‘Forget the Rhetoric and Boost the Geopolitics’: Emerging Trends in the Bush Administration's Policy Towards Africa, 2001

Abstract

This article assesses the Bush administration's self-proclaimed 'realist' policy towards Africa, the essential thrust of which is captured by the motto: 'Forget the rhetoric and boost the geopolitics'. Three essential elements of this approach include the strategic imperative of cultivating strong links with Africa's leading regional powers, most notably Nigeria and South Africa, harkening back to the Nixon administration's strategy of relying on such powers to ensure regional stability; building upon the Clinton administration's success in promoting US trade and investment with African countries, with a special focus on oil-producing countries; and underscoring the need for Africans to 'do more for themselves' in the realm of conflict resolution, suggesting a low-profile Bush administration approach to involvement in either peacekeeping or peacemaking operations. Emerging trends are analyzed by treating the US policymaking establishment as a series of three concentric circles: the inner circle of the White House; a second circle comprising the bureaucracies of the executive branch; and an outer circle inclusive of the US Congress and the larger African affairs constituency. An important result of White House and Congressional neglect of Africa is that the Bush administration's foreign policy towards Africa, perhaps more so than that directed towards any other region of the world, essentially will be delegated to the high-level bureaucrats and political appointees within the executive branch, leading to an outcome best characterized as 'bureaucratic incrementalism' in which continuity rather than change will mark the administration's policies towards Africa. THE INAUGURATION IN JANUARY 2001 OF GEORGE W. BUSH as the 43rd President of the United States potentially heralds the beginning of a new era in US policy towards Africa. As was the case with two previous presidential transitions in which Republican Presidents took office after a period of Democratic Party control of the White House (Nixon's replacement of Johnson in January 1969 and Reagan's replacement of Carter in January 1981), the Bush foreign policy team has castigated its Democratic predecessor (the Clinton administration) as having pursued an overly idealistic and ultimately Peter J. Schraeder is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago. His most recent books include African Politics and Society: A mosaic in transformation (2000) and Exporting Democracy: Rhetoric versus reality (forthcoming 2001).