ABSTRACT
Adopting historical-geographical materialism, this chapter illustrates how the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) can be understood as part of a broader system of accumulation based on what may be called the government–business–media (GBM) complex. The GBM complex is best defined as a network of state and corporate elite members, who interact, collaborate or collude to facilitate capital accumulation within a “fixed space”. The GBM lends itself to two heuristic applications: structural analysis and descriptive analysis. Under the Barack Obama administration, AFRICOM helped in areas such as public health, but the central point on all operations has remained the military. The United States (US) military command system is based on the assumed right of US military intervention in the regions in which its operates, or the so-called areas of responsibilities, regardless of the fact that this routinely impinges on the sovereignty of states and has been argued to break international law.
