Yet More On Bush in Africa
Not everyone shares the general belief that president Bush deserves some credit for his Africa policies. Josh Kurlantznick is decidedly unimpressed with the President’s approach toward Africa, as he shows in this piece at The New Republic. Here is a sample:
Rather than supporting democratic institutions and criticizing a new generation of African authoritarians, the Bush administration has backed whatever African leader claims to be battling militant Islam. For example, the White House has developed a close relationship with Ethiopia’s thuggish leader Meles Zenawi, supposedly an ally in the war on terror and a partner in battling militancy in neighboring Somalia. The administration has provided military aid to Ethiopia with virtually no conditions on the assistance. It has also offered advisers to support Ethiopia’s invasion of neighboring Somalia, an invasion which only led to more chaos in that benighted nation. Meanwhile, in recent years Zenawi’s government has overseen a massive crackdown on opposition activists and a brutal offensive in the country’s Ogaden region; in 2005, after disputed elections, the Ethiopian government arrested over 30,000 of its own people.
As in Ethiopia, so too across the continent. In building a string of counterterrorism allies, the White House has strengthened its links with some of Africa’s most brutal regimes, from Algeria to Chad.
For me, again, the case for Bush’s Africa policy is a relative one. From an absolute standpoint, this administration’s policies toward Africa have been fairly marginal. But from a historical perspective, Bush’s engagement still warrants some praise. I would like to see a foreign policy toward Africa that takes into consideration African needs and interests and in which Africans are partners, in the truest sense of the term, rather than appendages. But relative both to other administrations and to president Bush’s policies elsewhere, his approach to Africa warrants, if not praise, at least some recognition.