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Africa Policy E-Journalgiven the difficulty in maintaining up-to-date links in old files. However, we hope they may still provide leads for your research. Africa: Thinking Regionally, 2 Date Distributed (ymd): 960422 APIC Background Paper 005 (March 1996) Thinking Regionally: Priorities for U.S. Policy Toward Africa by Salih Booker (continued from part 1) Historical Obligations (cont.) One reason is that justice in international relations is important in its own right. Unaddressed injustices are likely to fester and weaken any new international order based on rules and ideals. There is also considerable domestic support for the idea that the U.S. should be morally and fiscally responsible for its international behavior. But there is little public recognition of the negative role the U.S. played in some of these cases. Acknowledgement of past mistakes can be useful in sending signals to dictators, demagogues and other human rights abusers that the U.S. is really committed to a new post-Cold War vision. It can also raise visibility of these issues for a public generally unaware of the past. Current involvement in such issues is warranted as well because America needs to demonstrate the durability of its commitments, and the coherence and predictability of its international behavior. Because our actions abroad frequently have a major impact on entirely different regions (e.g. U.S. intervention in Somalia is still a major influence on U.S. policies toward Haiti and Bosnia), we must be careful to avoid ad-hoc short-term responses to problems for which we share longer-term responsibilities. If the U.S. abandons the people of those countries in Africa where it was most heavily involved during the Cold War, it would demonstrate that the U.S., only concerned with short-term American geostrategic interests, is not a reliable partner. Finally, the U.S. continues to have significant 'practical' interests in many of these same countries (e.g. strategic minerals, oil, and access to ports and bases). Taken together, these elements provide ample justification for re-engaging in our "lost legacies" in Africa. Regional Perspectives The five focus countries and six "historical responsibility" countries add up to nine, with Zaire and Kenya in both categories. This list is not the same, nor should it necessarily be the same, as those countries currently highest on the agenda for aid programs, for commercial missions, or for crisis response. Those priorities may change more quickly, and should be regularly evaluated on more particularized criteria: the quality of aid programs, the governance capacity of a particular host country, prospects for exports or investments, or the need for response to immediate crises, such as those in Rwanda and Burundi. But such programs should be shaped in the context of a longer-term regionally informed policy framework. Thus it is essential to take stock of existing U.S. interests throughout each region and understand how they are inter-related. For example, peace and security in Angola and Mozambique, and economic policy reforms in Zimbabwe and Zambia, are all critical for the development of a Southern African economic community. Already in 1994, U.S. trade with the 11 countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) totaled over $7 billion, about the same level as with all of the former Soviet Union. Future political and economic progress in this region--including the capacity to attract foreign investment--will depend not only on domestic developments in South Africa, but on the success of regional institutions in dealing with complex and potentially divisive cross-border issues. In West Africa, although U.S. interests in Nigeria are clearly preminent, a resolution of the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone will have a direct bearing on the prospects for prosperity or suffering throughout the region. Any policy toward Nigeria focussed on internal reforms must also consider Nigeria's role in the region. In turn, the course of Nigeria's internal struggle for democracy has enormous implications for the legitimacy of its actions in the region. And the results of Ghana's continuing commitment to western economic policy prescriptions are likely to influence the choice of economic policies pursued by its neighbors. In Central and East Africa, the enormous number of refugees and the continuing conflicts in Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan are straining intra-African relations, and draining local and international resources. Other countries in the region cannot possibly isolate themselves from their effects. In North Africa, the US approach to the confrontation in Algeria must be shaped with an awareness of the parallel but distinct issues of governance in other North African states. By considering South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria and Kenya within their regional contexts rather than simply in bilateral terms, one can better promote stronger regional economies that will begin to benefit the poorest among them as well as their larger partners. The same pertains to Central Africa, though the prospects for an emerging regional market there depends disproportionately upon a new start in Zaire. Despite the unevenness of efforts and the mixed results to date, African states have consistently endorsed the goals of regional development and economic integration as crucial to their overall development efforts. Implementing such programs in practice requires confronting many complex negotiations and potential conflicts of national, bureaucratic or commercial interests. But supporting regional economic integration, as is coming to be widely recognized, is in the U.S. interest, since it should help develop larger markets that can better attract U.S. direct investments and exports. The U.S. should develop strategies to promote such integration, while remaining sensitive to the dangers of unsustainable imbalances among countries within a region. The interplay between bilateral relations with focus countries and wider regional concerns will be different, depending on the region and on the issues at stake. But the framework outlined here gives the option of sharpening the focus without writing off non-focus countries. A regional