Heads of State and Government

Ten people who passed away this year who shaped world affairs for better or worse.

PDF Version. A review of Michael Beschloss, “Presidents of War” (Crown Books, 2018).  *** The U.S. Constitution vests the president with “executive power” and provides that “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy,” while it endows Congress with the power “To declare War.” These provisions have given rise to two major questions about presidential war powers: first, what should be the president’s role in taking the country to war, and, second, what are the president’s powers to direct its conduct. Historian Michael Beschloss’s new book, “Presidents of War,” examines how presidents have responded to each of these questions across two hundred years of U.S. history. His account opens dramatically, with President James Madison (something of a tragic figure in the book’s telling) fleeing as a fugitive while British forces proceed to torch the White House in 1814. Beschloss goes on to tell the stories of the seven individuals who have presided over America’s largest wars: James Madison and the War of 1812, James Polk and the Mexican-American War, William McKinley and the Spanish-American War, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, Franklin Roosevelt and World War II, Harry Truman and the Korean War and Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. The book concludes with a brief epilogue relating those stories to recent and ongoing conflicts, including the war against al-Qaeda and its offshoots which is, after seventeen years of conflict, America’s longest running war. The major argument of this book is that “the notion of presidential war took hold step by step.” (p. 585) By that Beschloss means that presidents have gradually assumed greater power over decisions to go to war—contrary, in his view, to the constitutional founders’ vision. That is a very familiar story. Although the book does succeed in offering some new insights into how that accretion of power occurred, its more original contribution lies in its depictions of how presidents have handled and managed the tasks of waging war. Those responsibilities for the management and supervision in the conduct of America’s wars have grown more complex as warfare has evolved—and they, too, look nothing like what the founders expected or might even have imagined. The book also puts an important focus on the interrelationship between these two types of presidential war powers. It highlights the continually shifting relationship between war-initiation powers and war-waging powers throughout the course of American history.  Taking the Nation to War That presidents have, since America’s founding, asserted and exercised ever wider authority to launch military adventures is a well-known story. Scholars are most likely to associate the general thesis with Arthur Schlesinger’s monumental book, “The Imperial Presidency.” Beschloss, like Schlesinger, sees this growth in presidential power as gradual and starting very early in the republic’s history. This is in contrast to some modern scholars who pin it to the onset of the Cold War and especially Truman’s 1950 intervention in Korea without express congressional authorization. Beschloss, too, sees Korea as a significant point in this trajectory, but one that builds on steps taken by previous war presidents like Madison and Polk. In telling the story of how each figure became a war president, Beschloss avoids sweeping theories. Indeed, the pictures he paints are quite varied. Madison stumbles reluctantly into war, whereas Polk actively and deviously manipulates Congress and the public into it. McKinley is reactive and lacks a clear foreign policy strategy, whereas Franklin Roosevelt adroitly and incrementally moves the United States into World War II, foreseeing grave dangers that the public is not yet willing to confront if he does not. Wilson, though he had theorized as a scholar about the need for presidents to assert broad foreign policy power, showed little appetite to embroil the United States militarily, whereas Truman believed that freedom of military action was important to containing the Soviet bloc. Personal, political, bureaucratic and geostrategic factors all play roles in the stories of “presidential war.” This is a phrase that then-Senator Daniel Webster used to characterize the Mexican-American War in 1846 and one that Beschloss adopts to describe prevailing constitutional practice. Beschloss shows throughout this account that war presidents look to predecessors for lessons—including mistakes to avoid. Most of those lessons seemed to be practical ones rather than reflections about constitutional principle. An implication is that power and constitutional law cannot be meaningfully separated in this area. Having framed the book in terms of the Constitution, however, I wondered throughout my reading it just how consciously, or conscientiously, these presidents felt obliged to abide by either the founders’ design or prior presidents’ interpretations of it. Or, for that matter, how consciously they felt constrained by a sense that they were establishing constitutional justifications that would be relied upon by their presidential successors. Because Beschloss is so capable of getting inside the minds of presidents, I would have liked to hear more on this—if, in fact, the war presidents struggled much with these issues. Take, for example, Beschloss’s twist on the usual story of Madison and the War of 1812. Most scholars of war powers, including Schlesinger, characterize Madison as pushed reluctantly into the war by congressional “War Hawks” (thus quickly turning on its head many founders’ supposition that presidents would incline toward war while Congress would generally incline against it). Although Beschloss admires Madison as a hero of constitutional drafting, he gives Madison mixed grades in applying the Constitution to war. He is especially tough