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“It would be a sign of a significant strategic shift in administration policy, reflecting the need to put more emphasis on proactive, preventative measures rather than maintaining a defensive posture designed for the Cold War.”
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Someone has bureaucratic jargin down pat, but does this sentence actually say anything?
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The creation of an African command would allow one unit to set U.S. military policy for the region and create a cadre of planners who understand the region and have relationships with the host nations and embassies.
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OK, cleaning up those organizational charts is certainly a high priority.
I would think that the argument about whether to create a dedicated military command would be based on strategic considerations - where your interests are, what enemy threats there are to those interests, how to allocate resources to address the threat. There is certainly an argument to be made for separating out a command (as well, I suppose, for other commands like a South Asia Command or a Southeast Asia Command). Wouldn't it be nice to actually see such an argument, rather than fluff about DOD/DOS truf wars?
By the way, one aspect of that argument? As of 2005, according to EIA statistics, 6 of the top 20 sources of crude oil exports to the United States are on the African continent - Nigeria, Angola, Algeria, Gabon, Chad and Equatorial Guinea. Cameroon, though not a major source of crude for the US, controls the pipeline through which Chad's crude reaches ports on the Gulf of Guinea. The oil-producing nations of the Gulf of Guinea, especially Nigeria and Cameroon, are vulnerable to rebel movements and Islamist terrorist groups.
To the north, the belt of poor countries stretching along the southern fringes of the Sahara, a region known as the Sahel, is also particularly vulnerable to Islamist terrorist infiltration, as many 3rd Group participants in the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative are no doubt familiar. To the east, the problems in the Horn of Africa are only growing with the rise of the Islamists in Somalia.
Looking further into the future, China continues to make headway in the region, seeking to curry favor with local regimes and competing with the US for energy resources.