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October 14, 2004

US Africa agenda seen lacking

Jeremy Schwab

During the first presidential debate this fall, John Kerry and George Bush butted heads, excoriating each other for taking the “wrong” approach in the war on terrorism.

On at least one question, however, the candidates agreed — the United States should not commit troops to stop what both Kerry and Bush admitted is ongoing genocide in the Sudan.

The U.S. government’s slow reaction to the crisis in the Sudan typifies the U.S. government’s attitude toward Africa, according to former Ambassador Walter C. Carrington, who spoke at Simmons College last week.

“Our policy towards Africa has too often been reactive rather than forward-looking,” said Carrington, the former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria and Senegal and currently the Warburg Chair in International Relations at Simmons. “[In Sudan] we were, as we so often are in Africa, caught completely off guard. Sudan is high on our list of terrorist-sponsoring countries, yet we seemed to have had little understanding of the crisis brewing in Darfur until it was too late to contain.”

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have shown much interest in Africa, said Carrington.

“Incumbent Republican presidents, like their Democratic counterparts, would be likely to embellish their first term’s dealings with the continent,” he said. “Democratic challengers on the other hand, eager to connect with their important black base, can always be counted on to make nice-sounding generalities about the African American ancestral homeland.”

Recent campaigns, including the current one, have been more of the same, according to Carrington.

“During the 2000 presidential campaign, candidate George W. Bush declared: ‘The U.S. has no vital interests in Africa,’” he said. “Little has been said by either candidate during this campaign on African issues apart from Darfur and HIV/AIDS. The president did not think Africa important enough to include any mention of it in this year’s State of the Union address. His party, however, did treat with it extensively in their platform. The Democrats, however, devoted but a paragraph.”

Africa should be a higher priority for the United States, considering the continent’s vast natural resources, including large oil reserves, according to Carrington. Furthermore, he argued, the presence of so many moderate Muslim-dominated governments in Africa should prompt the United States to court these nations, in light of the war on terrorism.

“The efforts by the State Department to reach the hearts and minds of this vast reservoir of moderate Muslims have been dwarfed by initiatives emanating from the Pentagon,” said Carrington. “The Bush administration, pushed by the Pentagon, seems far more favorable to establishing bases rather than consulates.

“It is as reckless a gamble as setting up bases in Saudi Arabia. There it was religious sensibilities that were not taken into account. In Africa, it is nationalist sentiments that will have been ignored and Muslim fears which will have been exacerbated. Yet this is an issue that has not been addressed by either of the candidates.”

Carrington also chided the Bush administration for insulting Africans’ sensibilities when the U.S. delegation pulled out of the World Conference on Racism in 2001. The African press excoriated the United States over the incident, according to Carrington.

“The criticism was scathing,” he said. “Unacceptable was the United States’ explanation that it withdrew because of fear that the conference would call for reparations for slavery and that language in an early draft statement castigated Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians.”

Besides what he called the United States’ poor diplomacy in Africa and failure to intervene in such crises as the Rwanda genocide, Carrington criticized the United States’ economic policies toward Africa.

“The emphasis seems to be more on creating free market societies than on alleviating poverty,” said Carrington. “The assumption being that the benefits of economic growth will trickle down to the poor.”

The Bush administration established the Millennium Challenge account to provide assistance to countries that move toward a free market. Meanwhile, the debt relief that African countries are clamoring for has thus far not materialized.

Carrington argued that, as was the case during the Cold War, the United States has a significant strategic interest in African prosperity and stability and must do more to meet the needs of the continent’s people.

“The United States and its Western allies seduced so many African states to keep them out of the clutches of the Soviet Union in the Cold War, only to abandon them when the Berlin Wall fell,” he said. “What then are the stakes in Africa in this post-September 11 world, and how are those who vie to lead us for the next four years intending to deal with them?”

 

 

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