For the last two years, TomDispatch Managing Editor Nick Turse has been
following the Pentagon and the latest U.S. global command,
AFRICOM, as they oversaw the
expanding operations of the American military across that continent: drones, a
special ops surge,
interventions,
training missions, bases (even if not called bases),
proxy wars. Short of a major conflict, you name it and it's probably happening. Washington's move into Africa seems connected as well to the destabilization of parts of that continent and the rise of various terror groups across it,
another subject Nick has been following. With rare exceptions, only recently have aspects of the Obama administration's largely below-the-radar-screen "pivot" to Africa made it into the mainstream media. Even more recently, global chaos from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria to Ukraine has driven it out again. As a result,
most Americans have no sense of how their future and Africa's are being entwined in possibly explosive ways.
With this in mind, and with the support of the Nation Institute's
Investigative Fund (as well as the generosity of Adelaide Gomer), Nick has gone to Tanzania and South Sudan to explore the situation further himself. Today, as the first fruits of that trip, TomDispatch has a major story on a development that has, until now, remained distinctly below the radar screen: the Africa-wide contest between the globe's "sole superpower," the U.S., and its preeminent rising economic power, China, over which will benefit most from the exploitation of that continent.
Over the next several months, there will be more pieces from Nick on America's growing stake in and effect on Africa. The next will address a looming crisis in the world's youngest nation. He offers a preview: "My aid agency contacts say that, in September, the United Nations will officially declare a famine in large swaths of South Sudan. As one humanitarian worker here put it to me,
add famine to war and you have a powder keg. 'It's going to get worse,' says another, 'before it gets better.'"
Tom
Comment: For a glimpse into the destruction America brought to El Salvador read: Romney's Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched With Millions From Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities