Regional Organizations

This post is co-authored by Sungtae "Jacky" Park, research associate for Korea Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Since its establishment in 1967, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has fostered unprecedented levels of regional economic, political, and security cooperation. Yet despite these accomplishments, effective regionalism in Southeast Asia faces constraints. The process of regional integration is limited by the emphasis on economic cooperation rather than on forming effective mechanisms to resolve crisis spots such as the South China Sea. In a new CFR discussion paper, Developing U.S.-ROK-ASEAN Cooperation, Binh Thai Lai, deputy consul-general of Vietnam in Houston, argues that the United States should take advantage of South Korea’s increasing diplomatic and economic capacity and seek to improve the state of U.S.-South Korea-ASEAN relations to promote regional security and stability in Southeast Asia. South Korea stands out as an ideal non-ASEAN Asian power that has the potential to work with both the United States and ASEAN to foster greater regional cooperation in Southeast Asia. Japan, while a major U.S. ally and economy, has geopolitical, historical, and territorial disputes with China and would have difficulty adding to regional cooperation. The author recommends that the three countries should: Enhance discussion on regional security and development issues in bilateral and trilateral mechanisms. The United States, South Korea, and ASEAN countries should host discussions in their respective countries on topics such as responses to nontraditional security issues.   Seek resolutions to security and development issues at regional forums. Forums focused on ASEAN should not shy away from discussing sensitive issues such as the South China Sea.   Promote maritime security cooperation. In addition to calling for enhanced maritime security in general, the United States, South Korea, and ASEAN need to strengthen joint patrol activities, promote cooperation in avoiding clashes, and cooperate in responding to disasters at sea.   Increase contributions to the Lower Mekong Initiative. Based on the existing framework of the initiative, the United States should call for South Korea to contribute more (together with Japan and Australia) to the LMI to address the increasing challenges facing ASEAN countries along the Mekong.   Strengthen infrastructure and information connectivity in Southeast Asia. Providing affordable rural internet connectivity and enhancing land, maritime, and energy infrastructure will strengthen ASEAN connectivity and reduce the disparity in the levels of development among ASEAN countries.   Enhance cultural connectivity. The three parties should organize more cultural activities.   The Asia-Pacific region lacks an effective mechanism to promote international cooperation, particularly in resolving controversial issues. The United States, ASEAN, and South Korea can help to remedy this situation by strengthening their bilateral and trilateral coordination on economic and security policies. The three parties can demonstrate a new model for group collaboration among countries that share common goals despite being at different levels of development. This post is a summary of the discussion paper, Developing U.S.-ROK-ASEAN Cooperation.  

Rachael Sullivan is a Master of Public Administration candidate at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. She is currently a Franklin Williams intern at the Council on Foreign Relations.  On August 8, 2017, Kenyan voters went to the polls to choose between leading presidential contenders, incumbent president Uhuru Kenyatta and National Super Alliance (NASA) flag bearer, Raila Odinga. On August 11, the International Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) declared Uhuru Kenyatta the winner. Odinga’s allegation of election fraud has stoked local fears of a repeat of the ethnically charged political violence that took place in the aftermath of the 2007 Kenyan election.  Since this latest election, police have allegedly killed twenty-four Kenyans. Seventeen of the deaths took place in the capital, Nairobi. Police have used teargas on opposition supporters at demonstrations, prompting human rights groups, including Amnesty International, to urge professionalism and restraint by all security service members. The situation remains volatile amid protests, police violence, and unanswered calls to investigate voting fraud allegations. Continued instability and violence place Kenya’s neighbors and regional partners within the East African Community (EAC) at risk. Kenya is the de-facto leader of the regional economic bloc, which consists of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan.  