The African 'Star Wars'* - *It is the Pentagon's Africom versus China's web of investments - the ultimate prize: Africa's natural resources.* By: Pepe Escobar

The African 'Star Wars'* - *It is the Pentagon's Africom versus China's web of investments - the ultimate prize: Africa's natural resources.* 

By: Pepe Escobar


As Africa increasingly turns to China for economic investment and guidance, 
Africom seeks to reverse China's geostrategic foothold on Africa

 >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.

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:

1) The coming of age of the African Union (AU) in the early 2000s.

2) China's investment offencive in Africa throughout the 2000s.

3) The onset of the Pentagon's African Command (Africom) in 2007.

Beijing clearly sees that the Anglo-French-American bombing of Libya – apart 
from its myriad geopolitical implications – 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.

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

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).

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.

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.

It won't happen in Libya. It's not about to happen in Sudan. But further on down 
the road, all bets are off.

Meddle is our middle name

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.

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

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).

The September 2002 National Security Strategy (NSS), conceived by the Bush 
administration, is explicit; Africa is a "strategic priority in fighting terrorism".

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 – "cooperative partnerships" in Pentagon newspeak.

Africom has some sort of military "partnership" – bilateral agreements – with 
most of Africa's 53 countries, not to mention fuzzy multilateral schemes such as 
West African Standby Force and Africa Partnership Station.

American warships have dropped by virtually every African nation except for 
those bordering the Mediterranean.

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.

Africom's reputation has not been exactly sterling – 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.

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.

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… transferred that mission to NATO."

And that leads us to the next step. Africom will share all its African "assets" 
with NATO. Africom and NATO are in fact one – the Pentagon is a many-headed 
hydra after all.

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.

The lure of ChinAfrica

One of the last crucial stages of globalisation - what we may call "ChinAfrica" 
– established itself almost in silence and invisibility, at least for Western eyes.

In the past decade, Africa became China's new Far West. The epic tale of masses 
of Chinese workers and entrepreneurs discovering big empty virgin spaces, and 
wild mixed emotions from exoticism to rejection, racism to outright adventure, 
grips anyone's imagination.

Individual Chinese have pierced the collective unconscious of Africa, they have 
made Africans dream – while China the great power proved it could conjure 
miracles far away from its shores.

For Africa, this "opposites attract" syndrome was a great boost after the 1960s 
decolonisation – and the horrid mess that followed it.

China repaved roads and railroads, built dams in Congo, Sudan and Ethiopia, 
equipped the whole of Africa with fibre optics, opened hospitals and orphanages, 
and – just before Tahrir Square – was about to aid Egypt to relaunch its 
civilian nuclear programme.

The white man in Africa has been, most of the time, arrogant and condescending. 
The Chinese, humble, courageous, efficient and discreet.

China will soon become Africa's largest trading partner – ahead of France and 
the UK – and its top source of foreign investment. It's telling that the best 
the West could come up with to counteract this geopolitical earthquake was to go 
the militarised way.

The external Chinese model of trade, aid and investment – not to mention the 
internal Chinese model of large-scale, state-led investments in infrastructure – 
made Africa forget about the West while boosting the strategic importance of 
Africa in the global economy.

Why would an African government rely on the ideology-based "adjustments" of IMF 
and the World Bank when China attaches no political conditions and respects 
sovereignty – for Beijing, the most important principle of international law? On 
top of it, China carries no colonial historical baggage in Africa.

Essentially, large swathes of Africa have rejected the West's trademark shock 
therapy, and embraced China.

Western elites, predictably, were not amused. Beijing now clearly sees that in 
the wider context of the New Great Game in Eurasia, the Pentagon has now 
positioned itself to conduct a remixed Cold War with China all across Africa – 
using every trick in the book from obscure "partnerships" to engineered chaos.

The leadership in Beijing is silently observing the waters. For the moment, the 
Little Helmsman Deng's "crossing the river while feeling the stones" holds.

The Pentagon better wise up. The best Beijing may offer is to help Africa to 
fulfil its destiny. In the eyes of Africans themselves, that certainly beats any 
Tomahawk.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times (www.atimes.com). His 
latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at 
pepeasia@yahoo.com

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily 
reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.




http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/04/2011422131911465794.html

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