We toured Africa to explain the forthcoming AFRICOM to regional powers:
We discussed different mission areas, as we've discussed with you before, emphasizing the humanitarian, the building partnership capability, civil affairs aspects, things that we can help in improving border and maritime security and the professionalization of the militaries there on the African continent.
And then we would also look to work with the host nations to improve their capacity to exercise sovereignty over any ungoverned spaces that they might have.
I still think that it makes more sense to keep African responsibilities divided between different regional commands. I'd split the continent among CENTCOM, PACOM, EUCOM, and SOUTHCOM if it was up to me.
But greater attention indeed needs to be paid to Africa. The following list of denials is a good list for why we are paying more attention:
We hopefully cleared up the misunderstanding that AFRICOM was not being stood up in response to Chinese presence on the continent. It was not being stood up solely for the effort of enhanced counterterrorism, and it was not being stood up in order to secure resources, a particular sensitivity to the oil resources.
All three reasons sum up why we will establish AFRICOM.
Plus we discussed where we might find a host for the headquarters. If I had my choice, it would be Kenya.
Plus I'd like to see some sort of base in the Gulf of Guinea--perhaps even a mobile offshore base to really reduce our footprint.
