At The Mail & Guardian Virginia Tilley, a chief research specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council, speculates about Africa's, and especially South Africa's, role in a potential war against Iran and in the “War on Terror” generally. Her conclusions are probably not what the Bush administration would want to hear:
Renewed crisis in Somalia and the coming showdown with Iran suggest that the Bush administration's agenda offers little but mounting expense and new dangers for African security. The urgent question for South Africa is not how to join that war, but how to help protect Africa from it.
Of course South Africa needs to walk a tightrope. On the one hand the South Africans want American support. At the same time the South Africans are not likely to go in for being a puppet for Bush administration policies. Most likely Thabo Mbeki cannot wait for the 2008 elections and the prospects of change in the American leadership.