If current election issues are resolved peacefully, a second-term Kenyatta administration likely means business as usual and a continuation of current Kenyan policies with the EAC region. At present, Kenya’s relations with Tanzania remain strained due to disagreements over recent trade issues. Kenyan Defense Forces will remain in Somalia fighting Al-Shabaab with AMISOM until the job is done. And plans will remain in place for the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR)—a Chinese funded infrastructure project—to connect the region, eventually extending to Uganda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia, placing Kenya at the center of activity. However, many of these policies will become vulnerable if Kenya falls into turmoil. The other EAC countries, especially Uganda and crisis stricken South Sudan, heavily rely on Kenya's Mombasa port for many important material and food imports. Tumult in Kenya could threaten their access, and therefore, economic stability. Foreign companies like IBM and Google, have already established regional offices in Kenya, a regional champion for innovation and digitalization. They will be less likely to pursue increased investment in an insecure region.  Kenyan democracy is seen as a model for the region but faces an important political test as it considers its next steps. While international observers have widely praised the voting process, the problems for Odinga begin with the vote tally. On August 16, Odinga announced his plans to take his allegations of election fraud to the courts. If his supporters choose to settle their grievances in the streets in the face of an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling, Kenyan democracy will suffer. Democracy in the EAC, like much of Africa, faces significant hurdles as political leaders fuel fears, doubt, and mistrust of democratic processes. As neighboring countries already struggle to toe the democratic line, instability after the Kenya elections could encourage a trend of de-democratization in the region. Turbulence in the region could threaten the EAC's vision of economic integration between member states. If Kenya is to serve as a democratic model for its neighbors, it must immediately investigate the opposition’s claims of electoral fraud. As other nations, including the U.S., look to work more closely with Africa, they should continue to monitor and support Kenya during this critical time for the region. 

This afternoon I joined James M. Lindsay, senior vice president, director of studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg chair at the Council on Foreign Relations, to discuss the political and economic crisis unfolding in Venezuela and what we can expect in the coming months. You can watch the Facebook Live video below.    

Vice President Mike Pence, after a brief but relatively successful trip in Asia, rushed back to Washington ahead of schedule this week; the U.S. administration plans to tackle a very important set of domestic priorities including tax reform and keeping the federal government open. Pence reduced his time in Honolulu at the end of his trip. More important, as Reuters notes, portions of his trip in Indonesia and Australia were overshadowed by the increasingly tense environment in Northeast Asia, which now includes the reported chance of another North Korean missile or nuclear test Tuesday. As Reuters reports: While he spoke with business leaders in each country [including Indonesia and Australia], Pence's trip was overshadowed by rising tensions in North Korea, where it is feared another nuclear test could be conducted soon in defiance of United Nations sanctions. Pence did have time in Indonesia to visit a mosque, talk up potential trade ties, and praise the country moderate religious practices and vibrant democracy---although Indonesia’s tolerance and secular democracy may have suffered a blow during the weeks before the Jakarta governor’s election. Pence also did affirm to Australian leaders that the Trump administration will uphold the refugee resettlement deal that the Obama administration drafted with Canberra. Pence also declared that “Australia is and always will be one of America’s closed allies and truest friends,” and during the visit to Asia he announced that the U.S. president would attend the ASEAN leaders’ summit in November in the Philippines, which is an important signal of Washington’s commitment to the region. Still, Pence’s time in Indonesia and Australia was overshadowed by crises in other parts of the region, other parts of the world, and the United States’ own rocky domestic politics---a kind of overshadowing of trips to Southeast Asia that has become the norm in recent years, no matter who is in charge in Washington. Barack Obama’s ASEAN summit in February 2016 was overshadowed by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the immediate political wrangling in Washington during the aftermath of Scalia’s death. Other, previous visits to Southeast Asia and the Pacific by Obama were overshadowed by terrorist attacks in Paris, the fallout from Brexit, and---again---tensions in Northeast Asia. Many of the crises that have attracted attention from U.S. leaders during visits to Southeast Asia or summits with Southeast Asian leaders are outside of the control of U.S. policymakers, although the challenges in U.S. domestic politics certainly are not. But this repeated scenario---visits to the region cut short or dominated by events outside Southeast Asia---reinforce that it remains extremely challenging for any administration to place a more intense focus on ASEAN and/or Australia. This is, after all, a region that is relatively stable, has no nuclear powers, and has, for four decades, been only a modest priority for U.S. policymakers.

