Episode 4: Partner of Choice?

 

Michael Woldemariam and Robbie Gramer on Biden’s Sub-Saharan Africa Strategy

Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the fastest growing regions in the world and home to some of the world’s most critical developing economies. But historically, US foreign policy has treated the continent as a monolith and a site for great power competition, ignoring the role of African nations in deciding their own future. This week, None of the Above is joined by Horn of Africa expert Michael Woldemariam, and journalist Robbie Gramer, to discuss America’s relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa. 

How should Washington balance the often conflicting priorities of human rights and security in the region? Can Washington develop productive partnerships with African states, outside the prism of competition with Russia and China? And is there even room for coexistence on the continent between the United States and these competitors? As the Biden administration begins to reveal its strategy, guest host and Eurasia Group Foundation research fellow Zuri Linetsky asks Michael and Robbie whether Biden’s Africa strategy represents something new, or is more of the same.

Michael Woldemariam is an associate professor of international relations at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, who focuses on security and politics in the Horn of Africa. Michael is the author of the book, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and its Discontents (2018).

Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy, who covers the US State Department, the Pentagon, and most recently the Biden administration’s new US-Africa strategy.

This podcast episode includes references to the Eurasia Group Foundation, now known as the Institute for Global Affairs.

Show notes:

Archival:

Transcript:

Interlude featuring archival audio 

ZURI LINETSKY: Welcome to None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. My name is Zuri Linetsky, and I'm stepping in for Mark Hannah today. We're roughly 18 months into the Biden presidency, and finally, we're beginning to see the administration's thinking about a region that has the fastest growing population in the world, which today accounts for about one seventh of the global population. We're talking, of course, about sub-Saharan Africa.

Interlude featuring archival audio 

LINETSKY: It may seem obvious, but it bears repeating: Africa is not a monolith. There are 54 countries in Africa—assuming we count Egypt, which the United States government often lumps into the Middle East. The variation within just one country in Africa is incredible. So, it's orders of magnitude greater when thinking about the entirety of sub-Saharan Africa.

MICHAEL WOLDEMARIAM: The Horn of Africa: You have an indigenous power, Ethiopia, that was never colonized. You know the manner in which decolonization occurred: You've got borders that have historically been contested in this region in a way they haven't been in other parts of the African continent. But if you look at, say, for instance, a country like Somalia—its particular governance and security challenges and issues around violent extremism—you could draw parallels to a place like Afghanistan, for instance, or Yemen. There are, I think, some common threads there, but there are obviously distinctions that one needs to understand. No two places are the same in all ways.

LINETSKY: That's Michael Woldemariam, an associate professor of international relations at Boston University and the former director of the African Studies Center there. 

Now, despite all this variation, the United States has just put forth a singular strategy document concerning all of sub-Saharan Africa.

Interlude featuring archival audio 

LINETSKY: The document is only 17 pages long. It even had two typos in the earliest published copies. Maybe it was a sign of the consideration this administration is giving the region.

ROBBIE GRAMER: The first thing I'll say is copy editors are the unsung heroes of the world of journalism. And I hope the US government will invest in copy editors as much as journalists do, because from my experience, the most meticulous reporter—and you can spend months and months on a story, make it all perfect, and then make a stupid spelling mistake. I'm not really sure this signifies the US isn't paying attention in Africa. If you're looking for evidence that the US is giving Africa the short thrift, there's a lot more evidence out there than this. But for the US-Africa policy community, there always seems to be this chip on their shoulder that Africa gets the short shrift, that it's undercounted. The US doesn't invest enough resources or political capital into it in the same way it would, say, Europe or China, particularly these days.

LINETSKY: That's Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security correspondent at Foreign Policy magazine who's been covering the rollout of the Biden administration's regional strategy. But all that's not to say the new document lacks important content.

WOLDEMARIAM: One thing I liked or appreciated about the strategy was the way it situates Africa as sort of an important partner in resolving a whole array of global challenges from whether we're talking about issues of climate migration or the functioning of important international institutions. It's a critical swing player in the global balance of power. And I think a lot of previous strategies or discussions, I should say, about US-Africa policy have situated Africa as essentially a source of security and developmental challenges to be resolved.

GRAMER: I remember when then-National Security Adviser John Bolton rolled out the US-Africa strategy back in 2018. Within DC, it was rushed. It sort of came out of nowhere.

Interlude featuring archival audio 

GRAMER: It seemed like an afterthought. There wasn't a lot of interagency input or buy-in, from what I understand. And it was against the backdrop of President Trump never actually visiting sub-Saharan Africa, referring to sub-Saharan African countries as “shithole countries,” very famously or infamously. 

