Talking About the African Partnership Station

I just got off the phone with Captain John B. Nowell, Jr. who led the African Partnership Station engagement that completed last month. It was very interesting. The good people who do the bloggers roundtable will have a transcript up later today.

It was a good discussion. Capt. Nowell gave a detailed summery at the beginning of the conversation describing the US involvement in Africa. In talking to many Americans, most people have very little idea what the US Navy is doing in that part of the world, and usually the stereotype of most people is that the US only brings hostility to the region.

Clearly times have changed.

Earlier this month I called the African Partnership Station the most important Navy story so far in 2008. I believe that remains true. Captain Nowell gave a detailed summery of the operation off Liberia, an evolution few outside this blog probably understand, but that evolution uses sea power for a proactive peacetime purpose in a smarter way than any we can think of since the Great White Fleet, and I don't think that is an exaggeration. It isn't like Navies build a port off the coast of a large city with degraded port facilities to donate enormous quantities of materials very often, in fact it had never been done before. There is an interesting synergy discussion there between NGO and the military in that evolution, indeed, the entire APS.

I didn't get the opportunity to ask what the USS Annapolis (SSN 760) role was, but as Molten Eagle often says, submarines are always silent and strange.

More on the APS to come.