With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Allies?, page 1

It aims straight at China, but over a lot more than Sudan's oil. I'll start with the oil though.

Northern Sudan is heavily populated, around 22 million, mostly Arabic-speaking Muslims. The South is closer to 6 million people of several tribes, the largest of which makes up only about 1/6 of the Southern population. The southerners are linguistically and religiously diverse, but mostly indigenous cultures, as opposed to the Arabic/Muslim population to the North.

In the middle are the richest provinces: Blue Nile which has great hydroelectric power, and Kordofan, which has plenty of natural gas and oil. These provinces belong to the North, but border the 10 Southern provinces which gained autonomy in a peace deal over a year ago.

These 10 southern provinces get to vote on independence in 2012, but being divided as they are, and lacking the economic wealth that they could have if they possessed Kordofan and Blue Nile, their future wouldn't be all that bright. Darfur, interestingly enough, flanks that middle ground and straddles the border.

If the South gets the oil, the gas, and the hydroelectric power, while losing any ties to the 22 million people in the North, Sudan's exports can increase dramatically. Furthermore, if the US is the instrument of their liberation, then we have a decent shot of keeping that stuff from China.

That is important. As oil becomes more scarce, and China becomes increasingly able to manipulate prices from the demand side, the only way that America can keep oil prices stable for the next several decades (until we can make Ethanol or other sollutions our primary energy provider) is to cut our providers off from global demand and earmark that oil for ourselves, effectively artificially reducing demand and thus driving down prices for the oil we buy.

The other part
This will not begin immediately, but will come later as circumstances become harsher and tensions flare over oil. It will probably come in the form of us trading more than money, but in return getting EXCLUSIVE rights to a nations entire reserves. For example, in a decade or so we turn to Iraq and Sudan and say "We'll make trade arrangements with you instead of China" or "We'll give you such and such military technology" or "We'll give you naked pictures of Jessica Alba" or whatever "but in return you can't sell your oil to China... and by the way if you don't take the deal we'll bring down your government."

What this will do is undermine China as a manufacturer while giving us new suppliers for merchandise, and at the same time giving us the oil. It's not a 100% bad deal for the nations we make deals with actually. It's basically saying, "If you save the US Economy, you're gonna get a big fat slice of it, not necessarily from the oil itself, but by taking over China's old job of stocking Walmart's shelves with goodies."

Where Sudan figures into the other part
East Africa is a wonderful place to build the kind of friendships we'll need for what I have so eloquently named "that other part" (sorry, couldn't come up with anything catchy).
They've got famines, wars, and they've been getting the high hard one from Western corporations since before they were independent. We can make that all go away. They could do it themselves with a little vision and a lot of firepower, but realistically it will take American firepower and a whole lot of American capital to make it happen.

I refer back to the map I posted. Actually, first let me ammend that map by suggesting that the Democratic Republic of Congo may be orange too, as might Tanzania (the two large nations to the south of the orange area).

With some big investments in military security, irrigation, and transportation, Southern Sudan, Uganda, and DRC can feed that area and then some.

Sudan and Ethiopia can provide electricity for the area, and then some.

Kenya and Tanzania have large populations engaged in subsistence farming that would be liberated for industrial activity if the food and the power and the transportation infrastructure were there. There are also tremendous mineral resources throughout the orange area and beyond in the form of metal and rock.

If we get them fed, safe, and employed, they will be our best friends, foraking all others. Between them and India, we can eventually replace China, which if we do it in a subtle and non-aggressively, will allow us to completely cut China's economic balls off without ever raising a serious alarm. Economics IS war. You can make, break, and even own a nation without ever firing a shot if you play the economic game right. China understands this actually, and I don't think them stupid, but what are they going to do, cut their nose off to spite their face just because we're making friends in other places? They'd still have a lot of leverage over us, and probably think it safe, but with a safety net in the form of Africa and India, we would be better positioned to survive the economic crisis that would result from a severance of all economic relations between China and the USA.

If it comes to blows
There's another great thing about Africa from a "war for oil" point of view. What if it came to blows 20 or 30 years from now between China, Russia, and the USA? China's logical moves are in the Sea of Japan, Indonesia, and Siberia, not lucrative and ultimately a very bad idea because it involves slugging it out with Russia.

Russia's logical move is on the Middle East, and alone they'd lose out to us.

So they'd probably have to work together.
Russia would move through the Caucasus and Turkey, taking the Caspian Sea, accessing Iraq and Iran, and most importantly, forcing America to fight in the Med before they could even think about getting the mid-east back, and when the oil is cut off, you either win fast or you can't win at all, so a large gain up front is very important.

They can't overextend themselves by actually taking the Mid East though, so they'll need Chinese manopwer coming in through Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Southern Iran, all the way to North-East Saudi. Easier siad than done- that's a lot of terrain with bad transportation infrastructure, and flanked by India and Pakistan. With India and Pakistan onboard, the moving is easier and they are strategically safe. Without them, it's ugly.

Africa does two things.
1. Through economic ties to India (India being a top trading partner for many East African nations already) a US-friendly Africa makes for a more US friendly India, especially when it is part of a general scheme that involves those two regions helping the US replace China, and when that African supplier paves the way for India to advance beyond poor provider and into first world service economy dependent on the weaker Africans, similar to the relationship China and America or India and China currently have. (I'm deriving conclusions from economic assertions made my the Goldman Sach's BRIC Thesis here).

2. It's a military base from which to project power through Israel and across the Red Sea into Saudi Arabia, ensuring that we're not fighting a war starting in Europe or the Med but that we're actually in theater in in striking range of the advancing Russians if that war played out. (on the military end I'm drawing a lot of my models loosely from Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising and from discussions of Russian and Chinese procurement of airbases in Central Asia, as well as slightly from the role of Chinese rail infrastructure in the Sino-Indian wars)

*** Please note on the military end I'm not suggesting a Sin-Russian empire spanning all of Asia. I'm talking about being able to pressure nations who are "in the way" into allowing passage, and even helping them build the transpo infrastructure years ahead of time for the "just in case". Don't be shocked to see

China making some low level gestures towards Kyrgystan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan in the near future, along with Iran if Iran should go nuclear and avoid US attack.
Also look out for Iran to make trouble for Pakistan in that event, because Iran would probably love to see the infamous pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Karachi to end up going straight from Turkmenistan to Bandar-e-Abbas instead, and would also be under separate and mostly unrelated pressure from China and India to be the hitman for that job. The US is probably the only nation in the region that wants to see Pakistan remain stable- everyone else would like them to implode and see their nuclear program quickly seized or destroyed when that happened.

***** Also, please note that I tend to think big. I aspire, and imagine others aspiring, to tasks that would daunt Napoleon and Alexander the Great, because I am convinced that if executed with incredible audacity and genius, they could be accomplished. It is entirely possible that all of this will be significantly less dramatic because 1. The military end isn't a prediction, it's a remote possibility nations must hedge against just a little bit. 2. People make mistakes. They fail to guard against remote possibilities. They miss opportunities. They sell out "big picture" interests and find an easier, less ambitious answer that suits their own more narrowly defined interests.

I'm not predicting WWIII, I'm just going into the various considerations which will go into considerably less dramatic actions, if the powers that be are thinking on the same scale that I am.