U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik

U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik. Herman Cohen. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2020.

Ambassador Herman Cohen is one of many career diplomats, along with ambassadors like John Campbell and David Shinn, who devote personal time to researching, understanding, and commenting on African affairs. Herman Cohen held numerous Africa posts, including serving as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under President George H. W. Bush. Cohen’s most recent work traces U.S. foreign policy in Africa from Franklin Roosevelt to Donald Trump, intertwining historical files and personal insights to weave a picture of what the author titles, Eight Decades of Realpolitik.

While the book’s chapters are arranged in chronological order of U.S. presidential administrations, this review is based on themes. The initial theme lifts key U.S. policy examples from the book on crucial countries that span multiple administrations. The second theme extrapolates from Cohen’s book placing historical security considerations, past Cold War fears, and U.S. political culture in a contemporary context. The extrapolation shows that Cohen’s work is as much about history as it is about building better partnerships and diplomacy for tomorrow. Finally, returning more directly to Cohen’s book, the last theme discusses how U.S. policy toward Africa influences presidential legacies and even American identity.

Today, the African continent is made up of 54 separate countries. However, Cohen’s book shows that from 1960 to 2020, four countries and one region held a prominent place in U.S. foreign policy in Africa: Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Southern Africa. As demonstrated in the book, preoccupation with the Congo, by the U.S. or Congo’s neighbors, has often been directly or indirectly related to its resources. Ethiopia and Somalia’s story is part of a World War II legacy relationship and a later U.S. counterterrorism strategy. South Africa’s apartheid regime and Portugal’s Angola were both side-stepped for political and economic reasons in the 1950s and 1960s until Southern Africa boiled over into hot conflict in the 1970s and 1980s.

In a time when respectful political discussions are increasingly difficult, Cohen’s account gives an honest, if even unflattering, take on history. When Africa might have given the U.S. a clean bill in terms of colonialism, Cohen contends that had early America not been engaged in expanding westward under the Louisiana Purchase or engaged in colonial-type activities in the Philippines, America’s history in Africa could have looked differently.[1]

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)-83, in 1953, focused on tropical Africa. Africa had great trade potential and was a source of essential metals, uranium—especially in the Congo, and minerals.[3]

Official portrait of Patrice Lumumba as the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Republic of the Congo/Wikimedia)

History shows that late information or surprise intelligence can cause knee-jerk reactions that lead to poor decision-making. Cohen describes how the Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, surprised U.S. officials with a turn to Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union. The Central Intelligence Agency station in Kinshasa never followed the order to assassinate him, but as Cohen explains, Lumumba was still killed in the ensuing realpolitik between the United States, Belgium, and Congo’s nascent political and military cronyism.

In general, following Eisenhower’s lead, consecutive U.S. administrations were consistent in their support for the independence of Europe’s colonies and the end of colonialism. U.S. policy was “squarely on the side of African democratic majority rule.”[4] The realpolitik that frustrated the counter-colonial policy was Cold War competition. The Portuguese colonies in the 1950s and even early 1960s were estimated to have little or no resistance to Portuguese rule. Portugal was an important NATO ally, so the U.S. preferred to ignore but also under-estimate the resistance movements in Portugal’s African colonies.

Forty years ago, Southern Africa’s political challenge the transition from colonial rule to independence. Today, almost every African country is struggling to complete an economic transition, create jobs for millions of youth, and create development outside of their capital cities. Instead of Communism and civil war, countries like Angola and others battle corruption; a national problem with international dimensions. While African countries are justifiably shocked by racial tensions in the United States, they are also wise to their own prejudicial or ethnic divides. Africa’s relationship with China is on the mend after struggling to balance their relationship when Africans in China complained of racially motivated discrimination.

The themes of non-intervention and racial conflict that Cohen prescribes to the 1960s have their contemporary corollary. Cohen writes how Africans cheered at the passing of America’s 1964 Civil Rights Act. Barry Goldwater’s ardent opposition to the act, if even only a reflection of U.S. election maneuvering, was still noticed on the African continent. Today’s political climate reeks of the same racially charged disputes. Media of all flavors dissect personal statements made by presidential candidates even if it has little bearing on policy. With the addition of social media, Africans are likely watching more now than in the 1960s.

As Cohen mentioned, there was a time when the U.S. and China deconflicted their construction of a crucial road and rail line, respectively, from Zambia to the Indian Ocean in the early 1970s. The very idea today, due both to caustic political rhetoric and political foul play, is inconceivable. Today China, with the same stated policy of non-intervention in internal affairs as U.S. presidents in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, is challenged to prove its stated policy amidst so many backdoor deals and is tempted to redefine its policy in the face of conflict that threatens its economic investments in places like Sudan, Mali, the Congo, and Nigeria.

Forty years ago, South Africa suffered one of the hottest chapters of the Cold War. That Cold War is over but now another, some Chinese and Western diplomats warn, is brewing between the United States and China. In the opinion of well-known Angolan writer João Melo, it may already be in motion. Learning from eight decades of realpolitik might inform the United States, China, the European Union and, especially, a more robust and independent system of African states, how best to avoid another one.

It is unlikely the U.S. and China will engage in physical conflict in Africa. However, COVID-19 is too tempting a crisis not to be politicized by both. It is the latest in realpolitik tactics. Conflict between two of Africa’s largest trading partners would not end well for Africans. But COVID-19 is also exposing the economic, production, and development fragility of many African states. Cohen’s focus countries and regions have serious debt challenges. Angola, who has tried in vain to diversify away from oil dependence, is perhaps hit the hardest. China has decided to cancel small portions of Africa’s debt and, in the case of Angola, may pause repayment requirements for three years.

