A brigade of U.S. combat troops will soon be assigned to the Pentagon’s Africa Command to be sent to countries around the continent to train indigenous state security forces and participate in military exercises.

The strategy is characterized by military aid to and reliance on brutish, undemocratic regimes, proxy militias, and targeted special operations as opposed to full-scale invasion and occupation. All of this is done without the consent of Congress or the American people.

The Obama administration has deployed Marines and assisted a spate of African tyrannies engaged in warfare. Murky justifications of al Qaeda-like enemies color the stated mission, but these expansions of empire into Africa are a prime example of going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

Through the Pentagon’s Africa Command, the U.S. is now training and equipping militaries in countries including Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia in the name of preventing “terrorists from establishing sanctuaries.” The strategy appears irreconcilable with recent history, however, given the US-sponsored invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia in 2006 gave rise to the militant group al-Shabaab – now ironically justifying current interventions.

In terms of active military missions, the U.S. just recently backed regime change in Libya in favor of thuggish rebels who committed war crimes, is engaged in a proxy war in Somalia, sent combat troops to Uganda, is fighting a manufactured threat in Nigeria, among other things.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, says the new plan is “part of a new effort to provide U.S. commanders around the globe with troops on a rotational basis to meet the military needs of their regions,” reports CBS News. Notice the complete lack of pretense about any real or perceived threat which necessitates these military deployments to Africa. This also leads to Congress and the American people being left completely out of these expansionist military plans.