by DAVID AXE

On his blog, strategist Tom Barnett praised my latest column for World Politics Review — the one on China’s consultation with the U.S. Navy on humanitarian issues. Calling me a “free-ranging Michael Yon with an ‘everything else’-type focus,” Barnett said my column “is worth perusing each week on SysAdmin/DoEE-like subjects. It’s just his natural beat, it seems.”

Right you are. Thanks, Tom!

(Art: Barnett’s Second-Life avatar)

by DAVID AXE

More sample art from LOVE & TERROR, the forthcoming sequel to my award-winning 2006 graphic novel WAR FIX.

(Art: Ray Dillon)

by DAVID AXE

On Tuesday I will be accompanying the Air Force’s 403rd Wing — the famed “Hurricane Hunters” flying WC-130J weather recon planes, pictured, into the hearts of major storms — on an orientation flight for bloggers. Here’s the Air Force press release:

An Air Force Reserve 403rd Wing “Hurricane Hunters” WC-130J is scheduled to depart May 19 as the military’s first-ever media flight compromised solely of bloggers. This flight gives bloggers from across the country an opportunity only available to traditional media outlets until now.

Members from the international blogging community will be able to share with their audiences what it is like to ride with the Hurricane Hunters while learning what goes into training for one of the most challenging missions in the Air Force. Immediately after their flight, bloggers will be able to update their sites in an adjacent computer room. The two-hour flight over the Gulf of Mexico will give a new audience a better understanding of how the Hurricane Hunters collect life-saving data inside storms and highlighting the coming hurricane season which starts June 1.

(Photo: via Flickr)

A story I wrote in April last year for the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings has won a Society of National Association Magazines award for feature writing in the 50,001-to-100,000 circulation category. The award comes with a $4 million cash prize. Brad Pitt hosts the ceremony in Washington, D.C., in June, which I will be attending in my solid-gold sneakers.

I’m kidding. But the award is real, and here’s the story again:

Cries in the Dark

The situation in Somalia now represents Africa’s greatest crisis — and the United States is partly to blame.

by DAVID AXE

“We have no food, no shelters. People are sick. Medicine is short,” said Dr. Hawa Abdi, director of one of Somalia’s largest refugee camps, on the Afgooye Road outside the capital of Mogadishu. It was early December 2007, during a spike in fighting in the city that forced hundreds of thousands of residents to flee. Roughly 50,000 refugees settled in Abdi’s camp, where just a handful of Somali and international staff struggle to provide care. The flight represented only the latest chapter in what U.N. officials have said is Africa’s greatest crisis.

It has been 17 years since the violent overthrow of dictator Siad Barre and the first shots of the subsequent civil war, and 14 years since a U.S. and U.N. peacekeeping mission was cut short by the deaths of 18 U.S. troops and hundreds of Somalis in the brutal Battle of Mogadishu. Now, Somalia is plagued by military occupation, tribal in-fighting, criminality on a massive scale, political dysfunction, and persistent drought.

The transitional government — really just a loose alliance of clans — has little power outside its northern fortress town of Baidoa. One million people are displaced. Nearly 20 percent of the population is starving. And the crisis has created favorable conditions for Islamic extremists who, despite Pentagon claims to the contrary, previously held little sway in the country.

Somalia needs help, both for the sake of Somalis and for a stable East Africa that does not harbor extremists. But a destabilizing Ethiopian occupation, U.N. heel-dragging, a dearth of African peacekeeping resources, and seething anti-Americanism among many Somalis — resulting in part from the confused and inconsistent U.S. policy in the region — makes international assistance a dicey affair.

Read the rest at Proceedings.

A glimpse at chapter one of my new graphic novel WAR IS BORING, drawn by Matt Bors, slated for late 2010 publication by New American Library.

(Art: Matt Bors)

Daniel Abbott over at tdaxp is editing a new book on fifth-generation warfare, to be published by Nimble Books. I’m writing a chapter addressing Somalia, piracy (pictured), human security and 5GW in Africa. Here’s a brief sample:

The “fourth generation” of war entailed irregular combatants fighting for an ideological cause, seeking to remake society according to their ideals. Fifth-generation war, or 5GW, now coalescing, is less clearly ideological but just as sweeping in its goals. 5GW is when a party exploits or encourages an existing or emerging crisis to achieve strategic goals that those most directly involved in the crisis might not even be aware of. 5GW is a form of stealthy proxy war.

“The systematic alteration, or replacement of, an existing rule set is your strategic goal,” Thomas Barnett wrote of 5G fighters. “You’re not happy with things the way they are, so you make those around you unhappy enough that they too, are unhappy with the ways things are. Shock them hard enough, and you can trigger their own movement toward new rule sets that move the pile for you.”

Where fourth-gen combatants might blend in with the surrounding populace most of the time, they still periodically emerged to form military-style units. 5G fighters, by contrast, remain “subtle actors.” They may never once wear a uniform or carry a rifle. Their weapon is the desperate population of a society on the brink; their major tactic is unrest; their goal is to undermine the established order in the interest of changing it, or just leaving it in ruins.

No continent poses less of a traditional military threat to the United States than Africa. But in an age of 5GW, where subtle actors can exploit humanitarian, economic and other crises to undermine the power and legitimacy of the industrial state, no continent poses a greater non-traditional threat. An increasingly volatile Africa begs for greater U.S. intervention and risks corrupting that very intervention, turning American strength into weakness.