on Madison’s 1812 move to solicit Congress’s declaration that war existed with Great Britain. Madison, Beschloss says, designed the Constitution to avoid war except in cases of absolute necessity and with broad public support. By going to Congress for a war declaration in 1812, however, he violated both of those criteria: “By leading his country into a major war that had no absolute necessity or overwhelming support from Congress and the public, Madison, of all people, had opened the door for later Presidents to seek involvement in future conflicts that suffered from such shortcomings.” (p. 5) Later in the book, Beschloss reiterates this point, with a distinct emphasis on how actions of a president in a given would almost inevitably create precedents for future presidents and, importantly, thus create over time institutional interpretations of the Constitution: "As one of the chief architects of the American system, Madison knew that the nature of the first major war to be fought under any President would do much to shape how often and how lightly the nation went to war in the future—and that engaging in this conflict would mean relaxing the established standard in Philadelphia." (p. 60) But we might pause and ask: did Madison view it this way, and how exactly did Madison’s actions make it easier for future presidents to lead the country into war? Madison eases his own conscience about presidential war by asking Congress to declare that a state of war already existed—rather than urging Congress to declare war. Apparently even he—the great constitutionalist Madison—was willing to sidestep constitutional formalities for war when he deemed it expedient. Beschloss’s assessment additionally seems to imply that had Madison resisted the war hawks, the founders’ original vision might have held up better. I question this, though, after reading the book’s later chapters. I doubt, for example, that Polk would have behaved any differently in provoking war with Mexico in 1846, or that McKinley would not still have succumbed to war frenzy against Spain in 1898. It is undoubtedly true that presidents have, over time, engaged in wars for reasons that many founders would have opposed—reasons well short of absolute necessity. But changing thresholds and justifications for war over the very long run of American history probably had more to do, it seems to me, with expanding national power and broader changes in American foreign policy than with interpretation of constitutional dictates or ethics, including those arising from the supposed weight of precedents. The two presidents who Beschloss describes as thinking most consciously about the precedents they were setting for successors are Lincoln and Truman. Yet there is more than a bit of irony in both cases. Lincoln, knowing that the Civil War was a unique threat to the Republic, wanted to avoid setting precedent—and, yet, the wartime moves he made have been cited often since then to support presidential war powers. Truman may have been the one most attentive to precedent he was setting—but the precedent he wanted to set ran counter the founders’ vision. Beschloss describes how Truman calculatingly preferred not to get congressional authorization for the Korean War, in part because he believed that the Cold War required less-encumbered presidential agility to use military force. He also describes how Truman, more than other presidents, consulted history to guide him in tough decisions. A predecessor he admired for his presidential initiative was none other than Polk, who stands out as the greatest anti-hero of the book. Truman regarded constitutional architect Madison as weak and indecisive. But he admired Polk because, in his words, he “regularly told Congress to go to hell on foreign policy matters.” (p. 462) The book’s war presidents agonized about a lot of things in going to war. Constitutional law does not seem to have been one of them. Directing War Beschloss laments that the “Founders would probably be thunderstruck” to discover modern presidents’ power to initiate major military conflicts (p. 586). I think they would also be thunderstruck to discover how much power presidents have wielded in waging war, including vast authority delegated by Congress pursuant to its own expansive war powers. Lincoln wielded wartime powers over the economy, slaves, conscripts and dissenters that would have shocked most founders. Wilson took those types of powers to a new level, and then Roosevelt did so to a greater level still. Although Madison and many founders feared standing armies, Truman built a “permanent war machine.” (p. 434) This book does a lot to show the many essential elements of the president’s commander-in-chief function. We know generally what the founders did not want presidents to do in war—which was to seize tyrannical power. We know relatively little about what they wanted presidents to do in conducting war, though. One virtue that Beschloss emphasizes is some presidents’ ability to maintain control over war strategy, sometimes even against the strong recommendation of military leaders. The chapters on Lincoln stress how that president learned to balance and coordinate Civil War military strategy with political strategy. Beschloss gives significant treatment to Truman’s sacking of General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War, after the president lost faith in the general’s willingness to follow civilian strategic guidance. And one of the most remarkable, if brief, moments is when President Johnson rejects General William Westmoreland’s planning for possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam. These episodes call to mind Eliot Cohen’s terrific book on civil-military relations, “Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime,” which argues that the greatest wartime statesmen actively question and even sometimes defy military advice. Another aspect of waging war in which presidential leadership over time