According to Inside Defense (subscription required), House Appropriations wants to cut AFRICOM's budget from the request $390 million to just $80 million. This just weeks before the command was supposed to go fully operational. "The committee believes that traditional U.S. military operations are not an appropriate response to most or many of the challenges facing Africa," a committee report states.

Thing is, AFRICOM never was about "traditional U.S. military operations," according to Theresa Whalen, the Pentagon's top Africa official. "Most of our unified commands have as their primary mission warfighting," Whalen said last year. "SOUTHCOM is one exception. AFRICOM will be similar to SOUTHCOM in that the mission is not focused on warfighting, but on building local security partnerships in Africa to enable African nations to address security challenges themselves."

The SOUTHCOM parallel is telling. This year, Latin America boss Admiral James Stavridis has quietly diverted people and resources to "soft-power" missions in a bid to build stronger regional alliances and prevent future wars. Whether it works, will take a generation to tell. But the theory seems sound. Why can't it apply to Africa, as well?

Ironically, killing off AFRICOM will not end U.S. military involvement in Africa. There has been a steady increase in U.S. operations on the continent in recent years, ranging from Special Forces missions in Djibouti and, apparently, Somalia -- plus wide-ranging training initiatives and several soft-power naval deployments to West Africa. None of these are strictly AFRICOM operations, rather have been overseen by European Command or Central Command. AFRICOM was supposed to clear up those fuzzy boundaries between commands. If the House has its way, the confusion will just continue.

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