For America, 5GW in Africa is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t proposition. There are no easy answers to Africa’s worsening crises, and there is no consensus on how, or whether, the United States should intervene. Doing anything might make the continent’s problems worse. So might doing nothing. And despite its distance and its still-tiny slice of world trade and military power, in the age of 5GW, a suffering Africa is a threat to the United States.

“Trooper Talon doesn’t get tired or hungry,” Stephen Cave wrote last week in The Financial Times. “He doesn’t get scared and he doesn’t panic under fire. … Talon is a robot. He is the future of warfare and, with more than 12,000 robotic machines already deployed in Iraq, he is also the present.”

We are in the midst of a revolution in the way we wage war, as profound as the discovery of gunpowder or the building of the atomic bomb. Yet most of us hardly know it’s happening — and our legal and moral frameworks are entirely unprepared. But a few people have noticed: three fascinating and timely new books detail these developments and the issues they raise. 

One of those books is my WAR BOTS, published by Nimble last year. “Axe’s War Bots is a slim, introductory volume. Light on text, its primary virtue is the full-color pictures showing the droids in action.”

Well, thanks, I guess. Brief, WAR BOTS may be. But I never thought it was “light.”

(Photo: me)

In three weeks I’ll be flying out to Nigeria to meet up with the U.S. Navy amphibious ship Nashville. The vessel’s mission is to deliver training assistance and humanitarian aid to a slew of West African nations. It’s all part of the Pentagon’s “soft-power” strategy for encouraging stability and winning new allies through good deeds.

Increasingly, my reporting is reader-funded. With the accelerating decline of traditional print media, this “crowdfunding” model for specialist journalism might become the rule rather than the exception. My readers donated $1,500 to send me to Chad last summer and another $1,000 to support me while working in Kenya in December. You also gave $170 to help out Mohamed Omar Hussein, my associate and source in Mogadishu. So far, you’ve donated $900 to send me to Nigeria, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

That $900 goes a long way towards covering the approximately $5,000 I will spend on this enterprise. It’s still a money-losing venture for me — my assignments so far are worth just $2,000 — but every dollar donated reduces my risk. Hopefully I’ll eventually get enough assignments to break even.

I still need your help. After two years of sucking sand and saltwater, my old Pentax digital camera has died, and as it stands I’ll be going to Nigeria without a replacement. I’ve got my eye on a refurbished Nikon D40 that should be adequate for my newspaper, magazine and online illustrations. It costs $380. To afford it, I’m asking for your help, once again. Please consider donating, using the Paypal button at left.

Update #1: Well, that was easy. Within minutes of this post going live, loyal reader JL offered to loan me a very good digital camera for my Nigeria trip. Thanks, JL — and thanks to everyone who continues to support me (I’m looking at you, Chris Albon!) in my relentless quest to get my ass shot off in some Third World Hellhole.

With the camera problem solved, I’m still accepting donations to cover the balance of my $3,000 air fare to Africa and back.

Update #2: $150 donated!

In late 2010, New American Library will publish my graphic novel WAR IS BORING. Artist Matt Bors just finished the prologue, and it looks great. Here’s a snapshot.

(Art: Matt Bors)

In late March, I’ll be heading to Nigeria to embark aboard the USS Nashville amphibious ship during her “soft-power” deployment on the West African coast. Nashville‘s cruise is part of the Navy’s Africa Partnership Station, which in turn is one of three ongoing “Global Fleet Stations,” the other two targeting Latin America (pictured) and Asia. The Global Fleet Stations are frameworks for sending mixed teams of military trainers and humanitarians to developing countries to help build alliances and improve security. Think of it as ground-level diplomacy with a military edge, or war-prevention way, way in advance of any conflict. Nashville sits at a nexus of some of the most important trends in U.S. naval power: littoral operations, soft power and a renewed focus on developing countries. This is important stuff, folks.

I need help getting out to Nigeria. Air fare alone is around $3,000, and I just don’t have that much money. I’m asking readers to contribute a few bucks to make this coverage possible. Last summer, readers ponied up more than $1,500 to send me to Chad. In December, I got donations totaling almost $1,000 to support my reporting on piracy in Kenya. Both trips were still money-losing ventures for me, but much less so because of your generous support. If you can spare anything for this latest enterprise, please click the Paypal button at left. In exchange, I promise the best coverage to date of the Navy’s African, littoral, soft-power operations.

$860 donated so far!

(Photo: me)

From the Eugene, OR, school district book reviews, a look at my 2006 graphic novel WAR FIX:

Prepare yourself for some strong medicine in this graphic novel. … Contemporary, hard-hitting, and, well, graphic, this hardcover is definitely more suited to a mature teen audience than to a cartoon-loving middle school or elementary group. WAR FIX provides a tremendous platform from which to explore with young adults the addictive nature of violence and our personal responsibility, even as observers, for its perpetuation. … [T]imely, intelligent, and well worth reading.

(Art: Steve Olexa)

Australian TV news network ABC will be using one of my photographs from Afghanistan, seen above, in their upcoming “More than the Headlines” campaign, which will see ads plastered on 400 buses in Sydney and Melbourne. Why me? Because the Australian government makes it so hard for reporters to cover Aussie military operations, “the main libraries have limited coverage of Australians deployed overseas,” the ad guy told me.

Mostly by coincidence, I’ve covered the Australian Army in three separate war zones: in southern Iraq, where the Aussies operated alongside the British Army; in East Timor; and in Afghanistan, where Aussies are embedded in a Dutch battlegroup. See my video from East Timor below:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/AfPhGORilks" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

(Photo: me)