The Pentagon hunkers down in Africa (US and Europe are not anymore co-equal partners in military matters - by Charles Cobb
The stance of the United States with respect to the rest of the world has changed radically under the “conservative” administration of George W Bush. The latest indication of the militarisation that is at the forefront of this shift came on December 13, when then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that within “one to two months” the US military would establish an African Command -- adding a sixth region to the existing five US geographic combat commands.
One of the important shifts within this process is abandonment of the post-World War II idea that the US and Europe are co-equal partners in military matters. Rumsfeld “had a certain contempt for the Europeans,” the International Herald Tribune recently quoted Jens van Scherpenberg, an expert on trans-Atlantic relations at Berlin’s German Institute for International and Security Affairs, as saying.
In Rumsfeld’s view -- and despite his politically expedient departure, the administration continues to believe -- the US government requires a second tier of more pliable allies accepting of American leadership. A quick sense of this thinking can be gained by observing who is allied with the US in Iraq. The United Kingdom’s support notwithstanding, Western Europe in general and France in particular have been, to put it mildly, cool toward this US effort. In the admini-stration’s view, they are unreliable.
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