approach would permit the U.S. to remain engaged with the whole of the African continent, while increasing its capacity to promote the objectives it shares with most of its African partners. The alternative of 'selective engagement' only with 'pivotal states' or 'success stories,' in contrast, would tend to ignore the deeper interdependence which exists across the continent. Priority Issues: Security, Democracy and Development The criteria above serve to set priorities for where in Africa the U.S. should be most involved. Determining which substantive goals should constitute priorities for U.S. policy attention is in many ways easier, despite the complexity of determining how best to achieve those goals. The post-Cold War period has, thus far, been marked by a striking unanimity between African states and the U.S. on priority objectives and even on many of the methods to pursue such objectives. For more than six years now, the African priorities of security, democratization and economic development have been embraced by American policymakers. Indeed, the Administration's vision for U.S. foreign policy, focused on the expansion of democracy and the growth of market economies, could have been inspired by the changes taking place in Africa. Given this vision, it's surprising that there isn't more focus on Africa, the region of the world with the most emerging democracies and the greatest number of countries undertaking economic reforms. This discrepancy is very telling about American indifference to Africa. It suggests that there is a problem in the political culture of this country which allows policymakers to calculate U.S. interests elsewhere in the world using one set of criteria, while neglecting interests in Africa that meet the same criteria. Africans are pursuing strategies to establish institutions and processes through which they can collectively promote conflict resolution and prevention, and generally promote stability. In most countries, some form of democratization is underway, albeit haltingly in some cases. The recent disappointing lull in the pace of democratization only underscores the need for more timely and significant support. Democratization offers the only hope of creating and sustaining internal and then regional security and stability, and of legitimizing the process of economic reform which is critical to these countries' long-term development. Despite an adverse global environment, African countries are continuing to pursue major restructuring of their economies. But they are also recognizing the need to increase investments in human resource development, and for greater public participation in development efforts as well as development policy deliberations. While the U.S. cannot and should not be involved to the same extent everywhere, it must be concerned with the overall progress of all three goals throughout the African continent and take timely action to encourage the most promising African initiatives. Advance towards one goal does not automatically result in progress on the others. In general, however, they are mutually reinforcing, and successes on one front help to improve the chances for advancing on the others. There is also a need, however, to set priorities among the three broad goals of security, democracy and development. Without security neither of the other two policy priorities can be realized. Security, especially the end to current armed conflicts, must therefore be the first preoccupation of U.S. policy toward each of the five regions. To prevent a return to war where agreements have been reached and to prevent religious, ethnic, or political intolerance from leading to war, democratic institutions will need continuing support in democratizing states. The details of policy on each of these issues are beyond the scope of this paper. But, for each one, a regional perspective is indispensable to making choices that can have the most effect not only in one country but on advancing these goals for the continent as a whole. Security The regional dimension of security issues is vividly demonstrated in human terms by the flow of refugees across borders, so that the destructive effects of an internal conflict almost always extend far beyond the borders of one country. In the most dramatic case, even without the humanitarian demand for international involvement in the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, and the threat of new escalation of violence in Burundi and Rwanda, it should be impossible to ignore the impact of these crises on neighboring countries in both Central and East Africa, including the two focus countries of Zaire and Kenya. Renewal of violence in Angola would threaten stability and the prospects for economic advance in both Southern and Central Africa. The precarious peace settlement in Liberia is of wider concern not only because of US historical responsibilities there, but because of the destabilizing effect of refugees on other West African states, the expansion of illegal arms trading, and the example of continued reliance on violence unchecked by civilian control. Increasingly, political and economic refugees are finding their way to South Africa, not only from its immediate neighbors but from other regions of Africa. The issue of illegal immigration is becoming the subject of heated debate within South Africa. South Africa's own chances of success as a new democracy and a new emerging market cannot be separated from the prospects of other African countries. The U.S. cannot avoid responsibility for involvement in conflict resolution efforts where the U.S. has a regional concentration of interests and where the focus country in the region is affected or directly involved in the conflict. The precise mix of bilateral and multilateral engagement that involvement should take is debatable. But it is shortsighted to opt out of sustained efforts, while waiting for disaster to become so overwhelming that costly emergency relief is the only option. There can be no guarantee of success in resolving intractable conflicts. As it deals with current crises, the U.S. should be concerned first of all with building stronger African multilateral institutions to assist in the future. It must also maintain support for UN peacekeeping efforts, striving to improve their effectiveness. Finally, the