The following is a guest post by Kate Almquist Knopf, director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, and Payton Knopf, former coordinator of the UN Panel of Experts on South Sudan. On Tuesday, the UN Security Council will convene to discuss the ongoing civil war in South Sudan. The meeting, chaired by Nikki Haley, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, in her capacity as president of the council in April, comes at an inflection point for the world’s newest nation and for the global institutions, the United Nations (UN) and the African Union (AU) in particular, that are mandated to manage international crises of this magnitude and preserve the state system. Absent a fundamental change in the current humanitarian and security trends in the next eight months, nearly half of South Sudan’s population will have died of starvation or fled the country by the war’s fourth anniversary in December. Such a rapid depopulation of a sovereign state is nearly unprecedented; Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and Rwanda in the throes of genocide are the closest analogues for such a tragic record. Debates aside as to whether a full-scale genocide has yet begun in South Sudan, the level of trauma and psychological distress endured by South Sudanese citizens is on par with these cases. In a study conducted by the South Sudan Law Society using the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, 41 percent of South Sudanese exhibited symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder, rates comparable to those of post–genocide Rwanda and post–genocide Cambodia. That was two years ago. The magnitude of the war’s human cost has since continued to escalate and now dwarfs that of nearly every other global conflict, with the exception of Syria. In just three years, South Sudan has become the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world; the largest refugee crisis in Africa, and the third largest globally, after Afghanistan and Syria; and the largest cross-border exodus in Africa since the Rwandan genocide. Over 1.7 million South Sudanese have fled the country since 2013, and nearly 1.9 million are displaced internally. Of those that remain, at least one hundred thousand people are dying in a man-made famine, and a further one million people are on the precipice. Fortunately, the United Nations and the African Union have the necessary legal authorities to salvage the sovereignty of one their own member states by establishing an international administration, with an executive mandate, in South Sudan to run the country for a finite period of time, as described in a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Council Special Report, Ending South Sudan’s Civil War, published by the Center for Preventive Action. Given the extreme degree of South Sudan’s state failure, such an administration is the only remaining path to protect the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, restore its legitimacy, and empower its citizens. Though seemingly radical, international administrations have been previously employed to guide Cambodia, Kosovo, East Timor, and other countries out of conflict, without a greater financial investment from the United States and others than is currently being spent on the humanitarian operation and UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. Although each of these cases differ from one another and from South Sudan, the challenges to establishing a transitional administration can be managed through a combination of politics and force. Article 4(h) of the AU Consultative Act permits “the right of the Union to intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity,” a clause capturing the AU principle of “non-indifference” arising from the failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide. The AU Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, in fact concluded in 2014 that the killings in Juba in December 2013, which sparked the civil war, and subsequent acts, constituted war crimes and crimes against humanity. Numerous other independent, international investigations have since presented similar findings, most notably the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, which reported in March that “the targeting of civilians on the basis of their ethnic identity is unacceptable and amounts to ethnic cleansing.” Although, as Paul Williams has noted, invocation of Article 4(h) might appear to be a direct challenge to the authority granted to the UN Security Council by the UN Charter, Article 4(h) has never been invoked, and it is likely that the African Union would not proceed with any such intervention without prior (or at least concurrent) authorization by the Security Council. Action by the Security Council and by the African Union to legally mandate the administrative and peacekeeping components of an international transitional administration in South Sudan could, however, be complementary rather than conflicting. The Security Council has long-since determined that the war in South Sudan constitutes a threat to international peace and security and has exercised Chapter VII of the UN Charter on multiple occasions in the last three years to authorize and sustain a sanctions regime as well as a peacekeeping mission. Equally noteworthy is that the application of Article 4(h) in concert with a Security Council resolution would not require anything akin to the NATO operation for Libya authorized in 2011. Instead, the Security Council and the African Union—with leadership from key member states, including the United States—could orchestrate the establishment of a transitional administration through diplomacy, following the request of a configuration of South Sudanese religious, civil society, traditional, and political leaders, who retain more legitimacy across the population than the regime in the capital. The state’s sovereignty need no longer be held hostage—and squandered—by a morally bankrupt elite that continues to commit widespread atrocities against its own people and bears primary responsibility for the humanitarian and security crisis while exercising none of the responsibilities of a sovereign government, including preservation of the country’s territorial integrity. When, as political scientists David Lake and Christopher Fariss have shown, the state exercises only “limited or abused sovereignty,” international trusteeship—used sparingly—can break a vicious circle in which narrow, extractive coalitions and competition for state control have led to a “vortex that pulls states down.” Lake and Fariss also conclude that in these instances, the objective is not capacity-building but limiting violence and shepherding a transition to a new, more legitimate governing order by leveling the playing field among belligerents. The effectiveness of trusteeship is, however, contingent on two factors. First, the trustee must have few, if any, interests beyond stability in the failed state. Second, the interests of the trustee and the average citizen must overlap. It is hard to find a more clear-cut case of a predatory elite abusing a state’s sovereignty than that of South Sudan. However, formal UN trusteeship is neither applicable to UN member states, according to the UN Charter, nor necessary in this case. The Security Council and African Union have the legal authorities to authorize the components of a transitional administration, with an executive mandate, in South Sudan, and the conditions outlined by Lake and Fariss are present for such an administration with such a mandate to succeed. The Security Council meeting on Tuesday presents an opportunity for Haley, who has already stressed the link between human rights abuses and insecurity in the council, to demonstrate U.S. resolve in confronting the crisis in South Sudan. The success of the proposal in the CFR Council Special Report will depend on getting the politics right both at the United Nations and the African Union of course. But both institutions must act quickly to end the war and salvage South Sudan’s sovereignty before there is nothing and no one left in the country to save.

A policy paper by Steven A. Cook and Hussein Ibish exploring relations between Turkey and the Arab Gulf states for the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

This is a guest post by Allen Grane, research associate for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Studies program. This article was originally published on SSA Frontiers.  On May 18, 2000, Congress signed the African Growth and Opportunity Act, commonly known as AGOA, into law. AGOA is a trade program meant to establish stronger commercial ties between the United States and sub-Saharan Africa. The act establishes a preferential trade agreement between the U.S. and selected countries in the sub-Saharan region. Initially approved for fifteen years, AGOA was reauthorized for ten years on June 25, 2015, by the Obama administration. In its current form AGOA will last until September 30, 2025. It is important to emphasize that AGOA is a preferential trade agreement and not a free trade agreement. A free trade agreement is a treaty between two or more countries to establish a free trade area where commerce in goods and services can be conducted across their common borders, without tariffs or hindrances. A preferential trade agreement is a trade pact between countries that reduces tariffs for certain products to the countries who sign the agreement. While the tariffs are not necessarily eliminated, they are lower than countries not party to the agreement. It is a form of economic integration. The U.S. Department of Commerce describes AGOA as the “most liberal access to the U.S. market available to any country or region with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement.” AGOA in part was meant to establish a route for the U.S. to develop free trade agreements with certain African markets; however, this has yet to happen. What is AGOA’s purpose? Within certain sectors, AGOA is often looked at as a form of aid to developing countries. The U.S. government’s website says that it is “helping millions of African families find opportunities to build prosperity.” However, this image of trade as a form of aid is not entirely accurate. When needed, AGOA has provided the U.S. with preferential access to valuable commodities such as oil. AGOA has also served as a bargaining chip for the United States. The trade relationship between the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa has nearly always been skewed one way: the U.S. imports far more than it exports. AGOA didn’t change this. If anything, it increased the scale. U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa peaked in 2014 at $25.49 billion. The numbers for American imports are much higher, they peaked at $86 billion in 2008. (U.S.-Africa trade of products under AGOA reached its pinnacle in 2008 when it hit $66.3 billion.)     Those import numbers directly reflect American commodity needs. At the peak of American imports, between 2007 and 2008, the U.S. imported over one million barrels of oil a day from Nigeria alone. This is in direct contrast to the drastic drop in oil imports by 2015, when there were periods that the U.S. imported no oil from Nigeria. This trend affected other sub-Saharan oil producing countries as well. (The period between 2014-2015 represents the only time that the trade balance between the U.S. and sub-Saharan Africa was nearly even.) AGOA is also a very useful negotiating tool. The U.S. president has the ability to rescind access to AGOA to any country if he were to determine that it is not working toward certain goals. In essence, the U.S. president has the ability to cancel the AGOA relationship with any partner nation if he feels that it doesn’t benefit the United States. Most recently, AGOA was used as a negotiating tool just prior to its reauthorization in 2015. At the time, the South African government refused to let American chicken farmers export chicken products to South Africa. Accused of “dumping” low quality chicken products, the United States had not been allowed to export chicken to South Africa for over fifteen years. The South African argument was that American exports would destroy its local poultry industry by undercutting prices. On the American side, it was argued that this ban was a barrier to U.S. trade and investment. It was also argued that South Africa, with its advanced economy (though stalled), didn’t need a preferential trade deal (this goes back to the development side of AGOA). The renewal of AGOA, and South Africa’s inclusion in the renewed act, became questionable due to this one sticking point. In the end, the South African government conceded and allowed the U.S. to export 65,000 tons of chicken products to South Africa. Trade with the United States was too important for South Africa to risk losing over chickens, especially as the U.S. is South Africa’s largest export market. (South African exports to the U.S. in 2015 were valued at $9.1 billion. They consisted mostly of manufacturing materials, metals, and minerals.) AGOA under the Trump Administration? Based on the Trump administration’s largely anti-trade stance, there has been some worry that AGOA may possibly be on the chopping block. This, however, is highly unlikely. AGOA was passed originally by a Republican congress in 2000, and was just reauthorized in 2015. It still maintains broad support across party lines, and even if targeted by the Trump administration, it is unlikely that Congress would approve its repeal. AGOA is also not likely to be targeted for repeal because it is not a free trade agreement. While certain African goods are given preferential deals that reduce tariffs, sub-Saharan countries do not operate with blanket free trade and zero tariffs. In fact, the deal provides the U.S. with access to African goods and commodities that help drive the U.S. economy. Additionally, it would be foolish of the Trump administration to give up a tool that provides the U.S. with so much negotiating leverage. As evidenced by the South African chicken trading incident, the U.S. government is able to use access to American markets to dictate trade opportunities in Africa. Countries like Kenya have already expressed worries that trade access through AGOA could be restricted. Traditionally, sub-Saharan Africa as a whole has critical problems with intra-state trade that increases dependency on large foreign trade partners. This regional trade gap provides greater leverage for the United States when participating in trade negotiations. While it is doubtful that AGOA will be repealed, I would not be surprised if the new administration were to use the threat of removal from AGOA as a negotiating tool. Presidents have removed nations from the AGOA agreement before. The Trump administration doesn’t mean the end of AGOA, but it may mean that certain trade relationships are reevaluated.  

It is too soon to say what the lasting consequences will be of President Trump’s “travel ban” of the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries and his 120-day suspension of all refugee admissions to the United States. But, it could have serious effects on U.S.-African relations. In 2010 the Pew Research Center found that of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population of 823 million, 234 million were Muslims. The Islamic population is heavily concentrated in West Africa where U.S. strategic and economic interests on the continent are the greatest, especially Nigeria, where at least 50 percent of the country’s population of two-hundred million is Muslim. However, there are Muslim minorities in nearly all African countries. In general, African Muslim opinion about the United States appears to be largely favorable or indifferent. However, in parts of the Sahel, northern Nigeria, and in the Horn of Africa, radical jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and al-Shabaab are anti-American, though attacks on U.S facilities and American citizens have been rarer in West Africa than in East Africa. If African elites perceive President Trump’s immigration and refugee policies as in fact a “Muslim Ban” and part of a larger “war on Islam,” then a general hostility to the United States is likely to grow. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the outgoing chairman of the African Union Commission, is quoted in the media as saying, “We are living in turbulent times. The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries. What do we do about this? Indeed, this is one of the greatest challenges to our unity and solidarity.” Among at least some African intellectuals, President Trump’s ban and suspension is likely to become part of a general narrative of grievance against the west. (Dlamini-Zuma is a UK-trained medical doctor, the ex-wife of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma, ex-minister of health, and ex-foreign minister in successive, post-apartheid South African governments. She has never been particularly friendly toward the United States.) Dlamini-Zuma’s successor as the chair of the Commission of the African Union is Chad’s foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat. He is a Muslim, and a former prime minister of Chad, where roughly 60 percent of the population is Muslim. He has been a leader in the regional fight against Islamist militants in northern Nigeria, Mali, Cameroon, and the Sahel. Were he and others of his ilk to come to see the United States as involved in a “war on Islam,” there would be new, detrimental consequences for U.S. interests.

