Good Legwork, Little Context

"Tomorrow's Battlefield" is an impressive collection of research. It is an impressive catalog of US military activity in Africa. Nick Turse has done a fantastic amount of legwork in going through declassified documents, public records, and back-and-forths with military personnel. With all this work, he has created essentially a Rolodex of militarism. Unfortunately, the book fails to provide much context for these military activities.

Each of the 13 chapters seems to have the same thesis: that US intervention in Africa is expanding. To back this up, Turse has an array of believable numbers. He talks about the number of bases on the continent, the amount of drones, the number of airplanes, and so forth. The book is made up of articles that Turse originally wrote for TomDispatch.com, but each chapter seems to be repeating the same thing over and over. It becomes very tedious.

I believe Turse's thesis to be correct, but it needs context. Does "counter-terrorism" explain the entire build up? Where is the congressional and executive oversight? Besides the presence, what actual activities on the ground are happening in Africa? Without this context, the book shrinks to the thesis and offers little insight beyond the numbers.

I hope this book serves, at the very least, as a launching pad for more investigative journalism and research. Turse has done some preliminary groundwork, now researches need to find context for it. ( )