Trump wants no prostrate Africa, just for it to bend over
Shortly before Christmas, John Bolton, US President Donald Trump ’ s national security adviser — he of the large albino caterpillar on his upper lip — went to the Heritage Foundation, where Republicans are said to think, to unveil Trump’s Africa strategy.
It was, he said, “the result of an intensive interagency process ”— produced “about two years earlier than the prior administration’s release of its Africa strategy”. As if anyone was keeping score.
“Under our new approach, every decision we make, every policy we pursue, every dollar of aid we spend will further US priorities in the region,” said the moustache. I don’t recall Chester Crocker, Ronald Reagan’s great proconsul, ever saying: “I’m doing this for Fiji.”
The moustache continued: “We want our economic partners in the region to thrive, prosper and control their own destinies.” Not just thrive, but prosper as well! So clever, these Trumpsters, to see a distinction. On the issue of own destiny control, the moustache elaborated: “We ask only for reciprocity, never for subservience.”
African nations will be relieved to learn that Trump will not demand that they fully prostrate themselves if they fail to reciprocate to his satisfaction. They will merely need to bend over. It would, of course, be churlish to suggest that Trump was demanding subservience from Rwanda when he cancelled its access to the US market for refusing to import Chinese-made knickers discarded in the US and washed in India.
Africa, take heart, he means to rescue you from recolonisation. He wants to set you free: “Enhancing US economic ties with the region... is vital to safeguarding the economic independence of African states.”
The dastardly Chinese and Russians “are deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage over the US”. Ah, but they are so cunning and wicked.
“China uses bribes, opaque agreements and the strategic use of debt to hold states captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands. Its investment ventures are riddled with corruption.”
China’s and Russia’s “predatory practices … stunt economic growth” in Africa even as “the lack of economic progress in the region has accompanied the proliferation of radical Islamic terrorism”.
True, China has no Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but let ’ s resist the temptation to elaborate on what has riddled most, if not all, of Trump’s ventures, and leave for another day a disquisition on how the US’s laws and regulations are routinely written by the highest bidder. What strikes me here, rather, is the casual discounting of African agency, the condescending reflex that Africans only control their own destinies if “great powers” let them, and the preposterous assertion that Uncle Sam, in the time of Trump, is Mr Integrity.
That said, I suppose one has to be grateful that “great power competitors, namely China and Russia” have inspired the Trump administration to take Africa at least a little bit seriously. Having revealed their strategy, the Trumpsters are working on the tactics. These, they say, will include something called Prosper Africa.
Like everything Trump, it’ sa branding exercise. It will be cobbled together from what the Trumpsters inherited from their betters — the African Growth and Opportunity Act, the HIV/Aids programme Pepfar, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, USAID’s trade and investment hubs, Power Africa and the Young African Leadership Initiative. And from what they initially resisted, such as the Build Act creating a new development finance agency with $60bn to put in play.
Rest assured they will pretend to have created something new and wonderful.