U.S. should promote reductions in the arms trade that helps to devastate Africa and rethink our own security assistance programs in Africa, no matter how small. Democracy In many cases the threats to regional security and stability come in the form of repressive regimes which refuse to accept greater democracy within their political systems. The struggle for democracy and human rights in the focus countries is of particularly critical importance for other countries, both by the demonstration effect and, at times, by direct positive or negative involvement. That is one reason why, as is generally recognized, the success of democratization in South Africa should be a fundamental ongoing goal of US foreign policy. But the state of democracy and human rights in the other four focus countries should also be high on the agenda. Among the four, Algeria, Zaire, and Nigeria are currently in the throes of enormous internal political struggles, all involving significant human rights abuses. In each case, the attainment of a democratic system of governance would positively influence the other countries of the region and help lay the groundwork for accelerated regional economic integration. In Kenya, the democracy movement has suffered severe setbacks owing both to its own disunity and the government's continuing political repression. Nevertheless, democratization is crucial to Kenya's future and the future of the East Africa region. In each region, it will be necessary also to identify where the U.S. can best make a critical contribution to helping the smaller countries consolidate the democratic changes most of them have embarked upon. The variations of what would be appropriate in the many different cases are too numerous to detail here. Suffice it to say that with limited resources we will need to be creative, and better at coordinating with other donors, host governments and non-governmental organizations. Development There are many substantive issues concerning U.S. development policy, involving the size and the focus of the development assistance budget, the impact of policies on trade and debt, and the substance of the macroeconomic advice offered to African countries by the U.S. and multilateral agencies in which the U.S. has a prominent voice. Shrinking resources clearly imply a need to focus. But the concerns should go beyond choosing which country programs should be maintained and which shut down. A regional perspective, including the five focus countries, should also highlight investment in programs that develop the African human resources needed to solve Africa's own problems, and that help create larger regional markets better able to sustain economic growth and attract U.S. investment and trade. Promoting human resource development through greater investments in health and education, as well as increasing support for participatory development programs at the community level, should be priorities within each country program. A strategic approach to African development, however, requires explicit discussion of the combined impact not only of aid but also of trade, debt and different variants of structural adjustment policies. And it requires consideration of the regional impact of developments within any one country. The U.S. can most usefully shape its own policies on these complex topics only if it is willing to engage actively in dialogue on these issues within African and multilateral contexts, including but not limited to the clubs of Western donors that coordinate policy towards particular African countries. Once a clearer understanding is gained of how best to promote regional economic development and infrastructure, the U.S. must also be prepared to increase its level of assistance. Conclusion With the decline of the strategic significance of Africa in Cold War terms, and the relatively small U.S. economic ties with Africa, too many observers are prepared to state--quite emphatically--that the U.S. has no significant interests in Africa, and that this is unlikely to change in the near future. Such thinking disregards moral imperatives for involvement in Africa that are often just as compelling as economic or national security arguments. In doing so, it ignores the ancestral ties of some 25 million African Americans who have significant and growing investments-- political, social, cultural, emotional, psychological and economic--in Africa's future. It also reflects the absence of a strategic vision to replace the Cold War scenario. There is a failure to see Africa as a whole, a continent with existing economic ties to the U.S. already greater than those with the former Soviet Union. It is true that much of Africa is now handicapped by conflict, poverty or repressive governments. Each of Africa's major regions, however, with populations ranging from 80 million to almost 200 million (see chart), has the potential for significantly increasing mutually profitable ties with the United States, in the economic arena as well as in cultural and political ties. A new policy perspective must build a new vision for involvement. There are multiple constituencies for Africa in the U.S., concerned about a variety of countries and issues, that together can offer significant support for U.S. engagement in Africa. This regional framework is offered as one component of such a vision, which can hopefully enhance our collective effectiveness in promoting positive change in Africa and U.S.-African relations. -- Salih Booker Salih Booker is the Fellow for Africa at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Senior Advisor to the Vice President for Diversity in International Affairs Programs. An earlier version of this paper was presented to a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations held in Washington, D.C. (June 16, 1995) to discuss criteria for setting priorities in U.S. policy toward Africa. ----------------- (5)Source: US Department of Commerce, 1994. (6)Source: UNDP, Human Development Report 1994. ----------------- ************************************************************ Copies of the typeset version of this background paper, which also includes a map and charts of regions and focus countries, are available at $2 each, $1.60 each for 20 or more. Add 15% for postage and handling. 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