became especially crucial is preparing for and managing the peace that follows. Beschloss astutely highlights this function with the sharply contrasting stories around the middle of the book: McKinley was caught off guard by the challenges of managing a global empire after deciding to keep the Philippines; Wilson had grand visions for a new international order but failed miserably to build domestic support for it at home; and Franklin Roosevelt laid the military, diplomatic and political groundwork for a postwar order (although that architecture would need to be adapted to the Cold War). As important as they became, these imperative post-conflict aspects of waging war were probably far from the minds of most constitutional founders. Among the other lessons Beschloss draws is that the best wartime presidents are able to explain effectively war stakes and strategy to the public as well as to match war aims with higher moral imperatives. Here again he points to Lincoln and Roosevelt as models, especially compared to their prior war presidents, Polk and Wilson, respectively. Note, however, that if Beschloss is correct that the founders expected war to be waged only in cases of immediate and grave national danger and only with overwhelming public support, once again, these considerations would not have seemed to them likely priorities for war presidents. Interlocking War Powers As these last points suggest, by discussing together both how presidents have taken the nation to war and how they have managed it, Beschloss underscores the ever-shifting relationship between those powers, and how generally the founders intended, or failed to consider adequately, how various constitutional war powers would fit together. For example, Beschloss emphasizes that a major worry of the constitutional founders was that fame, glory and aggrandizement of power in directing wars might tempt presidents, like “the European despots they abhorred,” to launch them. (p. 586) In other words, power in war would affect proneness to war. This was a weighty argument in lodging the power to declare war—or most would say, more broadly, to initiate war—in Congress. There is some intuitive logic here, although I think many founders under-estimated the problem that wars can result from too little military power or willingness to use it, not just from too much. Moreover, this arrangement raises another constitutional design question: if the Constitution was designed to ensure that wars would be rare, was it also designed to ensure that the president would nevertheless be an effective wartime leader in those rare instances? The founders seem to have given relatively little thought to that latter question, perhaps because they expected the first president to be George Washington—by far the best wartime leader available. And they did not expect it to matter very much so long as they got the former issue right (that is, by designing the Constitution to help keep the United States out of wars to begin with). But the United States has engaged in many wars, and Beschloss’s book is a reminder that in the most important wars of survival—the Civil War and World War II—the United States had its most superb wartime leaders in Lincoln and Roosevelt. Was that just luck? It is hard for me to give much credit to constitutional design for this, especially given that in neither case was each elected by a public interested in war, Lincoln was a dark horse candidate altogether, and Roosevelt became a war president while serving longer than many founders likely would have approved. Finally, although “Presidents of War” argues that many constitutional constraints devised to avoid war have been gutted over the course of American history, the war presidents it depicts are rarely war-mongers like those the founders most feared. With the exception of Polk, none of the featured presidents sought war. Some came out publicly glorified, but all the war presidents of this book were tormented and damaged physically and mentally by the pressures of war. They were almost all reluctant commanders-in-chief. Does that mean that the constitutional design has somehow succeeded—whether because of or despite accumulating war powers in the presidency? My own intuition—one reinforced by this book—is that the American Constitution generally deserves much credit for the nation’s security and prosperity over time, but that the declare war clause and formal powers to initiate war have always been less important to that story than other still more basic constitutional features.

Rebecca Turkington is the assistant director of the Women and Foreign Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations. On Thursday, the Ethiopian parliament elected its first female president, Sahle-Work Zewde. Though the role is largely ceremonial, it holds symbolic importance for women across the country and the continent, as Zewde will be the only female head of state in Africa. (Saara Kuugongelwa-Ahmadhila, prime minister of Namibia, is the only female head of government in Africa.) In her opening speech, she emphasized the importance of equality, telling MPs that if they thought she was talking too much about women, that she had only just begun. Her election comes on the heels of another important step forward for Ethiopia, and neighboring Rwanda, who joined the meager ranks of countries with ministerial gender parity. In a cabinet reshuffle last week, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed appointed ten female ministers, comprising half of the all cabinet posts. Days later, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame announced that Rwanda’s new cabinet would also be gender-balanced. According to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, fewer than ten countries have reached parity at the cabinet level. The global average for female government ministers is 18.3 percent, and more than a dozen countries have no women cabinet members at all. Ethiopia and