Sensing the eve of great power competition and the whiff of realpolitik, many contemporary Africans echo the words of João Melo in saying, “keep your cold war out of Africa.” Cohen would remind us that as the 1950s ideological rivalries heated up, keeping the Cold War out of Africa happened to be President Eisenhower’s policy as well; desiring instead robust partner and diplomatic engagement 

In reference to Africa’s security challenges, Cohen suggests that regional organizations, not just bilateral interventions, must share a common responsibility. Cohen also accuses the Organization of African Unity, later the African Union, of doing too little in the face of conflict. Until the U.S. insisted Tanzania intervene in a 1972 genocide occurring in Burundi, Cohen claimed that there was no African response.[5] Still hesitant after the Blackhawk Down experience in Somalia, President Clinton says his biggest regret is not intervening in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. As Cohen put it, Clinton’s administration was content to sit back as a regional war ousted Mobutu from power, and Rwandan troops massacred hundreds of thousands. Waiting for U.S. diplomatic intervention to get serious, roughly 5 million lives were lost in what came to be known as Africa’s continental war.[6] While President Obama was determined not to make the same mistake in Libya in 2011, his most significant foreign policy regret is poor preparation for a post-Qaddafi Libya.[7]

Many consecutive U.S. administrations can be called out for ignoring the colonial elephants in the room, Portugal’s Angola, and South Africa’s apartheid until the injustice of blatant discrimination reached its tipping point. In a discussion that is even more poignantly present in the summer of 2020, Cohen points out the inconsistency of highlighting the horrors of racism while tolerating the atrocities of Africa’s leaders; a concept promoted by Africa’s youth and the brave protestors who have flooded the streets in places like Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mali, and across North Africa to demand human rights, dignity, and the rule of law.[8] The continent of Africa, its people, and their history have always provided a challenging perspective to Western political thought that is too often near-sighted.

Protesters in Bamako, Mali, calling for the resignation of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in Jun 2020. (Matthieu Rosier/Reuters)

Contemporary U.S. political passions have many historical Africa connections. Cohen writes about how in the late 1980s Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of President Mobutu of Congo, and for Jonas Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader, as late as the early 1990s, even after U.S. policy had distanced itself from both. The Heritage Foundation, in the 1980s and early 1990s housed or hosted Angola’s UNITA (União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola) and Mozambique’s RENAMO (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana) members as both rebel groups fought against Marxist governments.[9]

What is fascinating about U.S. foreign policy in Africa is that it describes a lasting legacy of U.S. presidents that is different, often contrary, to the common perception. Here are just a few examples highlighted in the book in relation to Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. Richard Nixon served as Dwight Eisenhower’s vice president, visited and researched the continent, and was known as one of the smartest politicians on the topic amongst his contemporaries. Cohen writes how Nixon advanced the idea of African neutrality in the Cold War and U.S. non-intervention in Africa’s internal affairs.[10] Despite Eisenhower’s robust support for Africa’s transition out of colonialism, his legacy in Africa is tarnished with his order to assassinate Patrice Lumumba.

President Ronald Reagan’s legacy is mixed but his Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Chester Crocker, toiled endlessly to realize a settlement between warring South Africa, Angola, Cuba and guerrilla movements in the region.[11] According to Crocker, the U.S. response to African events was slow and clunky. Crocker described African affairs as the “stepchild of U.S. foreign policy.”[12] George W. Bush is credited with having the most creative and positive development impact on the continent with the creation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, and other programs.[13]

In contrast, events in Africa recall some of its darkest examples of U.S. policy during the Clinton and Obama administrations; each president admitting that their most significant foreign policy regrets were linked to events on the African continent.[14] Often considered the lowest in U.S. foreign policy priorities, Africa reveals much about the character and evolution of U.S. leadership investment and partner interaction.

With such a deep and fascinating history between the U.S. and Africa, it will be easy to point out what is lacking in Cohen’s concise account. Readers might be surprised to find less mentioned about Kenya or Mali, given the influence both have on contemporary U.S. counterterrorism policy. Cohen hits the high points concerning Sudan, South Sudan, the Darfur region, and Niger’s role in supporting counterterrorism operations. Finally, despite Cohen’s extended involvement in executing and formulating U.S. Africa policy, the book is not a memoir. In only a handful of instances does Cohen contribute his personal reflections on specific occurrences. Even so, there is enough present to give even the novice to African affairs a glimpse of why and how Africa had a considerable influence on American policy and identity.

In conclusion, what keeps Africa’s populations, voters, entrepreneurs, media, and journalists from arbitrating their countries’ development; holding their leaders accountable to good investment policies that promote universal advancement and increased economic sustainability? Africa has its choice of partners between the European Union, Turkey, Brazil, India, Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Russia, China, the United States, and others, not to mention the recently inaugurated Africa Continental Free Trade Area between African countries. Whatever the U.S. policy toward Africa in the next decades, Africa seeks sincere engagement.

Caleb Slayton is a U.S. Air Force foreign area officer who has lived and worked in east, central, and west Africa for over 12 years. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.

[1] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 2.

[2] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 35.

[3] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 36

[4] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 71

[5] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 96.

[6] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, Chapter 12.

[7] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 225.

[8] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, pp. 97-98.

[9] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 141.

[10] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, p. 40.

[11] Chester Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood (W. W. Norton & Co Inc, 1993), Introduction, Chapter One.

[12] Crocker, High Noon, pp. 48 and 253.

[13] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, Chapter 13.

[14] Cohen, U.S. Policy Toward Africa, Chapters 12 and 14.