Creeping Evil Empire - AFRICOM - Is SA Safe?
Is South Africa Safe from US hegemonic designs?
Not according to shock reports by the ruling ANC who in February 2016 claimed it was being targeted for regime change. At the time, (19 February 2016), African National Congress Secretary General Gwede Mantashe made the startling claim at an Anti-Racism march that "western forces are plotting daily to advance regime change in South Africa". In a meeting convened in the wake of the publicised threats, a report* detailing the discussions reveals the West's despicable, racist and contemptuous attitude to Africa and the rest of the 3rd world, unashamedly articulated by Tory PM Tony Blair's Foreign Affairs advisor Robert Cooper, when he said "...The challenge in the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves (West), we operate on the basis of laws and open co-operative security. But when dealing with more old fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception and whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law, but when we are operating in the jungle we must also use the laws of the jungle." Now at least we know all options are on the table including genocide.
Notwithstanding the ruling ANC's publicised concerns and subsequent discussions about it being targeted for "regime change" by "foreign powers", there might be some truth in what Manatshe claims. Although the report specifically mentions certain opposition parties, hashtag social media campaigns and U.S. "Youth" programs as imminent sources of danger, this (i.e. the imminent nature of the threat) may be more of a political ploy for shoring up support as a result of deserting voters as a result of blatant corruption and mismanagement of public funds and assets and it's stubborn refusal to tackle corruption within its ranks with serious intent, along with ever evolving exposés of state capture, impatience amongst the youth with rising unemployment as well as sporadic episodes of service delivery issues, all of which can legitimately be used by any opposition parties to further their own ascendancy in the political race. Make no mistake, South Africa has seen a tremendous betterment in the lives of the previously oppressed under the ANC government, but discontent is growing.
The DA campaign is hinged on proving it to be less corrupt and better managers - successful so far. In 2016, the GGA (Good Governance Africa research and advocacy group) pronounced that 9 out of the top 10 municipalities in the country are DA run whereas Black youth find a far more relevant resonance in the radical economic policies and rhetoric of the EFF - a fact that has seen its rapid rise to power and representation over the past 4 years (since 2013). On the street, the EFF's Malema is seen to be a president in waiting, perhaps 10-15 years from now.
The EFF has placed it's economic policy squarely in the tight manuevering space that the ANC once itself proclaimed part of it's agenda , it being enshrined within it's National Charter - that of limited Nationalisation (primarily of key/major Industries), import substitution and protectionism a direct rebuttal to the clear neo-liberal policies of the ANC.
Overall, unchecked and rapidly rising inequality might see the ANC fighting a multi-fronted home battle - some not of it's own making especially as the gloomy global economic outlook bites in and the ANC is forced to implement greater neo-liberal "reforms". Great for the EFF, bad for the ANC who does itself no favour with its "talk left, walk right" policies.
However, more seriously, the spectre of "regime change" looms large in a world cowered by a single superpower, and SA is established firmly in the opposing (BRICS) camp. Venezuela is already burning whilst Brazil suffered regime change in May of 2016 when Dilma Roussef of the leftist Workers Party was deposed in what is speculated to be primarily because of her government's socialist policies, although in a May 2017 "Democracy Now" interview, she made startling claims ranging from misogyny to "...taking Brazil off the U.N.'s map of poverty and lifted some 86 million from extreme poverty" as reason for the "coup". Although Roussef steers clear of blaming the US directly, it is an established fact that Latin America is famous as target practice for US initiated coups against leftist governments like the '73 coup of Chile's Salvatore Allende, the '67 coup of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatamala and the lesser known Brazilian coup against the government of Joao Goulart, replaced by a genocidal dictatorship, as was Chile under US lackey Pinochet. US coups and interventions in Latin America are brutal affairs, as Noam Chomsky explains on the "antiwar" website ".... in 1961-1962, Kennedy made the policy decision to transform the militaries of Latin America from defending against external forces to "internal security" (referred to as "counterinsurgency") or, as Chomsky puts it "war against the domestic population, if they raised their heads." The Brazilian coup is significant because it may have been the first major manifestation of this shift in America’s Latin American policy. The Kennedy administration prepared the coup, and it was carried out shortly after Kennedy’s assassination."
The US officially claims only a single base on the continent in the form of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, but that may not be entirely true.
The US used it's phoney war on terror which it started by manufacturing probably the most audacious, spectacular and contrived terror event in the history of state false flag terror - 911, and used it as a pretext, amongst many other things, to co-opt and coerce nations around the world to be "with or against them". Subsequently, it began expanding it's military presence and Africa was no exception. False flags became the cherished tool of Empire after the mother of all false flags, 911, launched the US on a desperate rampaging attempt at global hegemony. Some of these bases are known as "Cooperative Security Locations" (CSLs). Including these and lesser or greater facilities, the US has approximately no less than 60 outposts of various sizes and configurations on the African continent. If that isn't disconcerting enough for an immediate call to action, then the ANC may be making a serious error of judgement.
With an increased attention on the continent, so too is the occurrence of more phoney terrorism, for instance, in the form of Boko Haram, another US fake terror outfit that permits the US "intervention" rights in extremely oil rich Nigeria similar to what that other US terror outfit, ISIS does in Syria. Iraq, Libya, Syria - All earmarked for destruction and Balkanisation have gone according to plan. Short on the heels of the destruction of Libya came the joint French - US invasion of Mali.
A continent with immense natural resources and not a single nuclear armed nation is easy pickings for US-NATO predatory designs and that takes us to South Africa, a nation that under the apartheid regime developed and then dismantled it's nuclear program and ballistic missile capability at the behest of the West.
Libya was high on the agenda for several reasons, amongst them, Gadaffi's spearheading directly the resistance to establish an AFRICOM base anywhere on the continent by active courting (offering inducements such as investments, infrastructure, cash) to African nations to reject any offers to build AFRICOM bases in their countries, the attempted ousting of the predatory world bank and IMF by using his immense gold reserves to establish an African Development Bank, his insistence on wanting to accept non-dollar payment for oil and the rest is history. The French are no less complicit as it was French planes that laid waste to much of Libya's infrastructure from the skies. The French stood to lose a lot if Gadaffi succeeded in a successful substitution of this former colonial African power's currency, in wide circulation in North Africa.The final aim is the absorption of the AU into a US/NATO asset - although in reality and unofficially, that already is a fait accompli with Ugandan, Kenyan and Ethiopian troops already fighting a proxy US war in Somalia for years now. This model has been tested over the past decades in programs such as Operation Condor and School of the Americas (since 1946, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation - WHINSEC) ), an American run school of torture and killing that trains Latin American mercenaries and US proxy groups to destabilise leftist regimes, terrorise trade unions, murder clergy and overthrow Latin American governments violently. These death squads were known for their particularly brutal methods regardless of where in Latin America they operated. It would therefore come as no surprise that some of the school's graduates are quite famous and unsavoury - Manuel Noriega, Yahyah Jammeh - ex president of the Gambia and the Founders of the Zeta drug cartel of Mexico. Failing to learn from the Latin American experience is an oversight with unimaginable consequences.
The destabilisation of Africa is an undeniable strategic imperative of imperial and colonial powers.
South Africa traditionally, with it's Mineral Wealth, geo-strategic location along the tip of Africa sea route, BRICS membership and it's already huge FDI ( the 5th highest in Africa) represent a compelling reason for it to be high on the agenda of imperialistic designs for regime change as alleged by the ANC.
Whether or not this is immediately true, National Interest alone, in the face of a rampant hegemonic US application of genocidal violence and US Unilateralism to obtain regime change should set off alarm bells and seriously give nuclear a re-think.
South Africa has a sophisticated armaments industry and the intellectual capital to re-acquire it's ballistic missile capability within a short time frame.But time is of the essence, as Saif-al-Gadaffi revealed - Libya's dithering in renegotiating a modernised ballistic missile program led to the downfall of the regime.
The same goes against arguing for an expansion in appropriate naval and air capability.A lack of urgency to seriously consider this issue is a fatal flaw South Africa can ill afford.
Besides a ballistic nuclear capability, a powerful, cohesive, independent (from NATO/US) AU force can mitigate Washington and NATO regime change initiatives by denying UN "Peacekeeping" forces access to the continent completely.The AU and individual nations should ensure clearcut legislation vis-a-vis US/NATO Drone "overflights" (spying) and should regard any drone-based attack as acts of war liable for immediate retaliation.Unfortunately, much of the African leadership is mired between post colonial politics and civil strife regardless of the causes being internal or externally motivated. If one takes the AUs position on the Libyan debacle for instance, one found the African leadership divided on what to do, many leaders either despising or accepting of Gadaffi allowed personal issues to inform a crucial political decision - hardly a unified, rational way of dealing with a far greater menace than Gadaffi - a US motivated and initiated regime change. How it was possible that senior politicians even in the ANC could not see the wood for the trees, especially when the call was made to establish a "No-Fly" zone in Libya (shamefully supported by the ANC) - with the Iraq experience, that should have been a dead ringer for an invasion.
Does the US's rapidly expanding bases hold immediate strategic danger for South Africa? - well, according to TomDispatch, “AFRICOM, as a new command, is basically a laboratory for a different kind of warfare and a different way of posturing forces,” says Richard Reeve, the director of the Sustainable Security Programme at the Oxford Research Group, a London-based think tank. “Apart from Djibouti, there’s no significant stockpiling of troops, equipment, or even aircraft. There are a myriad of ‘lily pads’ or small forward operating bases... so you can spread out even a small number of forces over a very large area and concentrate those forces quite quickly when necessary.” added to this is the new but very real spectre of Drone warfare - a-la-Pakistan operated from Chad, Algeria and the Seychelles amongst others.The US wants to be literally 4 hours away from ANY location on the African continent (and currently has access to locations as far south as Botswana).
Related article : http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=7707
Sources:
1.Report of the Secretaries general of the 6 governing former liberation movements of South Africa,
2.Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia:
https://cdn.mg.co.za/content/documents/2017/05/29/warwiththewest.PDF
3.Patrick Bond, author - "Talk Left walk Right": https://www.amazon.com/Talk-Left-Walk-Right-
Frustrated/dp/1869140540
4.http://thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Predatory_States_Condor.html
5.https://books.google.com/books/about/Talk_Left_Walk_Right.html?id=WLbtAAAAMAAJ
6.http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176070/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_america's_empire_of
Tomdispatch-AFRICOM Bases
7.https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/26/exclusive_dilma_rousseff_on_her_ouster
8.http://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2016/06/05/us-behind-brazilian-coup/
9.http://www.stripes.com/news/africa/staging-sites-enableafricom-
to-reach-hot-spots-within-4-hours-leader-says-1.345120
10.Libya, AFRICOM - Dan Glazebrook - Independent Political Analyst, You Tube
11.http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/02/understanding_a_1.html
 |
| Rhodes: Bad old days of Colonialism is back |
Notwithstanding the ruling ANC's publicised concerns and subsequent discussions about it being targeted for "regime change" by "foreign powers", there might be some truth in what Manatshe claims. Although the report specifically mentions certain opposition parties, hashtag social media campaigns and U.S. "Youth" programs as imminent sources of danger, this (i.e. the imminent nature of the threat) may be more of a political ploy for shoring up support as a result of deserting voters as a result of blatant corruption and mismanagement of public funds and assets and it's stubborn refusal to tackle corruption within its ranks with serious intent, along with ever evolving exposés of state capture, impatience amongst the youth with rising unemployment as well as sporadic episodes of service delivery issues, all of which can legitimately be used by any opposition parties to further their own ascendancy in the political race. Make no mistake, South Africa has seen a tremendous betterment in the lives of the previously oppressed under the ANC government, but discontent is growing.
The DA campaign is hinged on proving it to be less corrupt and better managers - successful so far. In 2016, the GGA (Good Governance Africa research and advocacy group) pronounced that 9 out of the top 10 municipalities in the country are DA run whereas Black youth find a far more relevant resonance in the radical economic policies and rhetoric of the EFF - a fact that has seen its rapid rise to power and representation over the past 4 years (since 2013). On the street, the EFF's Malema is seen to be a president in waiting, perhaps 10-15 years from now.
The EFF has placed it's economic policy squarely in the tight manuevering space that the ANC once itself proclaimed part of it's agenda , it being enshrined within it's National Charter - that of limited Nationalisation (primarily of key/major Industries), import substitution and protectionism a direct rebuttal to the clear neo-liberal policies of the ANC.
Overall, unchecked and rapidly rising inequality might see the ANC fighting a multi-fronted home battle - some not of it's own making especially as the gloomy global economic outlook bites in and the ANC is forced to implement greater neo-liberal "reforms". Great for the EFF, bad for the ANC who does itself no favour with its "talk left, walk right" policies.