Adama Barrow was sworn-in January 19 as the president of the Gambia at his country’s embassy in Dakar. He was the victor in the Gambia’s presidential elections on December 11. However, Yahya Jammeh, the loser of the election, who has ruled Gambia since 1994, refuses to step down. The members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with the Senegalese at the lead have sent in military forces. The UN Security Council, which convened today, announced its support of Barrow, but emphasized pursuing a political transition first. Though Senegal has the military lead, Nigeria has been playing its traditional role as the hegemon of West Africa and the mainspring of ECOWAS. On January 18, Nigeria announced that it had sent aircraft and personnel to Senegal to bolster any military effort. Nigeria is also sending a warship off the coast, both as a show of force and also to evacuate Nigerian citizens, if necessary. Meanwhile, there is evacuation of European tourists from beach resorts, especially British and Dutch. The Gambia is Africa’s smallest country. The Jammeh government has been a classic example of poor governance. The modern sector of the economy revolves around European tourism. Its military force is tiny. One estimate is that it is no larger than 2,500. The country would seem to have little economic or political influence on the larger West African region. Yet, the current crisis appears to be roiling West African governments and elite opinion. Much further afield, even Botswana has denounced Jammeh’s refusal to go. Many Africans are looking over their shoulders at the 2010-2011 election crisis in Ivory Coast, when contested election results led to violent conflict and the overthrow of the incumbent president. However, the Gambia is not nearly as important economically or politically as the Ivory Coast, nor are its divisions along ethnic and religious lines so acute. Nevertheless, West Africans are right to be concerned about Jammeh’s flagrant challenge to credible elections and therefore to emerging democracy. In West Africa, led by Nigeria, there is general opposition to military coups or other irregular grasps for power. If Jammeh continues to refuse to go, it is likely that with the support of the UN Security Council, ECOWAS member states will intervene militarily.

This is a guest post by Mohamed Jallow, an Africa watcher, following politics and economic currents across the continent. He works at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The Gambia is in a political crisis. The country’s longtime strongman, President Yahya Jammeh lost his bid for re-election to a fifth term earlier this month. After initially conceding defeat, he is refusing to step down. Citing irregularities on the part of the Electoral Commission, Jammeh has rejected the results, and is calling for fresh elections. Reminiscent of the post-electoral crisis in the Ivory Coast a few years ago, the Gambia is risking a jealously guarded reputation for peace and tranquility in a region fraught with political turmoil. Unless cooler heads prevail, and Jammeh respects the will of the Gambian people, the country is in for a wild ride. The Key Players The Incumbent: President Yahya Jammeh has ruled this small country for twenty-two years. He came to power through a bloodless military coup in 1994, ousting the country’s post-independence president, Sir Dawda Jawara. Styling himself and his group as “soldiers with a difference,” Jammeh quickly returned the country to nominal civilian rule with himself at the helm. Known for the eccentric, President Jammeh claims to have a cure for HIV/AIDS and once vowed to kill homosexuals. To the Gambian population, the stifling of opposition and dissent, arbitrary detentions and disappearances, and the all-around limited space for political activism has driven many people into exile. The Opposition Coalition: The opposition, long in the wilderness due to the harsh tactics of the Jammeh regime finally joined forces under a coalition that gave Jammeh a run for his money. With the core of its leadership jailed after protests earlier in the year, the consensus candidate was Adama Barrow; a little-known businessman that no one had heard of. As it turned out, that was a genius move. He went on to win the elections, though by a slim margin, surprising everyone, including Jammeh himself. The Army: The Gambian Army has so far remained loyal to Yahya Jammeh, and has shown no signs of abandoning him. As the strongest institution in the country, the loyalty of the army has been a key factor in Jammeh’s twenty-two year rule. The way this political crisis ends will determine the future of the Gambian Army, especially its leadership, and it will be a litmus test as to where their loyalties lie—to their country, or to an individual. ECOWAS: When the political crisis started in the Gambia, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) quickly sprang into action to avert an all-out crisis. A delegation headed by its current chair, Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, along with Presidents Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, John Mahatma of Ghana, and Earnest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone flew to the Gambia to encourage Jammeh to accept the results of the elections. Their efforts have so far failed, and ECOWAS is now considering additional steps to force