Joint Forces Command may gradually fade away, but the Pentagon's flagship journal, Joint Forces Quarterly (JFQ), established in 1993 under Secretary Les Aspin's watch, will likely have to carry a heavier load as the purveyor of everything "joint." Over the last few years Africa emerged as a major focus of JFQ , and this accelerated after Africom was announced in 2007. With many stories about China's rise in Africa, terrorism, piracy, support for African Union peacekeeping, the Navy's Africa Partnership Station initiative, etc., it is not that surprising the most recent July 2010 issue includes the cover theme, "Identity Politics in Africa and the Americas." It is worth a look. JFQ is fully and freely available online right back to issue one. There are very real, sometimes visceral, debates on strategy, policy, and doctrine in its pages.
National Defense University Press, JFQ 's publisher, also just released a detailed and frightening report on "Cocaine and Instability in Africa: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean" (July 2010). Implications for governance across West Africa, not just Guinea Bissau, are potentially immense.