Obstacles to a Whole of Government Approach: DoD versus State AOR's

[Tom Odom]

Personally, lumping N. Africa in with AFRICOM makes no sense to me, and lumping India into the rest of Asia makes less than no sense.

Well as an Africanist and a Middle East guy I would disagree. Egypt is perhaps the sole exception in that most of Egypt's international efforts are regionallty focused on the Middle East as we define it. But even Egypt spends a great deal of effort looking south toward Sudan.

The remainder from Libya west to Morocco spend their greatest efforts dealing with issues that are Africa-centric. Exceptions do emerge as no division is clear cut; Muammar Qadaffi's pan-Arab posturing offer a great example. At the same time, he did play the African regional gadfly in Sudan and Chad.

In contrast I would say that you are on the mark on India--State, like DoD, treats it as a sub-region even though the boundaries show it as Asia.

Best

Tom