Rwanda are part of a small club, and further unique for granting women substantial portfolios. Both named women to key ministerial posts; Ethiopia’s new minsters of defense and peace, and Rwanda’s ministers of trade and economic planning, are women. Of the female ministers in office worldwide, the vast majority hold posts that oversee social issues. In 2017, women were most likely to be ministers of environment (108), social affairs (102), family/children/youth (98), women’s affairs (68), education (67), and culture (65). Far fewer women served as ministers for justice (38), finance (19), and a mere fifteen countries—including Ethiopia—have a woman at the helm of the defense ministry. In their announcements of the new appointments, both Prime Minister Abiy and President Kagame remarked that they believed women would improve the effectiveness of the cabinet. Abiy told lawmakers that women would help battle corruption and bring accountability to the government. Kagame noted to judicial officials that "a higher number of women in decision-making roles have led to a decrease in gender discrimination and gender-based crimes.” To a certain extent, research bears this out. Women’s political participation is correlated with a number of gains that are particularly important for post-conflict countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda. A report from CFR’s Women and Foreign Policy program finds that, over a number of metrics, greater women’s participation in peace and security processes leads to more stability. Further studies find higher levels of women’s representation in government leads to a longer duration of peace, and lower likelihood of civil war relapse. Greater numbers of women in cabinet level posts correlates with friendlier working environments for women, and women’s political participation encourages confidence in democratic institutions and is linked with lower levels of extralegal killing, torture, disappearances and other forms of state abuse.  There are important caveats to these findings. Historically, the appointment of women to high-ranking posts has sometimes been instrumentalized for political ends, and several studies acknowledge that the transformative potential of women’s political representation is hindered when grassroots women’s activism is smothered. The Rwandan case in particular is evidence that even when women have high levels of descriptive representation, without an autonomous civil society, gains do not necessarily trickle down. Nevertheless, this recent news represents a welcome step forward. In addition to Ethiopia and Rwanda’s history-making cabinet line-ups, Mali’s president announced last month a new cabinet that is 30 percent female, including in key posts like the minister of foreign affairs. Women in ministerial roles are slowly changing the face of African politics. Their presence is a necessary—if not sufficient—element to achieving long-lasting equality and stability. 

Earlier this week, President Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton delivered a blistering attack on the International Criminal Court, or ICC, long a scourge of his and his audience at the Federalist Society. In doing so, he joined many African leaders who have likewise condemned the ICC; in 2017 the African Union passed a nonbinding resolution calling for its members states to withdraw from the court. Indeed, Bolton noted the African opposition in his remarks, saying that “to them [African opponents] the ICC is just the latest European neocolonial enterprise to infringe upon their sovereign rights.” That is certainly the way many African objections have been framed in the course of pointing out that atrocities occur around the world but the Court’s work has been almost entirely focused on Africa. Ironically, Bolton’s latest attack on the ICC was precipitated by the court doing the very thing that many Africans have been demanding—exploring abuses committed by great powers beyond the African continent.  But there is another and at least equally potent point of contention responsible for the rift between many African governments and the ICC—the issue of immunity for sitting heads of state, which is also an issue of interest to the White House. African governments’ discomfort with the ICC grew when the court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2009, creating a dilemma for host states whenever Bashir traveled on the continent. The discomfort spiked again when the court indicted President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice President William Ruto of Kenya in 2011 (the charges against both Kenyan leaders were later dropped for insufficient evidence). It is not hard to imagine that President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi had these cases in mind when he reacted to a UN Commission of Inquiry Report accusing his government of grave human rights abuses by withdrawing Burundi from the Rome Statute.  The Court was designed in part to provide for accountability in places where the desire for justice was strong but domestic judicial institutions were weak—an apt description of many African states. They make up the largest block of signatories to the Rome Statute that established the Court, and in many cases African states have referred crimes committed within their own borders to the ICC for prosecution. Interestingly, at the height of the tension over the Kenyan indictments in 2015, Afrobarometer found that over 60 percent of Kenyans believed the cases were important for fighting impunity in their country. It’s true that Africans chafe at the ICC’s almost singular focus on their region. But it is equally true that the agenda of African leaders who have been most vocal in opposing the ICC is not necessarily aligned with the desire of many Africans for fairness and accountability—even for the most powerful. Bolton’s attempt to buttress his diatribe with African perspectives seems oblivious to this desire.    