Jammeh out of power. Senegal: Senegal is Gambia’s only neighbor, wielding significant influence on the politics and economy of the country. Jammeh and Senegal have never gotten along, and a number of blockades and boycotts since he came to power have stifled economic activities between the two countries. With Senegal and most of the world now backing the coalition, Jammeh’s options are getting very limited. Whatever decision ECOWAS takes, Senegal is sure to play a significant role. The Key Date January 18, 2017 will be the key date in the Gambia. That is the date Jammeh’s mandate officially ends. The opposition is planning to inaugurate President-elect Adama Barrow as the new president of the Gambia, and West African leaders have vowed to attend his inauguration. Will Jammeh allow Barrow to be sworn in as the new president of the Gambia? Will he allow other West African leaders landing rights to attend Barrow’s inauguration? Will Senegal and West Africa intervene to forcefully remove Jammeh? These are critical questions that will determine the future of the Gambia come January 18, 2017. The Way Forward Since independence in 1965, The Gambia has been a quiet and peaceful oasis in a tumultuous region—a fact that many of the nation’s two million people have guarded jealously. With this political impasse, the country risks sliding into an all-out conflict. The defeated president must hand over power to the elected president as he initially promised to do come inauguration day in January. Anything short of that will be devastating for the Gambia.

When he officially became president three months ago, Michel Temer’s game plan was simple and bold: in the roughly eighteen months before the 2018 presidential campaign ramped up, he would undertake a variety of legislative reforms that would put the government’s accounts back on track, enhance investor confidence, stimulate an economic recovery, and possibly set the stage for a center-right presidential bid (if not by Temer himself, at least by a close ally). Temer’s band of advisors—Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) stalwarts and long-time Brasília hands Romero Jucá, Geddel Vieira Lima, Eliseu Padilha, and Moreira Franco—would ensure that he had the backing of Congress to push through reforms that might not bring immediate returns, but nonetheless might improve investor confidence, prompting new investments in the short term. Sotto voce, many politicians also assumed that the PMDB—which has been an integral player in every government since the return to democracy in 1985—would be well placed to slow the pace of the bloodletting occasioned by the massive Lava Jato investigation and stabilize the political system. This game plan appears to be running into a variety of self-inflicted troubles that will force the famously elastic Temer into difficult choices between his party and an angry public. Last week, the public’s worst suspicions of the PMDB-led government were confirmed in a two-bit scandal that claimed government secretary Geddel Vieira Lima. Vieira Lima fell on November 25 because of a petty effort to bring political pressure to bear on a historical registry office that had been holding up construction of a Salvador building in which he had purchased an apartment. More shocking, perhaps, was that the preternaturally cautious Temer helped Vieira Lima to exert pressure on the minister of culture whose office oversees the registry. The minister resigned, Vieira Lima fell, and Temer was left looking smaller than ever—a dangerous spot for a president whose legitimacy is already suspect. Temer sought to repair the damage by holding an unusual press conference Sunday in which he promised to veto a proposed congressional amnesty of illegal campaign contributions. But Temer now faces another important ethical fork in the road: how to respond to the remarkable chutzpah of the Chamber of Deputies, which moved in the early morning hours of November 30 to neuter anticorruption reforms and prevent judicial “abuses,” a move widely seen as an effort to intimidate judges and prosecutors. The severely mangled anticorruption reform, bearing little semblance to the original draft, now heads to the Senate, which seems unlikely to repair the damage, and indeed, may further distort the bill in an effort to undermine Temer’s ability to resurrect the reforms through selective vetoes. The reform package had been a poster child for the prosecutors that are spearheading the Lava Jato investigation, and it was pushed onto the legislative agenda in a petition drive that gathered more than two million signatures. Widespread grief over the Chapocoense tragedy may temporarily blunt public reaction to this bold late night maneuver, which was only possible because it had support from across the political spectrum, including the Workers’ Party (PT) of impeached president Dilma Rousseff, the clientelist Progressive Party (PP), and of course, members of the governing PMDB. But the public is fed up with politics as usual, and it does not take a leap of imagination to imagine that sporadically brewing public demonstrations might easily tip into a broad groundswell against the self-serving political class. Meanwhile, Lava Jato continues to cast a long shadow, and the possibility that a deal may soon be signed between the Odebrecht construction firm and Brazilian, Swiss, and U.S. authorities has