204 - Washington Learns to Woo the World: Countering China and Russia
China wants Africa. It also wants Oceania. Russia wants Africa. Now, finally, the United States is trying strenuously to respond to the preferences and needs of the fifty-five nations on the African continent and to woo at least eighteen island mostly microstates in the Pacific.
Obviously, worried about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and about how to help the Ukrainians survive, Washington’s priorities initially were war-focused, especially after Ukraine kept the Russians from marching easily and quickly on Kyiv. That redoubtable defense of the realm energized Western support and rightly turned all eyes on Donetsk and the fighting front.
Washington has simultaneously had to keep its eyes on China – a major long-term destabilizing threat to world order. China’s aggressive assertion of sovereignty in the South China Sea, ignoring a UN Law of the Seas Convention Tribunal adverse ruling and the maritime rights of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines to their territorial waters – plus building and fortifying reef outposts next to the Philippines and Vietnam— is threatening to our allies and our alliances in the region. China claims arrogantly that previously unoccupied coral outcroppings, including one next to the Philippines’ Palawan Island (with its 1 million inhabitants), are “inherently” Chinese.
China is also menacing Taiwan with almost daily air crossings of the dividing line between them, and with harassing propaganda broadcasts and threats. The Pentagon cannot for a moment relax its awareness of rapidly increasing tensions in a once relatively peaceful part of the western Pacific Ocean. One-third of the globe’s maritime commerce traverses the disputed waters of the South China Sea; the U. S. Navy has always regarded the South China Sea as an international waterway, its vessels routinely patrolling there.
Such rising dangers in a geographical area that was once seemingly of long-term, but now of serious medium- and short-term anxiety, has led to a new attention to the smaller nations of the Pacific, places like the Solomon Islands, Papua-New Guinea, Kiribati, the Cook Islands, Fiji, and Samoa. The U.S. State Department is busily opening and re-opening embassies in an area of the world from which Washington largely withdrew, having left world order interests to be monitored and overseen by Australia and New Zealand. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) recently opened a major office in Fiji to disburse new assistance packages to eight of Oceania’s states.
China in the past few years has been actively courting these very same island states, large, small, and tiny. The U.S. finally realizes that it must now be present, offer aid, keep an eye on the Chinese, and not simply observe from a distance. Being active, and being seen to be engaged, in the region is paramount.
This week President Biden is holding the second annual meeting between the U. S. and eighteen island nations of Oceania – from French Polynesia in the eastern Pacific to Papua New Guinea in the western reaches. Only the prime minister of the Solomon Islands, a seeming client of China, refused to attend. So did the new prime minister of Vanuatu (east of Australia) failed to show, but for political reasons at home. President Biden told the Oceanic conclave (and earlier Africans) that he would battle to reduce mitigate the climate changes that threatens literally to submerge so many of their territories.
China and Russia are even busier in Africa. Although a number of African countries have begun to chafe against being entrapped by borrowings owed to China, and some places have complained about shoddy Chinese construction and facility maintenance, not to mention China’s usual refusal to transfer technology to recipient countries and its insistence on employing hordes of its own citizens instead of Africans, much of sub-Saharan Africa still relies on China to build railways and roads, to construct dams, and to wine and dine political leaderships. China has also built a base in Djibouti, on the Red Sea, adjacent to American and French military encampments. Russia plans to build a naval base farther up the Red Sea, in Port Sudan.
Washington has long tried to assist Somalia and Sahelian countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger against al-Qaeda affiliated and Islamic State franchised insurgents operating out of the Algerian, Libyan, and now Malian Saharan desert sands. It has an active drone base in northern Niger to watch the jihadists and, previously assist French troops and Sahelian national efforts to keep the Islamists at bay. But now, thanks to military coups in all three Sahelian countries, the French are pulling out and the U.S. Africa Command has withdrawn its Special Forces from Niamey, the capital of Niger, to Agadez in northern Niger. But Niger’s new military rulers may soon compel a further U. S. force retreat.
So far, Somalia seeks as much American military involvement as it can get. U. S. drones fly over the war-torn territory from bases in Kenya and Djibouti, and Special Forces train the Somali Federal army and sometimes are involved in combat. But, for almost twenty years the al-Shabaab Islamist movement, allied to al-Qaeda, has managed to hold its own and, too often, to inflict serious damage on Somalia’s government headquarters, its troops, and civilians caught in an interminable crossfire.
Such martial assistance to troubled African entities now needs to be coupled to massive attention to the rest of Africa in order to counter, or at least match, Chinese and Russian hard- and soft-power attention to African governments and ruling elites. China, in addition to a massive construction and lending operation that has continued over at least a decade, provides free Mandarin language training, free global news broadcasts for television and radio, and scholarships for training in China. When asked by an African government for project assistance – a new road, perhaps – it acts with alacrity. It also facilitates, even fosters, grand corruption, too, but Washington does not wish to compete in that area.
Russia’s Wagner Group offers some key African leadership cadres corrupt earning possibilities, protection for harried rulers (especially in the precarious Central African Republic), and – in theory – lethal kinetic force to use against jihadists. But, in fact, ever since the Wagnerites have replaced the French in Burkina Faso and Mali, jihadism has grown more successful. And the Wagnerites have committed atrocities against civilians while plundering gold, diamonds, and timber. Wagner hopes to replace the French and Americans in Niger.
Last week, at the UN, both President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with African leaders and spoke publicly about the many initiatives that the U. S. is now undertaking to help Africa. Biden said that he stood strongly with the African Union and ECOWAS to protect constitutional rule and democracy. He promised new economic support for Africa, instancing backing for a refurbished rail line from the Zambian and Congolese Copperbelts to an underused port on Angola’s Atlantic coast. Blinken promised more diplomatic attention to the continent, reopened embassies, and more accredited personnel (if Republicans in the Senate can confirm nominees). He agreed to tackle Africa’s food insecurity issues, especially those exacerbated by the war in Ukraine.
With Kenya, Washington agreed to finance its advance into Haiti to try to end gang violence there, but whether the Kenyans will send sufficient police and troops is unclear.
A reset for the Pacific is finally underway. The reset for Africa is harder and much more complicated, especially if Congress delusionally fails because of Republican anti-abortionists fantasists to re-authorize PEPFAR, President Bush’s much acclaimed HIV-AIDS prevention and treatment initiative, one of America’s best ever endeavors in Africa.
China and Russia are in Africa for narrow geopolitical reasons. The U. S. regard for Africa has always been more motivated by benevolence. But to compete with its global adversaries Washington needs to become more active on the ground, where being present will mean far more than well-intended rhetorical phrasings.
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