West Africa does seem to be of increasing interest.....

But is America's interest about a. terrorism, b. oil, or c. both? (Full disclosure: Both are valid national interests as far as I'm concerned.)

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. military is putting together a new command, Africom, to bolster West African countries. As the Journal writes:

The effort, already under way in Benin, is an example of the type of security and social partnering the U.S. military hopes to replicate under a new U.S. command center focused on Africa. The idea is to bolster fragile nations and prevent failed states from breeding radical groups, like the Taliban in Afghanistan in the 1990s.

Now consider this context:

The move comes as the world's biggest oil companies -- including U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp. and France's Total SA -- are investing billions of dollars to boost production in Africa. . .

In most months, the energy-producing countries of West Africa -- primarily Nigeria and Angola, but also Gabon and the Republic of Congo -- ship as much or more oil to the U.S. as Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations.

Incidentally, this isn't just about American interests, violence and oil-smuggling cost African nations - and oil companies in the region - hundreds of millions of dollars a year, says the Journal.

To assuage concerns that any American military presence in the region will only invite terrorists, Theresa Whelan, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, told the Journal that only in "extraordinary circumstances in extremis after all other options had been exhausted" would any type of military intervention ever be contemplated.

Libya was was singled out as being particularly cold to this new plan. More typical, suggested the Journal, was this response from a street vendor in Benin: "Beninese like the U.S. Having the U.S. here would help us, but it could bring terrorists," he says.