This New York Times piece on the U.S. army attempts to justify its existence by preparing for wars in Africa reads like an official army press release: U.S. Army Hones Antiterror Strategy for Africa, in Kansas
Here on the Kansas plains, thousands of soldiers once bound for Iraq or Afghanistan are now gearing up for missions in Africa as part of a new Pentagon strategy to train and advise indigenous forces to tackle emerging terrorist threats and other security risks so that American forces do not have to.
The first-of-its-kind program is drawing on troops from a 3,500-member brigade in the Army’s storied First Infantry Division, known as the Big Red One, to conduct more than 100 missions in Africa over the next year. The missions range from a two-man sniper team in Burundi to 350 soldiers conducting airborne and humanitarian exercises in South Africa.
The plan behind this is certainly not honest. If one wants to seriously train foreign troops or help the population one must send specialists who also understand the culture of their guest countries. But here the army plans to send troops that are trained to fight in main battle tanks and who get only 6(!) days of minimalistic cultural training by graduate students of African heritage without any additional language capacities.
What good can such troops do in those 50 African countries which are about all internally diverse and sociological complicate? What but trouble could they create?
The official army answer is this:
Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, said in an interview that the goal was to field an Army that could be “engaged regionally in all the combatant commands to help them shape their theaters, set their theaters, in order to sustain and execute our national security strategy.”
U.S. national security strategy, Obama's pivot to Asia, is to contain China. As China has made many investments in African good-will and resources the countries there have now come under new U.S. scrutiny. "Shape their theaters" and "set their theaters" means to prepare the country and area in question for an onslaught of U.S. military might.
The countries in question would be well advised to reject such U.S. intrusions. Their leaders should notice that it are usually those native troops which were trained by the United States who, like recently in Mali, overthrow the government in military coops.
P.S. Notice that the comments to that NYT propaganda piece are by very wide margin negative towards such deployments.