Africom is now up and running. I still am ambivalent about the US African Command in theory and especially in practice. The idea seems ok — it gives America a presence on a continent it has so long overlooked, ignored, or mismanaged. And maybe there is the chance that the US presence will augment AU troops on the ground in cases where augmentation is needed. But I tend to wonder whether the United States will be capable of looking beyond its own interests and will be willing to subvert those interests to the desires and needs of Africans. I do not, for example, trust the current administration to conceptualize or implement such a commend, and I suspect that Africom could quickly devolve into a mechanism for administering US foreign policy at the barrel of a gun. Still, now that Africom is a reality it is important both for Americans with a role in the foreign policy and security apparatus and a legitimate interest in Africa to work with African leadership to try to counter the almost inevitable attempts to misuse Africom forces.