President Donald Trump will receive President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya in Washington, D.C. today, the second African chief of state to make a bilateral visit since becoming president in 2016. The conversation will reportedly focus on trade and investment—the reason for Kenyatta’s visit to the United States—with specific attention paid to China's increasing involvement in Kenya, and security issues with a focus on Somalia.  The visit is an opportunity for both presidents to burnish their damaged international reputations. In 2012, Kenyatta was charged by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity linked to violence associated with the 2007–8 election cycle (though the charges were dropped in 2014 after alleged witness intimidation). The 2017 national elections in Kenya were “irregular,” to put forward the most favorable of interpretations; the country seemed to be on the brink of serious ethnic conflict, with plenty of blame to be shared by Kenyatta and his long-time rival, Raila Odinga. For his part, President Trump’s rhetoric on Africa has been disastrous, from his infamous “shithole” comments to his recent mischaracterization of land reform and white murders in South Africa. So, too, have his comments on African-Americans, to which many Africans pay attention. U.S. policy, however, has shown remarkable continuity with that of previous administrations.  So, Rose Garden pictures and a press conference will likely boost President Kenyatta’s standing on his home continent and improve President Trump’s African image. There is media speculation that the visit will result in a closer economic relationship between the two countries. Kenya is an important trading partner of the United States, but that aspect of the bilateral relationship is not as salient as the security relationship, which is one of Washington’s most important in Africa. UK Prime Minister Theresa May is also looking for an expanded economic relationship with Kenya. She will visit Nairobi and meet with Kenyatta later this week as part of a swing around Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya. According to British media, she is looking for enhanced British export possibilities in the aftermath of Brexit. Kenyatta’s rehabilitation of himself would appear to have been a success in the United States and the United Kingdom. However, it should be noted that Kenya is heavily indebted to China, which owns more than seventy percent of its debt and is involved in many large infrastructure projects. This would seem to limit Kenya’s capacity to buy more goods and services from the United States and the United Kingdom. In fact, after his meeting with May, Kenyatta is travelling to Beijing for the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, which has occurred in varying forms every three years since 2000, and over which President Xi Jinping will preside.   

The 1986 meeting in Iceland between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was like none other. It offers helpful context for a potential U.S.-North Korea arms control summit.

Michelle Gavin is a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. From 2011 to 2014, she served as the U.S. ambassador to Botswana and to the Southern African Development Community. She started at CFR in February 2018. Burundians are at the polls today to vote in a referendum on constitutional amendments that would, among other things, change the country’s rules around term limits. The change would make it possible for the current president, Pierre Nkurunziza, who has served since 2005, to continue to hold that office until 2034. It is the latest example of a powerful Central African trend that rejects norms around regular leadership transitions and instead embraces a governing style in which a single individual—far more than institutions, ideologies, or even party platforms—dominates decision-making in the name of stability. While West African states have actively worked to shore up the principle that leaders should not seek to stay in power indefinitely, and many of Southern Africa’s ruling parties, while retaining political power, allow for real changes in the personalities at the top, the countries at the heart of the continent seem to be moving in a different direction entirely. Paul Kagame has been the de facto ruler of Rwanda since 1994 and formally president since 2000. Yoweri Museveni has been the president of Uganda since 1986. Joseph Kabila became president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2001, and continues in that role despite the fact that his most recent term expired in 2016. Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and the DRC are very different places with very different political dynamics, but each serves to reinforce the sense in their neighbors that term limits are of dubious value at best.  As Central Africa moves in this direction, and the rest of the continent in another, it is no coincidence that the region is plagued by instability. The causes of region’s conflicts are interlinked and complex, to be sure. But it is equally true that the specter of conflict is at the heart of these entrenched leaders’ claim to political legitimacy. Each cultivates a narrative in which he is the only thing preventing a return to a more violent, chaotic past. The constant threat of instability has become inseparable from the governing ethos of its leaders and the state institutions that they shape.  The idea that only one man stands between a society’s ruin and its redemption makes for compelling drama, but it is a truly frightening basis on which to establish governing authority. Every decision—any decision—can be justified on the grounds of meeting the existential threat. Accountability and dissent become confused with plots against the state itself. Dialogues about the future become focused exclusively on questions about individual leaders. And worst of all, this approach leads the state, inevitably, off a cliff. Unless there are immortals among us, these states will outlast their leaders. Paradoxically, the men who claim to be bulwarks against chaos are ensuring that they will leave instability in their wake.   

