AFRICOM and the Threat to China’s National Energy Security http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26763

The Washington-led decision by NATO to bomb Gaddafi’s Libya into submission over recent months, at an estimated cost to US taxpayers of at least $1b, has little if anything to do with what the Obama administration claims was a mission to “protect innocent civilians.” In reality it is part of a larger strategic assault by NATO and by the Pentagon in particular to entirely control China’s economic achilles heel, namely China’s strategic dependence on large volumes of imported crude oil and gas.

Today China is the world’s second largest imported of oil after the US and the gap is rapidly closing. If we take a careful look at a map of Africa and also look at the African organization of the new Pentagon Africa Command, AFRICOM, the pattern that emerges is a careful strategy of controlling one of China’s most strategically important oil and raw materials sources. NATO’s Libya campaign was and is all about oil. But not about simply controlling Libyan high-grade crude because the USA is nervous about reliable foreign supplies. It rather is about controlling China’s free access to long-term oil imports from Africa and from the Middle East. In other words, it is about controlling China itself.