Reddit reviews Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa (Dispatch Books)

A book if you're interested



EDIT: The book is "Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa" by Nick Turse



It released in 2015 and documents the growing number of secret US military operations across Africa, investigates the purpose of these operations, and gives predictions for what directions these operations will take and how they will affect all countries involved.




Here is the book description:


"You won’t see segments about it on the nightly news or read about it on the front page of America’s newspapers, but the Pentagon is fighting a new shadow war in Africa, helping to destabilize whole countries and preparing the ground for future blowback. Behind closed doors, U.S. officers now claim that “Africa is the battlefield of tomorrow, today. In Tomorrow’s Battlefield, award-winning journalist and bestselling author Nick Turse exposes the shocking true story of the U.S. military’s spreading secret wars in Africa."

Of course. Or pressure their government to put sanctions on South Africa. Each case would need to be looked at individually and moreover take into account what one's government could do, perhaps with good intentions, under the guise of humanitarianism. How much of a chance is there to get our government to go into Darfur? What would occur if American troops went into Darfur? Would we set up a corrupt government and implement disastrous economic policies that wreck the economy and give all the contracts to corporations that not only waste funds but hire Americans rather than locals and leave infrastructure deteriorating leading to skyrocketing unemployment, crime and conflict as in Iraq?

You have to look at what the US government is institutionally capable of doing. I for one came to the conclusion that our government cannot, in general, be trusted to complete humanitarian missions a while ago, helped in part by reading Michael McClintock's Instruments of Statecraft (available in full online: http://www.statecraft.org) This is one of the hardest points to get through to people (it took ages for me) when they accept US military presence and funding as essentially benign.

You can see Chomsky emphasizing this point here: "One can imagine a world in which intervention is undertaken by some benign force dedicated to the interests of people who are suffering. But if we care about victims, we cannot make proposals for imaginary worlds. Only for this world, in which intervention, with rare consistency, is undertaken by powers dedicated to their own interests, where the victims and their fate is incidental, despite lofty professions.

The historical record is painfully clear, and there have been no miraculous conversions. That does not mean that intervention can never be justified, but these considerations cannot be ignored — at least, if we care about the victims."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/11/noam-chomsky-interview-isis-syria-intervention-nato/

So to answer your question yes it is theoretically possible but rarely that straightforward. I cannot think of a time where Americans were able to get their government to enable in a humanitarian mission but plenty where they were able to mitigate what it was inflicting (South Africa, East Timor, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Vietnam, the list goes on). However if I thought it could be done and saw intervention as a worthy endeavor I would of course do so. However the only two examples I know of where a blatant act of invasion was justified was India into Bangledesh and North Vietnam into Cambodia, both of which were opposed by the United States (going so far as to send a nuclear submarine off the coast of India and telling its ambassadors in Bangledash to shut up as they were screaming to Kissinger America was supporting genocide; had it not been for the Soviet Union, yes THAT Soviet Union, sending its own sub to follow ours the ploy may have worked and the slaughter would have continued).

Given this observation and given that we are actively engaged in so many horrific policies (operation Columbia, unilaterally supporting the Israeli occupation, channeling millions of dollars in military aid to subsaharan Africa which has already enabled a coup in Mali (http://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Battlefield-Proxy-Secret-Africa/dp/1608464636) our provision of billion of dollars in military aid to Saudi Arabia as it slaughters People in Yemen, our support for dictatorial regimes in Central Asia, and recent help in solidifying 2 coups against democratically elected governments in Honduras in 2009 and Ukraine more recently) and given that mainstream intellectual culture in our society either supports them or sees them as unworthy of comment it makes sense to focus on the harm our government is engaged in that we have a chance of mitigating.

But I once again emphasize that if I thought our government could be pressured into doing something good, I would do so but given my understanding of the world much more can be done by attempting to mitigate its crimes.

He actually has a book called "Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa," which is more in line with the covert ops you were originally interested in, though obviously is a part of neo-imperialism as well.

Nich Turse's "Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa" might then be interesting! (he wrote the vice piece above)
https://www.amazon.com/Tomorrows-Battlefield-Proxy-Secret-Africa/dp/1608464636