Ethiopia, a strategically located regional power with over 100 million people and one of the fastest growing economies in the world, has a new prime minister. Abiy Ahmed is a compelling figure and his personal history is resonant—he comes from one of the country’s two largest ethnic groups, has mixed Muslim and Christian heritage, and fought against the Derg (shorthand for Ethiopia's Communist government from 1974 to 1991). At forty-two, he is Africa’s youngest head of state, and his youthful charisma is a breath of fresh air. His political instincts are impressive, as evidenced by his early efforts to listen to and reassure Ethiopia’s disparate regions, and to loosen the restrictions that an increasingly repressive state machinery had used, ineffectively, in pursuit of stability. He is also a man with a very tough job ahead of him. His ascension to office is only the latest development in an attenuated transition process that began with the death of Meles Zenawi in 2012, and has since encompassed shifting dynamics within the ruling party and increasing popular frustration across the country. In accordance with the constitution, Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn stepped into the leadership role when Meles died. Ethiopia’s ruling political party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), worked to project an image of tight control and continuity. To that end, Ethiopia’s information minister was widely quoted as saying, “I would like to stress, nothing in Ethiopia will change. The government will continue. Our policies and institutions will continue. Nothing will change in Ethiopia.” But what a difference six years makes. Having been buffeted by popular uprisings, a violent government response, and a national state of emergency that exacerbated popular disaffection, Hailemariam resigned in February of this year. By the beginning of April, Abiy committed to reform and was apologizing for the mistakes of the past. Change wasn’t just on the table—it was at the heart of his appeal to the nation. To be sure, the issues at stake in Ethiopia’s internal political debates are complex and longstanding. But since the death of Meles, the way these debates have manifested has changed significantly. Ethiopia’s recent experience suggests that, no matter how smooth the process of replacing a leader may initially appear, the very fact of long-awaited change at the top awakens latent appetites for devolving power and intensifies expectations of reform throughout society. Old grievances gain new urgency while popular tolerance for heavy-handed or self-serving policies dissipates quickly.  To the south, ruling parties in both Angola and Zimbabwe have worked to carefully manage major leadership transitions of their own, albeit under very different circumstances. They might take a keen interest in Ethiopia’s recent history. Ruling party continuity does not guarantee that new leaders can govern as their predecessors did, or count on the same patience or leeway from their own party or population.  

On April 1, Botswana inaugurated its fifth president, Mokgweetsi Masisi. The presidency is structurally very strong in Botswana and its past leaders have been giants. Filling the shoes of his predecessors will therefore be a daunting challenge for President Masisi. Botswana’s founding president, Seretse Khama, was extraordinarily influential in shaping the country’s trajectory. His insistence on inclusion, faith in democracy, and the use of national resources for national goods rather than personal gain are all still prominent features of Botswana’s political culture today. Seretse Khama's successor, Quett Masire, oversaw a period of tremendous development and steered Botswana into its place alongside Norway as a counterexample to the “resource curse.” Then came Festus Mogae, a brilliant and compassionate leader whose decisive action helped his country overcome the HIV/AIDS epidemic years before the problem was meaningfully addressed elsewhere. Though extremely powerful, each of these leaders oversaw the development of strong governing institutions, including an independent judiciary, aimed at serving the country long after they left office. Together, they took Botswana from the bottom of nearly every development index at independence in 1966 to the upper middle-income status it enjoys today, peacefully and with integrity.  Botswana’s fourth and most recent president, Ian Khama, may be best remembered for his insistence that the persistent poverty experienced by many Batswana be acknowledged, an important contribution in a country celebrated for its development progress but characterized by significant income inequality. He was also a true champion of the country’s spectacular ecological resources and he fostered some of the most effective anti-poaching policies and practices in the world. Some feared that there was an authoritarian strain in Ian Khama’s leadership style. But the pride with which he observed the county’s strict two-term limit and transferred power to Masisi speaks volumes about the depth and endurance of Botswana’s political values.  Like its neighbor South Africa, Botswana has a multiparty system that is dominated by one political party, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP). Traditionally, the president of Botswana ends his term a year before national elections, ceding power to a vice president who has been chosen with the express intent that he or she lead the party and country going forward. While Botswana’s fractious opposition parties have made some progress in uniting recently, the BDP will likely still win the 2019 election, beginning Masisi’s first five-year term.   I had the pleasure of working with then-Minister Masisi during President Ian Khama’s administration, and found him thoughtful, decisive, fierce in defending Botswana’s equities, and enthusiastic about getting things done. His inaugural address gave some hints to his priorities going forward, including improving the return Botswana receives on its admirable investment in its human capital. I am eager to see how he moves out on his agenda. Botswana should be of interest to anyone who studies the world and cares about what is possible. It is an imperfect place, like any other, but there is no small-population, landlocked country in the world that has ever accomplished so much in such a short time.   