caused many a sleepless night in Congress. Press reports suggest that this may be the largest deal ever announced, surpassing even the US$1.6 billion in penalties that Siemens paid to U.S. and European authorities for worldwide corruption in 2008. The possibility that nearly eighty Odebrecht executives might sign individual plea bargains, and reports that as many as two hundred federal politicians may be implicated, suggests that the Congress could soon be paralyzed. Meanwhile, the PMDB’s motley crew has been decimated, undermining Temer’s ability to coordinate with Congress: Geddel Vieira Lima has resigned; Romero Jucá was driven out of the Planning Ministry soon after he was appointed in May (when wiretaps caught him discussing efforts to slow down Lava Jato); the high court this week is expected to take up a criminal case against Senate President Renan Calheiros (for allowing a construction firm to pay childcare to a mistress); impeachment impresario Eduardo Cunha is in jail; and Eliseu Padilha and Moreira Franco are frequently rumored to be next in the Lava Jato crosshairs. Despite some initial success on fiscal reform, the appointment of solid and credible managers to key positions in state companies and ministries, and important regulatory changes intended to attract new investment, the outlook for the remainder of the Temer term remains grim. Economic forecasts now show economic growth of less than 1 percent in 2017. The budget situation of the twenty-six state governments is critical, and politically influential governors are begging for federal help. A much-needed pension reform promised by Temer has not yet been made public, much less begun the tortuous amendment process in Congress. Temer increasingly is being forced into a choice between helping his legislative allies and achieving economic reform, or satisfying a public that is baying for accountability and a political cleanup. It will take all of Temer’s considerable political skills and knowledge of backroom Brasília to revise his game plan for these challenging times.

Media indicates that sub-Saharan African opinion is as astonished as everybody else at Donald Trump’s presidential victory. As appears to be true in much of the rest of the world, African opinion makers do not welcome it. The New York Times cites a Nigerian political science professor as saying that most Nigerians believe that a Trump administration will focus little on international issues. It also quotes Kenyan columnist Mafdharia Gaitho as saying, “If Trump wins, God forbid, then we will have to reassess our relations with the United States.” These views accord with what I am hearing. Africa featured not at all in the presidential campaign except with slight reference to jihadi radicalism—and even that was centered on Libya, not part of sub-Saharan Africa. U.S. trade ties mostly involve importing African primary products, especially petroleum and minerals, and limited investment in “frontier” markets. There is a concessionary trade agreement between the United States and Africa, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), but it was recently renewed and has little consequence for the U.S. economy. The U.S. does have assistance programs in Africa, notably in health and girl-child education. And the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is an important legacy of the previous Republican president, George W. Bush. There is also a security relationship with a few African countries, notably Kenya and Djibouti, but they are small. Over the long term, Africa is of immense importance to U.S. interests with respect to climate change, disease, and a host of potential security issues. Africa is prominent in international organizations such as the UN General Assembly or the World Trade Organization where each country has one vote. And, of course, Africa is central to the broad U.S. agenda of promoting democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. But, these are long term, not short term issues, and candidate Trump has shown little interest in them. Hence, Africa is unlikely to be near the top of the Trump administration’s policy agenda. International relations are shaped by people as well as policies. Under President Obama, about 70 percent of ambassadors were career diplomats, and in Africa all were, with two exceptions: South Africa and Tanzania. Similarly, the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa is a career foreign service officer. All ambassadors submit a letter of resignation on inauguration day; past practice is that those from career officers are not accepted. Some from “political appointees” may be, and most are when there is a change in party. A president can appoint anyone he likes as an ambassador, so long as the proposed appointee is an American citizen, can survive the security clearance process, and wins Senate confirmation. So, should he choose to do so, President Trump could change wholesale the personnel that shape and conduct U.S. policy toward Africa. This, however, is unlikely, given that a new administration will have a very full plate. At least for a year or two, the Africa policy of the new administration is likely to be characterized by continuity. But, then the election results along with Brexit show the limitations of prediction. It also remains to be seen how Africa’s leadership will respond to a Trump administration.