So, contrast with this one. The top person on the National Security Council who led it, Judd Devermont, spent eight months on it. So, talking with thought leaders, African diplomats around town. So, at least purely in terms of their input, this is not a throwaway document. This is not pouring old wine into new bottles and slapping the word strategic on it and calling it a day, as often happens here in DC when government personnel are mandated to write up a strategy.

LINETSKY: The timing is worth noting. This document arrived in the week following Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s trip to the continent, and it coincided with trips by the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Interlude featuring archival audio 

LINETSKY: It's important to point out that China has been investing heavily throughout sub-Saharan Africa for decades, which has allowed it to grow its influence there. In fact, it's the number one trading partner for the entire continent, and it's maintained this status since about 2009. So, should competition with Russia and China be a primary focus of the United States in the region?

WOLDEMARIAM: As we think about the geopolitical landscape in Africa, it's not just a US, China, Russia thing. There's also some very important middle powers, frankly, whose influence in many contexts dwarfs that of certainly Russia and maybe even China. The UAE, Turkey in the Horn in Libya. Yes, absolutely right. Qatar. And so, the intuition of US policymakers across multiple administrations has been, for better or worse, to situate the United States, as we would call the partner of choice for African countries. And so, the concerns about China are set up against, I think, that strategic priority or concern. I would say this: One of the concerns I have about the strategies is what the strategy doesn't really offer is a vision of US-China coexistence on the African continent.

GRAMER: They are between a rock and a hard place. De-emphasize great power competition, but at the same time they're emphasizing great power competition in every other way outside of this document here. In the past, there's been a tradition, it seems like, in US-Africa policy, where the US president or secretary of state makes a trip to a select few countries in sub-Saharan Africa once a year, every two years, and says, “Africa, you are so important. We love to engage you,” and then goes away. And you never hear about it again. And African leaders obviously bristle at this because it's patronizing, and they're going to be a major economic and diplomatic powerhouse in the 21st century. And that's just not how you can engage Africa as a whole if you want to paint a broad brush for a full continent here. 

I think there is a step, too, for this administration to put their money where their mouth is now, because you talked about Blinken's trip, but they're also stepping up engagement on a lot of different levels because undersecretaries of state have been there. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, our US ambassador to the UN, who plays an outsized diplomatic role in this administration, is there. [Administrator of USAID] Samantha Power was just in the Horn of Africa. And so, there seems to be an increased tempo of high-level US trips there to try to get away from this sort of traditional, one-off pomp and circumstance trip without much to back it up that has defined US administrations in the past.

LINETSKY: Perhaps the simplest way of thinking about all this is the US is setting out its interest in sub-Saharan Africa and how it wants to engage with the continent. But there are so many unanswered questions. Why do we care specifically about engaging with sub-Saharan Africa? What are American interests in the region? Does this document actually constitute a strategy since it lacks clear goals and methods for achieving them? I dive into all of this with Robbie and Michael because a 17-page document can only cover so much.

WOLDEMARIAM: Africa is really quite essential to the global balance of power. If you think about—what—27- to 30-percent of voting members at the UN are African states. And that is why I think—to use a phrase that comes up in US foreign policy parlance—the partner of choice. This is why that logic, I think, is important from the perspective of US policymakers. So, ultimately, all of these equities—if you want to call them that—kind of merge together and feed off one another. And if you are interested in protecting US security interests across the continent, then there might be some interests in an alignment of values with certain governments or with the promotion of certain values and governance structures across the continent. Although I think we found over the course of the war on terror that those two interests or priorities diverge on a regular basis. See Chad. See Uganda. See Ethiopia. Etcetera.

LINETSKY: Well, this is really interesting because I think when you start thinking about Africa and what the American interests are, what we've just boiled this down to is we start talking about balance of power. Well, the balance of power actually feeds into this idea of great power competition. The United States is the global hegemon. China is rising. China is the number one trade partner of all African countries. Robbie, you talked about trade. China is definitely monopolizing it. So, it feeds into this narrative of great power competition. And we've got massive infrastructure investments across the continent. We talk about human rights. We talk about all these kinds of big ideas. But do we actually care?

