A New Direction for U.S. Foreign Policy in Africa

Abstract

A New Direction for U.S. Foreign Policy in Africa Zachariah Mampilly (bio) and Jason Stearns (bio) President Trump's approach to Africa rightly elicits outrage. His conception of the continent ranges from disinterest—he has only mentioned it three times out of around 20,000 tweets—to outright contempt, such as when he referred to African nations as "shithole countries." For eighteen months, the office of the assistant secretary of state for African affairs was empty or occupied by a temporary official. Almost two years into his administration, there was no ambassador deployed to twenty of Africa's fifty-four countries. Trump has only met with two heads of state from sub-Saharan Africa in the White House. He has proposed large budget cuts for humanitarian funding—including for the flagship President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and UN peacekeeping operations—although these attempts were mostly foiled by bipartisan efforts in Congress. In January, he extended his travel ban to four additional African countries, including Nigeria, the continent's most populous nation and its largest economy, affecting nearly a quarter of the 1.3 billion people on the continent. Appearances, however, are deceptive. While Trump's Africa policy may seem to be a departure, its broad contours have changed little from recent administrations. Since the end of the Cold War, both Republican and Democratic administrations have embraced a mixture of military intervention, free trade, and humanitarian aid on the continent. As a result, Washington has often ended up backing authoritarian regimes, all the while halfheartedly projecting democratic values. Meanwhile, the continent is undergoing transformative changes. Much like Latin America during the 2000s, many African countries once drawn into the U.S. orbit are drifting out of it. With COVID-19 threatening to destabilize African economies and political systems, now is the time for a progressive reset in relations with the continent: a new foreign policy, centered on economic justice and the democratic aspirations of African youth. With the presidential election looming and Joe Biden, the Democratic Party nominee, expected to place Obama-era stalwarts such as Susan Rice and Samantha Power in top foreign policy positions if he wins [End Page 107] Click for larger view View full resolution A Nigerien soldier wearing a U.S. military uniform waits during a training exercise in 2004 in Samara, Niger. (Jacob Silberberg/Getty Images) [End Page 108] in November, progressives must push for a new direction for U.S.–Africa relations or risk entrenching the problematic policies of the past. Beneath the Turmoil, Continuity U.S. foreign policy in Africa has its roots in the Cold War, when it was dominated by fears of communist encroachment. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the continent was viewed as peripheral to core U.S. interests. As a 1995 Defense Department assessment summarized, "Ultimately we see very little traditional strategic interest in Africa." The same dismissive attitude held in the economic sphere. By 2017, exports to the continent stood at just above 1 percent of the U.S. total and direct investment by U.S. companies was even lower. Disengagement was also spurred by missteps and the thorny realities of local politics. In 1993, the deployment of Army Rangers to Somalia in support of a UN peacekeeping intervention ended when eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed and some of their mutilated bodies were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. This influenced Bill Clinton's refusal to back a more robust UN engagement to prevent the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. His administration instead enthusiastically supported a new generation of rebels-turned-rulers in Rwanda, Uganda, and Ethiopia, only to see them entrench themselves as authoritarian leaders. This trend of opportunistically backing authoritarian regimes solidified after 9/11, when African countries came to be key, albeit secondary, battlegrounds in the global War on Terror. During the 2000s, several militant groups emerged on the continent that were eventually designated as errorist organizations by the Bush and Obama administrations, including the predecessors of al Shabaab in Somalia and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in the Sahel. In 2002, to combat this perceived threat, the United States set up the Combined Joint Task Force...