However, more seriously, the spectre of "regime change" looms large in a world cowered by a single superpower, and SA is established firmly in the opposing (BRICS) camp. Venezuela is already burning whilst Brazil suffered regime change in May of 2016 when Dilma Roussef of the leftist Workers Party was deposed in what is speculated to be primarily because of her government's socialist policies, although in a May 2017 "Democracy Now" interview, she made startling claims ranging from misogyny to "...taking Brazil off the U.N.'s map of poverty and lifted some 86 million from extreme poverty" as reason for the "coup". Although Roussef steers clear of blaming the US directly, it is an established fact that Latin America is famous as target practice for US initiated coups against leftist governments like the '73 coup of Chile's Salvatore Allende, the '67 coup of Jacobo Arbenz of Guatamala and the lesser known Brazilian coup against the government of Joao Goulart, replaced by a genocidal dictatorship, as was Chile under US lackey Pinochet. US coups and interventions in Latin America are brutal affairs, as Noam Chomsky explains on the "antiwar" website ".... in 1961-1962, Kennedy made the policy decision to transform the militaries of Latin America from defending against external forces to "internal security" (referred to as "counterinsurgency") or, as Chomsky puts it "war against the domestic population, if they raised their heads." The Brazilian coup is significant because it may have been the first major manifestation of this shift in America’s Latin American policy. The Kennedy administration prepared the coup, and it was carried out shortly after Kennedy’s assassination."
But there is yet another real but slightly less conspicuous reason why Africa needs to be concerned, really concerned, and that is the rapid proliferation of US military presence on the continent in the form of bases. The US indeed has a directed military agenda in Africa in the form of a growing physical presence . This presence does not exist arbitrarily or "situationally", as the US would want the world to believe, but exists institutionally in the form of its "Africa Command" - AFRICOM driven primarily by Africa as a new resource frontier and also to counter a growing Chinese economic presence on the continent, and directed initially, geographically at least, at oil rich West Africa and meaning that they are here to stay. According to author Bryan Hunt1 (2007), A context for the pending strategic role of AFRICOM can be gained from observing CENTCOM in the Middle East. CENTCOM grew out of the Carter Doctrine of 1980 which described the oil flow from the Persian Gulf as a “vital interest” of the US, and affirmed that the US would employ “any means necessary, including military force” to overcome an attempt by hostile interests to block that flow.
It is in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa that the US military force is most rapidly increasing, as this area
is projected to become as important a source of energy as the Middle East within the next decade. In this region, challenge to US domination and exploitation is coming from the people of Africa - most specifically in Nigeria, where seventy percent of Africa’s oil is contained. People native to the Niger Delta region have not benefited, but instead suffered, as a result of sitting on top of vast natural oil and natural gas deposits. Nigerian people’s movements are demanding self determination and equitable sharing of oil-receipts. Environmental and human rights activists have, for years, documented atrocities on the part of oil companies and the military in this region. As the tactics of resistance groups have shifted from petition and protest to more proactive measures, attacks on pipelines and oil facilities have curtailed the flow of oil leaving the region.
As a Convergent Interests report puts it,“Within the first six months of 2006, there were nineteen attacks on foreign oil operations and over $2.187 billion lost in oil revenues; the Department of Petroleum Resources claims
this figure represents 32 percent of ‘the revenue the country [Nigeria] generated this year.’”
Oil companies and the Pentagon are attempting to link these resistance groups to international terror
networks in order to legitimize the use of the US military to “stabilize” these areas and secure the energy
flow. No evidence has been found however to link the Niger Delta resistance groups to international terror
network s or jihadists.
Instead the situation in the Niger Delta is that of ethnic-nationalist movements fighting, by any means
necessary, toward the political objective of self-determination. The volatility surrounding oil installations in
Nigeria and elsewhere in the continent is, however, used by the US security establishment to justify
military “support” in African oil producing states, under the guise of helping Africans defend themselves
against those who would hinder their engagement in “Free Trade.”
The December 2006 invasion of Somalia was coordinated using US bases throughout the region. The
arrival of AFRICOM will effectively reinforce efforts to replace the popular Islamic Courts Union of Somalia
with the oil industry – friendly Transitional Federal Government. Meanwhile, the persistent Western calls
for “humanitarian intervention” into the Darfur region of Sudan sets up another possibility (subsequent to this article 10 years ago, we know what has since happened there)
It is in Western and Sub-Saharan Africa that the US military force is most rapidly increasing, as this area
is projected to become as important a source of energy as the Middle East within the next decade. In this region, challenge to US domination and exploitation is coming from the people of Africa - most specifically in Nigeria, where seventy percent of Africa’s oil is contained. People native to the Niger Delta region have not benefited, but instead suffered, as a result of sitting on top of vast natural oil and natural gas deposits. Nigerian people’s movements are demanding self determination and equitable sharing of oil-receipts. Environmental and human rights activists have, for years, documented atrocities on the part of oil companies and the military in this region. As the tactics of resistance groups have shifted from petition and protest to more proactive measures, attacks on pipelines and oil facilities have curtailed the flow of oil leaving the region.
As a Convergent Interests report puts it,“Within the first six months of 2006, there were nineteen attacks on foreign oil operations and over $2.187 billion lost in oil revenues; the Department of Petroleum Resources claims
this figure represents 32 percent of ‘the revenue the country [Nigeria] generated this year.’”
Oil companies and the Pentagon are attempting to link these resistance groups to international terror
networks in order to legitimize the use of the US military to “stabilize” these areas and secure the energy
flow. No evidence has been found however to link the Niger Delta resistance groups to international terror
network s or jihadists.
Instead the situation in the Niger Delta is that of ethnic-nationalist movements fighting, by any means
necessary, toward the political objective of self-determination. The volatility surrounding oil installations in
Nigeria and elsewhere in the continent is, however, used by the US security establishment to justify
military “support” in African oil producing states, under the guise of helping Africans defend themselves
against those who would hinder their engagement in “Free Trade.”
The December 2006 invasion of Somalia was coordinated using US bases throughout the region. The
arrival of AFRICOM will effectively reinforce efforts to replace the popular Islamic Courts Union of Somalia
with the oil industry – friendly Transitional Federal Government. Meanwhile, the persistent Western calls
for “humanitarian intervention” into the Darfur region of Sudan sets up another possibility (subsequent to this article 10 years ago, we know what has since happened there)
The US officially claims only a single base on the continent in the form of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, but that may not be entirely true.
The US used it's phoney war on terror which it started by manufacturing probably the most audacious, spectacular and contrived terror event in the history of state false flag terror - 911, and used it as a pretext, amongst many other things, to co-opt and coerce nations around the world to be "with or against them". Subsequently, it began expanding it's military presence and Africa was no exception. False flags became the cherished tool of Empire after the mother of all false flags, 911, launched the US on a desperate rampaging attempt at global hegemony. Some of these bases are known as "Cooperative Security Locations" (CSLs). Including these and lesser or greater facilities, the US has approximately no less than 60 outposts of various sizes and configurations on the African continent. If that isn't disconcerting enough for an immediate call to action, then the ANC may be making a serious error of judgement.
With an increased attention on the continent, so too is the occurrence of more phoney terrorism, for instance, in the form of Boko Haram, another US fake terror outfit that permits the US "intervention" rights in extremely oil rich Nigeria similar to what that other US terror outfit, ISIS does in Syria. Iraq, Libya, Syria - All earmarked for destruction and Balkanisation have gone according to plan. Short on the heels of the destruction of Libya came the joint French - US invasion of Mali.
A continent with immense natural resources and not a single nuclear armed nation is easy pickings for US-NATO predatory designs and that takes us to South Africa, a nation that under the apartheid regime developed and then dismantled it's nuclear program and ballistic missile capability at the behest of the West.
Libya was high on the agenda for several reasons, amongst them, Gadaffi's spearheading directly the resistance to establish an AFRICOM base anywhere on the continent by active courting (offering inducements such as investments, infrastructure, cash) to African nations to reject any offers to build AFRICOM bases in their countries, the attempted ousting of the predatory world bank and IMF by using his immense gold reserves to establish an African Development Bank, his insistence on wanting to accept non-dollar payment for oil and the rest is history. The French are no less complicit as it was French planes that laid waste to much of Libya's infrastructure from the skies. The French stood to lose a lot if Gadaffi succeeded in a successful substitution of this former colonial African power's currency, in wide circulation in North Africa.The final aim is the absorption of the AU into a US/NATO asset - although in reality and unofficially, that already is a fait accompli with Ugandan, Kenyan and Ethiopian troops already fighting a proxy US war in Somalia for years now. This model has been tested over the past decades in programs such as Operation Condor and School of the Americas (since 1946, now known as Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation - WHINSEC) ), an American run school of torture and killing that trains Latin American mercenaries and US proxy groups to destabilise leftist regimes, terrorise trade unions, murder clergy and overthrow Latin American governments violently. These death squads were known for their particularly brutal methods regardless of where in Latin America they operated. It would therefore come as no surprise that some of the school's graduates are quite famous and unsavoury - Manuel Noriega, Yahyah Jammeh - ex president of the Gambia and the Founders of the Zeta drug cartel of Mexico. Failing to learn from the Latin American experience is an oversight with unimaginable consequences.
