PowerSwitch

France’s military aggression in Mali is only the latest expression of a renewed Scramble for Africa being undertaken by all of the continent’s former imperialist overlords. This involves not only those powers that directly ruled Africa from the late nineteenth century through to the 1960s, such as France and Britain, but above all the United States.

Paris has never fully abandoned its imperial designs on Africa, as its recent record in Rwanda and Libya demonstrates all too brutally. It still has 9,000 troops stationed in the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Gabon, Central African Republic, Chad and Djibouti. Its return to Mali is not about combating Al Qaeda and Islamist fundamentalism, but rather a means of staking its claim to the country’s uranium, gold and untapped oil deposits and those of the West African region and throughout a landmass recently proclaimed by President Francois Hollande as “the continent of the future.”

It is as yet unclear whether the US will go beyond providing aerial support to France in Mali. But if it does not, it is only because it does not want to help a rival predatory power. 2013 opens amid a whole number of military operations being waged by Washington in a continent upon which America now depends for fully a quarter of the oil and raw materials it consumes—including oil, gold, diamonds, copper, iron and big money crops such as cocoa.

Africa is in play as far as Washington and all other major powers are concerned. US aims in Africa centre on securing hegemony over the entire continent, a conflict in which its chief rival is now China.

Standuble wrote:... Europeans who have nowhere to go when PO occurs can immigrate to Africa.