This is a guest blog post by Anthony Carroll. Anthony is founding director of Acorus Capital, a private equity fund investing in Africa, and a vice president of Manchester Trade Limited, an international business advisory firm. He has over forty years of experience working with Africa and is an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Last Friday’s State of the Nation Address by newly-elected South African President Cyril Ramaphosa outlined many of the challenges that confront his country nearly a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid. These include economic inequality, unemployment, decaying social conditions, and corruption. His forthright remarks represent a paradigm shift in that country’s governance and governing principles and provides an opportunity for the United States to reengage with a strategic ally after nearly two decades of eroding relations. It is only fitting that Mr. Ramaphosa usher in this new era. Once the favored protégé of Nelson Mandela, Ramaphosa was the chief negotiator for the ANC during the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) process that effectively dismantled the odious system of apartheid. The institutions established at that time, including a much admired constitution, have flexed their muscles in the past few months exorcizing the corrupt and incoherent eight-year reign of Mr. Ramaphosa’s predecessor, Jacob Zuma. The coming months will reveal the depths of corruption that marked the Zuma era and, as the Truth and Reconciliation process salved the wounds of apartheid, provide South Africa an opportunity to set a new course. The United States should extend its hand to Mr. Ramaphosa and contribute when requested and where it can, not only for some ideal but for its own strategic self-interest. This process will not be easy. After the bloom of the post-apartheid process faded and Nelson Mandela relinquished power, U.S.-South Africa relations began a downward arc. Among the irritants included dismay over President Thabo Mbeki’s policies on HIV/AIDS, differing positions on Israel, Palestine, Iraq, and Libya, South Africa’s preferred embrace of fellow BRICS countries (most concernedly Russia) and myriad disagreement on trade relations starting with a scrapped regional free trade agreement and more recently, disputes on U.S. chicken exports. While this trend occurred in both Republican and Democratic administrations, it has been especially fractured during the later years of the Zuma administration. The symptoms included a compulsive attention to protocol over substance, limited access to government decision makers in Pretoria, thinly veiled opprobrium by U.S. diplomats, and an eroded civil discourse that included allegations by high level ANC officials that the United States was intent on fomenting regime change. Well, regime change did occur, and the United States had nothing to do with it. Rather, it was South Africa’s independent media, civil society, parliament, and judiciary that waltzed Zuma and his cronies out the door.  So where to begin? We can start by maintaining our current programs of assistance in South Africa. While we have ongoing military and counterterrorism collaboration with South Africa, laudable U.S. initiatives in health programming like PEPFAR have benefited millions of South Africans. A second area of strength is in trade. South Africa has been the largest beneficiary of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) by trading 141 items without duty, including automobiles and fine wines. Lastly, over 600 U.S. firms have offices in South Africa and provide a strategic and secure platform to grow U.S. commercial interests on the African continent. Using these as a base, here below are a few recommendations where the United States could advance Mr. Ramaphosa’s and its own interests. First, South Africa is a leader in medical research and life sciences in both the government and private sector. The United States could foster partnerships between U.S. educational institutions and bioscience organizations such as the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) that could address Africa’s vast unmet health needs. Second, South Africa is the logical platform for U.S. businesses to exploit the Africa continent. Indeed, South Africa’s fastest growing trade relations are with its African neighbors. American technical assistance and political capital can be leveraged to support the emergence of African regional integration, a process logically led by South Africa, the continents largest and most sophisticated economy. Additionally, South African financial institutions, including the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (the world’s fourth oldest exchange) can be a conduit for U.S. creative capital going into Africa. Last, with three consulates and Africa’s largest embassy in Pretoria, the U.S. government has the platform in which to respond to advise and technical assistance requests by the South African government, private sector, and civil society. 

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation awarded its prize for African leadership to Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the former president of Liberia. The foundation’s prize committee stated that Sirleaf had shown exceptional leadership, and noted that Liberia was the only African country out of fifty-four to improve in every category of its Index of African Governance. While it did acknowledge that Sirleaf has been criticized for tolerating corruption, it noted that her leadership had nevertheless been exceptional under difficult circumstances following a generation of civil war. Mo Ibrahim, a British-Sudanese telecom billionaire, established the prize in 2006 to recognize African leadership. Eligibility is restricted to African democratically elected heads of state or government who served the constitutionally mandated term of office in the past three years and demonstrated outstanding leadership. It is probably the richest international prize in the world. It awards laureates $5 million over ten years, then $200,000 per year for life. In addition, laureates may apply for an additional $200,000 per year for their own philanthropy. The prize appears to have been designed to recognize and encourage African leadership of the highest quality and also to free former heads of state from post-presidential financial burdens.  The selection committee numbers eight and is of outstanding quality: it includes former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, former first lady of both Mozambique and South Africa Graca Machel, and former president of Botswana (and laureate) Festus Mogae. The prize may be awarded annually, but it has been awarded only five times in the ten years since it was established, including this year. The other recipients are Joaquim Chissano (former president of Mozambique), Festus Mogae (former president of Botswana), Pedro Verona Pires (former president of Cape Verde), and Hifikepunye Pohamba (former president of Namibia). Johnson Sirleaf was by no means without controversy during her long career in Liberian politics. She appears to have been much more popular outside of Liberia than at home. Her chosen candidate to succeed her in the most recent elections was defeated, and her political party recently expelled her from membership for reasons that appear to be both local and obscure. That she was the first woman to be elected as a chief of state in Africa and was therefore also probably more important outside of Liberia than at home. Her record is undoubtedly mixed, but her success in guiding the country out of a generation of civil war should not be taken for granted.   