GRAMER: Yeah. I think this is an existential question in US foreign policy that will always be asked and never be fully answered. How do you balance the hard national interests versus the—quote, unquote—“soft interests” of human rights and democracy? And there's no “the US is on one side or the other.” There's no black or white. No matter how much the administration professes on human rights, there's always going to be give and take and small sacrifices. And obviously, this strategy has emphasized democracy and human rights. But I think if you read between the lines in this 17-page document, there's a real subtle sense of mea culpa on: What have we done wrong? Has our emphasis on hard security issues, military cooperation—sometimes at the expense of human rights, or working with countries or governments that aren't so democratic—is that actually paying off? What we're seeing in the Sahel, the answer is no, because there have been governments we've cooperated with that went through coups. Mali has spurned French regional US support and is embracing Russia through its private military Wagner group. 

And so, I think there's a big existential question now. This strategy won't solve it. I don't think it sought to solve it. But I think they are trying to shift the balance more towards: Let's work on governance. Let's work on democracy. Let's work on human rights. But again, there's a tension because even within that, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez, a key ally of President Biden, has called out Biden on basically doing too much to support the Rwandan government without calling out its undermining and erosion of democratic institutions. And Menendez said he's going to withhold some security funding from his perch on Capitol Hill for Rwanda just ahead of Blinken's visit there.

LINETSKY: Well, let me just ask you this, because I'm genuinely curious about this. Is this actually a strategy? To me, it's a wish list. I think there's a larger conversation within the grand strategy community about what strategy is. I think it's a connection between our money, our commitments, and what we want to accomplish. I think there is a sense. There's a vision statement here about what we want to achieve. I don't necessarily know that there's a mechanism, a causal mechanism, of any kind of how to get there.

WOLDEMARIAM: Yeah, this is something I had gestured at, I think, early on in the conversation is that it is a statement of vision, of priorities. I think the “how?” of all of this is still uncertain. And there are not a lot of details on the implementation. Of course, the big question here is funding and resources. And one thing I would flag here, one thing I would have liked to have heard more about in the document is capacitating both USAID and the State Department. If we look at embassies—And Robbie, I think you've reported on this before—in the Sahel in particular, there are huge human resource challenges for our missions there. And so, I think, Zuri, you're right. There's not a lot of detail, I think, on the how of all this. But maybe that's not what this document is designed to provide, and maybe you actually need something more granular at the regional or the country level to sort of lay out how this will be implemented in specific contexts. So, embassies have their integrated country strategies. You've got some regional strategies. And so, a document like this can only do so many things. But I do agree there are some gaps.

GRAMER: Yeah. What I'll say on that is that within the US government, as someone who's who's covered it, sort of opened the hood, and peered underneath how the government works more as a reporter. These US foreign policy strategies have two purposes: One is the strategy itself outlines US policy for American voters and for the rest of the world. And two is corral the bureaucracies, get them all in line, and get them all to make sure they're all playing on the same sheet of music. And so, these strategies actually serve this purpose internally for the government, because if you are tasked by the president to write a strategy on US Africa, you're suddenly going to ask everyone at the State Department, at USAID, at the Defense Department, etcetera, what they're doing, what their priorities are, and knock heads together, force coordination, and do a lot behind the scenes to make sure the left arm and the right arm are working in coordination. 

So, is this document a strategy? I think there's a bunch of academic arguments that could argue yes or no. It seems like it on the surface to me. So, I'm just going to go off that assumption. But, two, it does serve the internal purpose of making sure all these different agencies and bureaus that have their own bureaucratic interests and inertia all have to get buy-in and input into the strategy. And so, there is a lot of inherent worth to corral the bureaucracy into having one coordinated document off which to work here.

LINETSKY: I think that's a great point. And yeah, I think the bottom line is let's wait and see. If we start seeing substantive changes in how the United States interacts with the continent, hotspots or not, we should see what we'll know, that this is actually a strategy.

GRAMER: Yeah. Just as one superficial read, because I'm a data guy, the strategy mentions China or the PRC three times, Russia seven times, and terrorism nine times. I think that is an interesting little metric for how one could view the priorities in this, because based on how the US government actually functions and its priorities, it seems like it should be reversed given the big emphasis on China.

LINETSKY: I want to talk a little bit about this idea of China and a vision of coexistence. China is not going anywhere. China is locked in on the continent. And we can talk about this idea of partner of choice. I did some work for DOD. And you talk to people in Chad, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, everyone. The United States is the partner of choice. The United States has access. The United States has basing rights almost throughout Niger. We're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars into Niger. Chad as well. China is there too. China is heavily invested in Djibouti moving towards East Africa. China is heavily invested in Ethiopia as well. So, let's talk about the vision of coexistence.

