How Big Is Africa?  A Lesson in Grand Strategy!

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  Geographic perspective is always instructive when looking at economic potential, past, present, and future.  And so is “who owns what where,” as indicated in the article “Gaza and Afghanistan: A Grand Strategic Perspective,” http://www.theamericanmuslim.org, January 10, 2009.  A map from The Times Atlas [1] shows why Qaddafi has given up on the Middle East and wants to be the savior of Africa instead.  And so now does Washington. 

  Africa dwarfs all of the rest of the world except Russia and in area could swallow it too.  Africa is larger than the United States, China, Western Europe, and most of the other countries of the world combined.  China and the United States could each easily fit into the Arab North.  India and Pakistan could fit into the spaces in between. 

  Unfortunately, Africa has a total GNP only a fraction the size of any of the five large regions that could fit geographically into it.  It has the potential, however, to be the fastest growing region of the world, and is considered to own most of the world’s uranium reserves, mostly in Morocco, which after oil may power the economy of the world.  This suggests why the NeoCons in the United States last year created a new military command called Africom.   

  Why the enormous wealth gap?  One indicator is that at the time of independence the huge central country, known as the Belgian Congo, with all of its rich resources, had only two college graduates.  Why?  One reason is that the top priority of the colonial countries was to keep the natives ignorant except for the few it needed to keep the rest from getting a modern education and becoming uppity. 

  The same policy was applied viciously against the native nations in America, who suffered and still suffer from the most ruthless colonial regime in history.  Their crime?  They sit on the bulk of America’s rich natural resources, having been driven to the least desired parts of the continent before Washington knew that the frontier had any rich resources or knew how to exploit them. 

  How does one define a crime against humanity? 

  What’s the solution?  Try “binary economics” and the “just third way.”  CESJ all the way, http://www.cesj.org.  Close the wealth gap!  Own or be owned!

  How?  Grand strategy!  Peace, prosperity, and freedom through compassionate justice!  Check out http://www.americanrevolutionaryparty.org.  Up the Revolution!

[1] Africa in Perspective, The Times Atlas http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2006/11/africa_in_perspective_map.jpg