Tyler McBrien is a research associate for education at the Council on Foreign Relations.  On January 9, President Jacob Zuma announced the appointment of a long awaited judicial commission of inquiry into allegations of state capture. The phrase, plucked from a 2000 World Bank paper and popularized by a 2016 report by South Africa’s then Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, describes a widespread system of political corruption where the powerful Gupta family influences state decision-making through its close ties with President Zuma and his affiliates. “It is of such serious public concern that any further delay will make the public doubt government’s determination to dismantle all forms of corruption‚ and entrench the public perception that the state has been captured by private interests for nefarious and self-enrichment purposes,” said President Zuma of the allegations in a public statement. In a swell of optimism and surprise, some in the South African media have labeled President Zuma’s announcement as a concession, a shift in power, or a miraculous reversal of his comments just two months ago that state capture was “all fake and political, just to paint black a particular family and individuals.” Others have reserved celebration, as the announcement came on the heels of a December 14 court order forcing President Zuma to approve such a commission within 30 days. Skeptics also view this as a signature political parry of the “Teflon president,” pointing to the timing of the announcement, which occurred on the eve of a meeting of high-level African National Congress (ANC) officials widely speculated to be debating President Zuma’s recall. The state capture commission, coupled with his free higher education plan revealed last month, demonstrates President Zuma’s particular skill for throwing water on the fire the very moment before he is engulfed in flames. Just like the complex nature of state capture itself, with its dizzying web of corruption propped up by esoteric procurement laws, the devil of Zuma’s commission announcement is in the legal details. In the “commission capital of the world,” debate abounds as to whether or not these costly productions actually achieve what they set out to do. Commission findings often take much longer than anticipated, and the state has no obligation to act on them. Plus, the effectiveness of commissions of inquiry depends upon their terms of reference, or investigative scope. Too narrow, and the commission lacks the authority to investigate widespread wrongdoing. Too broad, and the commission gets bogged down in an excess of information. To reach an effective Goldilocks equilibrium, the terms of reference should draw on the public protector’s recommendations and the suggestions laid out in the impressive work done by researchers and activists in South Africa’s vibrant civil society. However, with President Zuma’s appeal of last month’s court decision still pending, some have argued that he still retains the ability to set the terms of reference, which he would no doubt set in his favor.   This important aspect of the commission has not escaped notice from President Zuma’s enemies. On January 18, members of the Democratic Alliance, one of South Africa’s leading opposition parties, demanded that President Zuma release the terms of reference by Friday and adhere to Public Protector Madonsela’s recommendations, a provision that newly elected ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa has also endorsed. In the likely event that this commission of inquiry into state capture falls victim to the shortfalls of commissions past, the recent announcement will prove to be just one more deft move in President Zuma’s political dance of survival.

On December 29, South Africa's Constitutional Court ruled that the parliament had failed in its constitutional obligation to hold President Jacob Zuma accountable for illegal expenditure of public money on his private compound, Nkandla. Zuma has survived a number of no confidence votes and has denied wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the Constitutional Court gave parliament six months to put in place a mechanism for removing the president. In response to the court’s ruling, a parliamentary subcommittee is developing a draft procedure for removal that would then be voted on by parliament. South African social media is speculating that the mandated development and review of procedures will increase the pressure on Zuma to resign the presidency. Following the African National Congress’s (ANC) convention vote, he is no longer party leader. ANC policy is that the party leader should also be the country's president so as not to divide authority between president of the country and the president of the party. Media is also speculating that Cyril Ramaphosa, who defeated Zuma’s preferred candidate, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, will be trying to force Zuma out of the presidency to clear the way for reform of the party, which is suffering erosion of electoral support. Zuma, however, retains allies at the top of the party machinery, and his removal is by no means a sure thing. Nevertheless, the episode illustrates once again the power and independence of the South African judiciary. South Africa is not a parliamentary democracy, but a constitutional democracy. The constitution, interpreted by the judiciary, is sovereign, and all branches of government are subordinate to it. Hence, in the face of the December 29 ruling, parliament is moving to establish clear procedures for the removal of a president.   

Ten people who passed away this year who shaped world affairs for better or worse.