U.S. Foreign Policy

Each Friday, I look at what the presidential challengers are saying about foreign policy. This week: The coronavirus pushes the Democratic presidential primaries to the sidelines, the Defense Production Act, and a possible twelfth Democratic presidential debate.

Contrasting the current pandemic with past crises underscores U.S. President Donald J. Trump's abdication of global leadership.

Each Friday, I look at what the presidential challengers are saying about foreign policy. This week: Democratic visions for a new direction in foreign policy, calls for a relaxation of U.S. sanctions on Iran, and more national security luminaries endorse Joe Biden. 

The war in Idlib is a growing humanitarian crisis, a potential disaster for Ankara—and a problem that doesn’t bear on Washington.

The most effective plan against the Islamic Republic has always been the most obvious—and the one nobody in Washington seems willing to try.

Arab countries are looking for partners who aren’t bogged down by chaos ranging from impeachment to Iowa.

Each Friday, I look at what the presidential challengers are saying about foreign policy. This week: the Democratic field narrows, and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders square off.

Since November, I have been talking with experts with differing views on how the United States should handle the foreign policy challenges it faces. These special episodes are part of CFR’s Election 2020 activities, which are made possible in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

Each Friday, I look at what the presidential challengers are saying about foreign policy. This week: foreign policy is AWOL in Las Vegas; Bloomberg and Warren talk about Latin America; and foreign policy advisors.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently completed his first trip in his current role to Africa. Over three days, he visited Dakar in Senegal, Luanda in Angola, and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, where he also visited the head of the African Union. During the trip, Secretary Pompeo advocated for a stronger U.S.-Africa relationship amidst China’s growing role on the continent.  Though President Trump appears to have no interest in Africa beyond seemingly unfiltered insults, some in his administration have visited, thought not to the same extent as previous administrations. His wife Melania, his daughter Ivanka, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have all visited the continent, though the latter was fired by Trump during his trip. Unlike past administrations, the Trump administration has no high profile, signature Africa policy initiative, such as President Bill Clinton’s Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), President George W. Bush’s campaign against HIV/AID (the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, or PEPFAR), or President Barack Obama’s electric power initiative (Power Africa).  The Trump administration’s Africa strategy, Prosper Africa, envisages facilitating greater American private sector investment and trade with Africa. Its Development Finance Corporation has significant potential, building on and ultimately replacing the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, but it is underfunded and is only just now becoming operational. Prosper Africa’s roll-out rhetoric by then National Security Advisor John Bolton seemed more concerned with countering China’s political and security influence on the continent than on political, social, or economic development. Meanwhile the Trump administration’s new “travel ban,” suspending immigration to the United States from Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania because of alleged security shortcomings, is unlikely to encourage American private sector involvement with Africa.  But in general, American policy toward Africa—encouraging democracy and the rule of law, facilitating economic development, and supporting the development of African security initiatives and capabilities—remains consistent with that of previous administrations, driven below the cabinet level and from outside the White House. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Tibor Nagy and USAID Administrator Mark Green get high marks for management, and Congress has blocked Trump administration efforts to eviscerate the various assistance programs from which Africa benefits.  Moreover, American soft power endures, going from strength to strength. China may have peppered the continent with Confucius Institutes designed to expand its influence through the study of Chinese language and culture, but the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Africa league and the enduring power of Hollywood promote American mass culture to a much larger popular audience. Aubrey Hruby observes that the movie “Black Panther” and the NBA do more to build American influence than cabinet visits. And that is even leaving aside Oprah! It is always worth keeping in mind that the American relationship with Africa is much more than presidential administrations.

Until now, there has not been a comprehensive survey of U.S. policy toward Africa for either the specialist or the general reader. Now, happily, there is. Herman J. Cohen (‘Hank’) has just published U.S. Policy Toward Africa: Eight Decades of Realpolitik, covering fourteen U.S. administrations. It is hard to think of anyone as qualified as Ambassador Cohen to undertake such a work. A career Foreign Service Officer, Hank Cohen was, inter alia, charge in the Democratic Republic of Congo, ambassador to Senegal, senior director for Africa at the National Security Council, and assistant secretary for Africa at the U.S. Department of State. He entered the Foreign Service in 1955 and has been present as a participant or an observer throughout the sweep of U.S.-African relations, from the African pre-independence period right up to the present.  Ambassador Cohen’s study is specifically of official U.S. policy, not of the myriad other links to Africa. He makes extensive use of documents declassified and published by the Historian of the Department of State. That series, published in hard copy and also online, is The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS). Volumes are usually published about thirty years after the events they cover.  Often overlooked by contemporary commentators, Ambassador Cohen explores the fact that the United States not having been a colonial power in Africa, though it was elsewhere, and its positive impact on U.S. relations to Africa. He covers important episodes, among many other things, such as the decolonization of Congo, the Nigerian civil war, the Bush administration’s establishment of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the establishment of the Development Finance Corporation under the Trump administration.  Cohen organizes his material chronologically by presidential administration, concluding with the first two years of the Donald Trump presidency. Through his narrative, he shows the bipartisanship and continuity of successive Washington administration policies toward Africa. Even in the recent partisan and polarized political atmosphere in the United States, he shows that this bipartisanship has persisted. The general reader will be encouraged by the competence of policymaking toward Africa that Cohen elucidates.

Each week I’m talking with two experts with differing views on how the United States should handle a foreign policy challenge it faces. These special episodes are part of CFR’s Election 2020 activities, which are made possible in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.