WOLDEMARIAM: Part of the reason I think it would be good to gesture at what a vision of coexistence looks like—and I said this before—is that I don't think China is going anywhere. It is so deeply entrenched across a variety of economic sectors, to the benefit in many ways to African states and peoples. And so, I think you need to recognize that fact. I also think it's the case that the ratcheting up of US-China tensions in Africa is because of the broader deterioration of relations globally between these two countries. But I think there are ways in which one could creatively silo off US trade interactions on the African continent, because I don't think—beyond who is the partner of choice and great power competition—I think there are a lot of common interests. And a couple of years back—2014, 2015—there were a lot of track two dialogs on what US-China cooperation might look like in Africa. 

One way to conceive of this—there are many ways. I don't have any clear answers here or models. But one way to think about it is maybe the United States takes the lead in terms of security cooperation. And then China is the economic player. Infrastructure development. You could see each side playing to its comparative advantage. It has spaces it works in to the benefit of African countries. I'm just throwing out—not endorsing that idea. That's one model. But again, to underscore the point, I do think it is important that conversation is held because, most African countries don't have the option of disengaging China. That's just not a serious proposal. And I'm not suggesting the strategy is saying that explicitly. But you do need to, I think, offer some concept of how these two big players might may engage and coexist.

LINETSKY: So, what I'm hearing you say is the United States needs to walk and chew gum at the same time. Is that a bar you think we can hop over?

WOLDEMARIAM: Well, we can try, Zuri. We can try.

LINETSKY: Okay. I agree with you, though. China isn't going anywhere. Does China do bad things? Yes. Does the United States do bad things? Yes. Do both the United States and China do good things? Also yes. And that all exists on the continent. And I think that's the point that maybe the strategy could be getting at implicitly is we need to deal with the reality of the continent. We need to understand where we are, what we're talking about. And the fact that leaders in Africa right now cannot say, “I won't take Chinese investment in the dam on the Nile. I need their money to come in.” And that's something we should probably be talking about.

WOLDEMARIAM: Yeah, but to add there, part of the challenge, I think, for what I'm suggesting or proposing here is the political one. And it's a political one both in Washington and Beijing. Does China itself or does the CCP want to coexist and collaborate with the United States across the African continent or on a set of issues? That's an open question. And then, of course, given the political climate in Washington around US-China relations, is it possible to propose a vision of coexistence that would have broad bipartisan support or just support in general? I don't know. I think the temperature or the tone of the conversation around US-China relations in Washington is such that it's really difficult to imagine how this conversation could be fostered around US-China engagement in Africa.

LINETSKY: I think that's a really powerful point. I think, as a result of the ongoing flare-up around Taiwan, notably, the Chinese articulated a list of eight areas of a pausing of US-Chinese cooperation. This is a big problem. A big, big problem, because the United States and China have to cooperate on any number of things beyond these eight issues. And I think we need to figure out how to work on these things, particularly in the context of Africa. So, I think that was a long-winded way of saying I agree with you aggressively.

WOLDEMARIAM: And the other thing I would add is that it may be the case that a vision of what US-Africa or US-China cooperation in Africa looks like actually comes from Africans themselves and African multilateral institutions. And I know those conversations have been happening across the continent. If the strategy is serious about Africans having agency in global affairs, and maybe on this issue, they can offer a program of action. And I think there's a lot here to think through. I wish I had more clear-cut answers or clear thinking on what this vision might look like. But it's certainly one Africans should have some ownership of and some input on. That would seem to be quite wise.

LINETSKY: Our guests offered a hopeful view of the Biden administration's new sub-Saharan Africa strategy—that it's not just a retread of what came before it. I think time will tell. Certainly, the Biden administration has a lot of work to do to redefine the American relationship with the region. And even though it's early days for the strategy, there's an open question as to whether the Biden team has started off on the wrong foot. The civil war in Ethiopia is dragging on. Biden recommitted an enduring force of about 500 special forces troops to Somalia to fight al-Shabab to an unknown end. Coups and interesting conflicts are wreaking havoc in the Sahel, and the Democratic Republic of Congo seems determined to dig for oil and gas in the Congo River Basin, the single biggest carbon sink in the world. 

I'm Zuri Linetsky, and this has been an episode of None of the Above, a podcast of the Eurasia Group Foundation. 

Thanks so much to Michael Woldemariam and Robbie Gramer for joining us today. 

Thanks also go out to the entire None of the Above team. Thanks to our host Mark Hannah, producer Caroline Gray, associate producer and editor Sarah Leeson, and for research and archival support from Lucas Robinson and Sam Gardner-Bird. If you enjoyed what you've heard, we would appreciate you subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or anywhere else you find podcasts. Rate and review us, and if there's a topic you want us to cover, send us an email at info@noneoftheabovepodcast.org. Thanks for joining us.

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