The Next Cold-Staging Ground: Africa?

I feel *very* antsy about the establishment of an African Theater Command structure for the US military. It's not that I see us jumping into conflicts left and right with little or not thought to how it really fits into a coherent strategy... I mean we do that anyway. The proverbial shoot first, ask questions later. The thing that worries me is that with a dedicated command there, we're going to stretch ourselves even thinner across more arenas. The dwindling military resources of the US is not by any means dwarfed by any other country's assets, but the Roman Empire was twice the military might of any other collective entity at the time of its fall. It fell because of internal issues and the weight of being stretched to thin across so great an area. America is following dangerously close to this path. And the possibility of "conflict" with China, no matter what form, is worrisome, too. Add that to the three or four other pressure points that we have with the chinese (taiwan, hong kong, N. Korea, etc) and there's alot of unknowns that could really powder-keg quickly in a bad scenario.

I'm just saying... we need to keep our eyes peeled and tread carefully...