I agree with the main thrust of this piece: the US overreliance on France for power projection and policy direction in West Africa has clearly had drawbacks, and may now be reaching the limit of its utility for them. They would probably be wise to at least appear to distance themselves from French policy for now. I’m just not convinced that even if they did put some daylight between themselves and Paris they won’t end up replicating France’s dysfunctional relationships with the region.
You concluded that “great powers that engage in cynical power politics and the cultivation of weak client states that only exist to facilitate the wanton pillaging of natural resources will most certainly lose out.” It would indeed be a happy coincidence if expediency and morality in foreign policy were aligned so neatly this time, but I’m not sure they are. Take the DRC for example: is it really in anyone’s interest outside that country that they develop a strong, stable, internally accountable state machinery? The US has recently been signaling its concern about China’s footprint in their mining sector, but would they really prefer a government in Kinshasa that was capable of wielding its leverage on critical minerals effectively? Isn’t it better, from a purely realpolitik standpoint, to maintain a state so weak it can’t even track, let alone control, who mines in its territories? Then set up a couple of charities and NGOs, give a few handouts, commission the occasional UN report if they feel so moved?
It’s certainly true that the cost of maintaining weak clients in Africa is currently too high. But the solution from the ‘great powers’ won’t be serious attempts to expand their capacity. That’s difficult, expensive, fraught with risk, hard to sell domestically, and will take time to produce results. If it fails there will be condemnation both at home and abroad, and even if it works the resulting allies will be unpredictable and more difficult to control. Your fate is now tied to parties whose motives are not your own, and whose competence and internal sociopolitical dynamics now impact and implicate you directly. Isn't it much safer to try to mitigate one’s risks: focus on ensuring that the continent’s problems remain confined to it, win over those you can with whatever carrots and sticks you have at hand, and make sure the rest aren’t worth losing any sleep over?
A poor, chaotic, subjugated Africa is, if nothing else, a familiar sight.
I guess the idea here is that in the current global environment, it’s hard to keep the DRC’s of this world bottled up in their misery. When their economies fail, economic migrants become a global “problem.” When they can’t maintain security, they become havens of global security threats and hubs of other illicit activity.
Finally, and in my view most importantly, domestic structural conditions are such that such countries will from now on struggle to be stable enough to be pillaged by cynical major powers.
Thanks for responding. My response would be that it perhaps isn't as hard to "keep the DRC’s of this world bottled up in their misery" as you suggest. Is it really easier to attempt to keep DRC's economy and government afloat indefinitely in the hope that dissuades emigration than to pay off a Tunisian autocrat and some irregular militias in Libya to try and stop people from crossing the Med? Add a couple of UK-Rwanda style migrant processing deals and there's immigration policy sorted. Most African emigrants move to other African countries, not 'global powers', in any case. There's been a complacent sense in many Global South countries, not just in Africa, that they are 'too big to fail' and the consequences of their collapse would be so painful for the rest of the world that it won't be allowed to happen. I fear they will soon be disabused of this idea.
Similarly, it remains true that extremist and insurgent movements in Africa pose minimal risk to Western interests, and essentially zero threat to Russian, Chinese or Indian interests. Today's jihadists have much more local ambitions, and have accordingly been left to their own devices as focus shifts towards 'great power competition'. The drawdown in the Middle East is instructive: the Taliban is back in power and no-one's too concerned what Assad gets up to nowadays.
As for your point on domestic structural conditions raising the costs of clientelism, I'd say the likely result is a greater unwillingness to be roped into state-building projects. Africa's tiny share of global trade and growth will mean that anyone that isn't 'stable enough to be pillaged' can simply be ignored. France will probably be fine even if it completely loses influence in Niger, for example.
But I’d like to push you a little on the domestic structural conditions point. As I argue in the Three Billion Africans piece, I think there’s good reason to believe that the net effect of these structural pressures will be better governance.
I'm in agreement that the coming years will force many African governments to be more effective and responsive to their publics. It's just that, with characteristically unfortunate timing, this sudden sensitivity to domestic opinion often comes precisely when it could hinder a long-term strategic opportunity and not a moment sooner.
As an example, unlike previous interventions, operations Serval and Barkhane weren't primarily attempts at removing a French adversary or installing a friend or preserving some strategic interest. Despite their many flaws, they were instead a result of France's new priority: European integration. Contrary to previous cases, this time the EU genuinely needed stronger Sahelian states and militaries to counter Salafist extremism. Yet the one time in the last sixty years that a French intervention was actually in West Africa's larger interests, the public, which had resigned itself to every previous self-serving imposition from Paris, rises in defiance.