The destabilisation of Africa is an undeniable strategic imperative of imperial and colonial powers.
South Africa traditionally, with it's Mineral Wealth, geo-strategic location along the tip of Africa sea route, BRICS membership and it's already huge FDI ( the 5th highest in Africa) represent a compelling reason for it to be high on the agenda of imperialistic designs for regime change as alleged by the ANC.
Whether or not this is immediately true, National Interest alone, in the face of a rampant hegemonic US application of genocidal violence and US Unilateralism to obtain regime change should set off alarm bells and seriously give nuclear a re-think.
South Africa has a sophisticated armaments industry and the intellectual capital to re-acquire it's ballistic missile capability within a short time frame.But time is of the essence, as Saif-al-Gadaffi revealed - Libya's dithering in renegotiating a modernised ballistic missile program led to the downfall of the regime.
The same goes against arguing for an expansion in appropriate naval and air capability.A lack of urgency to seriously consider this issue is a fatal flaw South Africa can ill afford.
Besides a ballistic nuclear capability, a powerful, cohesive, independent (from NATO/US) AU force can mitigate Washington and NATO regime change initiatives by denying UN "Peacekeeping" forces access to the continent completely.The AU and individual nations should ensure clearcut legislation vis-a-vis US/NATO Drone "overflights" (spying) and should regard any drone-based attack as acts of war liable for immediate retaliation.Unfortunately, much of the African leadership is mired between post colonial politics and civil strife regardless of the causes being internal or externally motivated. If one takes the AUs position on the Libyan debacle for instance, one found the African leadership divided on what to do, many leaders either despising or accepting of Gadaffi allowed personal issues to inform a crucial political decision - hardly a unified, rational way of dealing with a far greater menace than Gadaffi - a US motivated and initiated regime change. How it was possible that senior politicians even in the ANC could not see the wood for the trees, especially when the call was made to establish a "No-Fly" zone in Libya (shamefully supported by the ANC) - with the Iraq experience, that should have been a dead ringer for an invasion.
Does the US's rapidly expanding bases hold immediate strategic danger for South Africa? - well, according to TomDispatch, “AFRICOM, as a new command, is basically a laboratory for a different kind of warfare and a different way of posturing forces,” says Richard Reeve, the director of the Sustainable Security Programme at the Oxford Research Group, a London-based think tank. “Apart from Djibouti, there’s no significant stockpiling of troops, equipment, or even aircraft. There are a myriad of ‘lily pads’ or small forward operating bases... so you can spread out even a small number of forces over a very large area and concentrate those forces quite quickly when necessary.” added to this is the new but very real spectre of Drone warfare - a-la-Pakistan operated from Chad, Algeria and the Seychelles amongst others.The US wants to be literally 4 hours away from ANY location on the African continent (and currently has access to locations as far south as Botswana).
Related article : http://www.tlaxcala-int.org/article.asp?reference=7707
Sources:
1.Report of the Secretaries general of the 6 governing former liberation movements of South Africa,
2.Tanzania, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia:
https://cdn.mg.co.za/content/documents/2017/05/29/warwiththewest.PDF
3.Patrick Bond, author - "Talk Left walk Right": https://www.amazon.com/Talk-Left-Walk-Right-
Frustrated/dp/1869140540
4.http://thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Predatory_States_Condor.html
5.https://books.google.com/books/about/Talk_Left_Walk_Right.html?id=WLbtAAAAMAAJ
6.http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176070/tomgram%3A_nick_turse,_america's_empire_of
Tomdispatch-AFRICOM Bases
7.https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/26/exclusive_dilma_rousseff_on_her_ouster
8.http://original.antiwar.com/ted_snider/2016/06/05/us-behind-brazilian-coup/
9.http://www.stripes.com/news/africa/staging-sites-enableafricom-
to-reach-hot-spots-within-4-hours-leader-says-1.345120
10.Libya, AFRICOM - Dan Glazebrook - Independent Political Analyst, You Tube
11.http://www.moonofalabama.org/2007/02/understanding_a_1.html
