent.
Forever they have ignored Africa’s needs, opting only to exploit and draw from it. It seems it won’t be too long before Africa finds its teeth and starts to bite back.