What conclusions will domestic populists and foreign policymakers draw from this experience? Will US and EU diplomats, for instance, rush to become the new scapegoats for the situation in West Africa? Or will they pull up the drawbridge, narrowly circumscribe their interests and limit their exposure to the Sahel's instability. Conversely, will enterprising politicians in the region sign onto similar defense arrangements with external partners and be labeled imperialist stooges? Or will they stir up nationalism and avoid tackling their insecurity issues head-on?
Good post but why do you write as if you were US gvt official looking to advance USA's diplomatic/popular standing and/or the economic opportunities ? I would like to see after the conclusion, how rich western countries could help African state become strong enough to stand on their own without falling prey to constant coups ?
I recall that France supported the independence of Biafra from Nigeria, but now it seems that France wants Nigeria to stop Niger's independence from France? Are coups ok in Nigeria but not ok in Niger?
It is true that France worked hard over the last six decades to prevent West African unity as such an eventuality would undermine its influence in the region. Part of the support for Biafra was a play to weaken Nigeria, its obvious hegemonic competitor in the region at the time.
Why should the US decouple from France in praxiology if it remains on the same page with France in ideology? Should we not be happy to see them clearly associated with those we know practice an ideology of white supremacy?
"Decades of colonial and neocolonial exploitation and humiliation (in collusion with venal African ruling elites)." There should be a stylistic rule to edit out this expression in writing about Africa (or developing nations in general).
The primary actors are always local; there is little outside parties can do the resolve problems - the actions of France, the US, China etc are really second or third order factors in the governance and performance of these nations.
It is highly unlikely that a region that has become (in parts) hostile to France whom it blames for its own failures, will achieve a different outcome with the US. The failures will continue and the blame will shift (there is already a lot of anti-US feeling in Africa).
The nations that succeed will be those that have good relations with both France and the US, and that will spring from self-confidence and success.
As an aside, any American who learns French is going to end up Francophile. There is a lot to admire about the country.
I agree with the main thrust of this piece: the US overreliance on France for power projection and policy direction in West Africa has clearly had drawbacks, and may now be reaching the limit of its utility for them. They would probably be wise to at least appear to distance themselves from French policy for now. I’m just not convinced that even if they did put some daylight between themselves and Paris they won’t end up replicating France’s dysfunctional relationships with the region.
You concluded that “great powers that engage in cynical power politics and the cultivation of weak client states that only exist to facilitate the wanton pillaging of natural resources will most certainly lose out.” It would indeed be a happy coincidence if expediency and morality in foreign policy were aligned so neatly this time, but I’m not sure they are. Take the DRC for example: is it really in anyone’s interest outside that country that they develop a strong, stable, internally accountable state machinery? The US has recently been signaling its concern about China’s footprint in their mining sector, but would they really prefer a government in Kinshasa that was capable of wielding its leverage on critical minerals effectively? Isn’t it better, from a purely realpolitik standpoint, to maintain a state so weak it can’t even track, let alone control, who mines in its territories? Then set up a couple of charities and NGOs, give a few handouts, commission the occasional UN report if they feel so moved?
It’s certainly true that the cost of maintaining weak clients in Africa is currently too high. But the solution from the ‘great powers’ won’t be serious attempts to expand their capacity. That’s difficult, expensive, fraught with risk, hard to sell domestically, and will take time to produce results. If it fails there will be condemnation both at home and abroad, and even if it works the resulting allies will be unpredictable and more difficult to control. Your fate is now tied to parties whose motives are not your own, and whose competence and internal sociopolitical dynamics now impact and implicate you directly. Isn't it much safer to try to mitigate one’s risks: focus on ensuring that the continent’s problems remain confined to it, win over those you can with whatever carrots and sticks you have at hand, and make sure the rest aren’t worth losing any sleep over?
A poor, chaotic, subjugated Africa is, if nothing else, a familiar sight.
I guess the idea here is that in the current global environment, it’s hard to keep the DRC’s of this world bottled up in their misery. When their economies fail, economic migrants become a global “problem.” When they can’t maintain security, they become havens of global security threats and hubs of other illicit activity.
Finally, and in my view most importantly, domestic structural conditions are such that such countries will from now on struggle to be stable enough to be pillaged by cynical major powers.
Thanks for responding. My response would be that it perhaps isn't as hard to "keep the DRC’s of this world bottled up in their misery" as you suggest. Is it really easier to attempt to keep DRC's economy and government afloat indefinitely in the hope that dissuades emigration than to pay off a Tunisian autocrat and some irregular militias in Libya to try and stop people from crossing the Med? Add a couple of UK-Rwanda style migrant processing deals and there's immigration policy sorted. Most African emigrants move to other African countries, not 'global powers', in any case. There's been a complacent sense in many Global South countries, not just in Africa, that they are 'too big to fail' and the consequences of their collapse would be so painful for the rest of the world that it won't be allowed to happen. I fear they will soon be disabused of this idea.
Similarly, it remains true that extremist and insurgent movements in Africa pose minimal risk to Western interests, and essentially zero threat to Russian, Chinese or Indian interests. Today's jihadists have much more local ambitions, and have accordingly been left to their own devices as focus shifts towards 'great power competition'. The drawdown in the Middle East is instructive: the Taliban is back in power and no-one's too concerned what Assad gets up to nowadays.
As for your point on domestic structural conditions raising the costs of clientelism, I'd say the likely result is a greater unwillingness to be roped into state-building projects. Africa's tiny share of global trade and growth will mean that anyone that isn't 'stable enough to be pillaged' can simply be ignored. France will probably be fine even if it completely loses influence in Niger, for example.
You make some good points.
But I’d like to push you a little on the domestic structural conditions point. As I argue in the Three Billion Africans piece, I think there’s good reason to believe that the net effect of these structural pressures will be better governance.
I'm in agreement that the coming years will force many African governments to be more effective and responsive to their publics. It's just that, with characteristically unfortunate timing, this sudden sensitivity to domestic opinion often comes precisely when it could hinder a long-term strategic opportunity and not a moment sooner.
As an example, unlike previous interventions, operations Serval and Barkhane weren't primarily attempts at removing a French adversary or installing a friend or preserving some strategic interest. Despite their many flaws, they were instead a result of France's new priority: European integration. Contrary to previous cases, this time the EU genuinely needed stronger Sahelian states and militaries to counter Salafist extremism. Yet the one time in the last sixty years that a French intervention was actually in West Africa's larger interests, the public, which had resigned itself to every previous self-serving imposition from Paris, rises in defiance.
What conclusions will domestic populists and foreign policymakers draw from this experience? Will US and EU diplomats, for instance, rush to become the new scapegoats for the situation in West Africa? Or will they pull up the drawbridge, narrowly circumscribe their interests and limit their exposure to the Sahel's instability. Conversely, will enterprising politicians in the region sign onto similar defense arrangements with external partners and be labeled imperialist stooges? Or will they stir up nationalism and avoid tackling their insecurity issues head-on?
Good post but why do you write as if you were US gvt official looking to advance USA's diplomatic/popular standing and/or the economic opportunities ? I would like to see after the conclusion, how rich western countries could help African state become strong enough to stand on their own without falling prey to constant coups ?
Fair. I do think that the US is a potential useful ally to African states for the reasons I outline in the piece.
More on my thoughts on US policy failures here: https://kenopalo.substack.com/p/overcoming-the-underwhelming-history
I recall that France supported the independence of Biafra from Nigeria, but now it seems that France wants Nigeria to stop Niger's independence from France? Are coups ok in Nigeria but not ok in Niger?
It is true that France worked hard over the last six decades to prevent West African unity as such an eventuality would undermine its influence in the region. Part of the support for Biafra was a play to weaken Nigeria, its obvious hegemonic competitor in the region at the time.
Why should the US decouple from France in praxiology if it remains on the same page with France in ideology? Should we not be happy to see them clearly associated with those we know practice an ideology of white supremacy?
You raise a good point.
And I have argued that the US should rethink its Africa policy or lose out here: https://kenopalo.substack.com/p/overcoming-the-underwhelming-history
and here: https://kenopalo.substack.com/p/on-americas-structural-inability
"Decades of colonial and neocolonial exploitation and humiliation (in collusion with venal African ruling elites)." There should be a stylistic rule to edit out this expression in writing about Africa (or developing nations in general).
The primary actors are always local; there is little outside parties can do the resolve problems - the actions of France, the US, China etc are really second or third order factors in the governance and performance of these nations.
It is highly unlikely that a region that has become (in parts) hostile to France whom it blames for its own failures, will achieve a different outcome with the US. The failures will continue and the blame will shift (there is already a lot of anti-US feeling in Africa).
The nations that succeed will be those that have good relations with both France and the US, and that will spring from self-confidence and success.
As an aside, any American who learns French is going to end up Francophile. There is a lot to admire about the country.