U.S. Foreign Policy

As the 2020 presidential campaign heats up, U.S. politics is getting harder and harder to explain to the rest of the world.

Each Friday, I look at what the presidential challengers are saying about foreign policy. This week: Democrats pan the Trump peace plan, Warren unveils her global health plan, and John Delaney departs the race.

Each week between now and the Iowa caucuses, 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.

Since the last National Defense Strategy [PDF] more than a year ago, there has been a shift in U.S. defense priorities from countering terrorism to great power competition. Since then, the Department of Defense has been considering a drawdown of U.S. military assets in Africa, especially West Africa, presumably for redeployment to arenas of great power competition. That would be a mistake. Also included in the strategy is to "support relationships to address significant terrorist threats in Africa." Terrorist episodes in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad have been expanding exponentially. Extremist violence has doubled every year since 2015. Mauritania is concerned, with good reason, that it will be next. Further east, in the Lake Chad basin, factions of Boko Haram have revived, with almost daily assaults in Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon. The capital city of Borno State, Maiduguri, is almost cut off from the rest of the country due to the destruction of bridges and frequent attacks on travelers. Many governments in the Sahel and West Africa are weak and fragile, and, with the exception of in Nigeria, France plays an outsized role in countering terrorism there. Operation Barkhane is France’s largest overseas operation, with 4,500 soldiers and an expenditure of some 600 million Euros per year. There have been French casualties, small in number but nevertheless threatening French popular support for the effort. Further, the French presence in West Africa has recently elicited anti-colonial riots in Bamako, with the burning of the French flag. French President Emmanuel Macron has made it clear that France will stay only at the request of the governments in the region. Early in January, he convened a summit of the five francophone heads of state in the southwestern French city of Pau. There, the Africans reaffirmed their desire for the French to stay. Compared to the French, the American role is small. There are perhaps 800 Americans stationed in West Africa, mostly at a base in Niger. (For context, altogether there are about 200,000 U.S. military stationed abroad.) The Americans in Niger provide logistical support, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assistance to the French and their partner governments in the Sahel. The Americans also facilitate air-to-air refueling. The American role is small, but the French regard it as essential. A French presidency official characterized the American role as “irreplaceable.” “If the Americans decided to pull out of Africa, it would be very bad news for us, absolutely,” said President Macron. “I hope that I can convince President Trump that the fight against terrorism, a fight that he is fully committed to, is at stake out in this region.” At Pau, the five francophone heads of state also expressed their gratitude to the United States. French General Francois Lecointre, head of the French armed forces, has said that without Barkhane, the affected countries would collapse. The general is probably right. It is true that a long term solution to the problems of the region require the local elites to find political and social solutions, as French political scientist Marc-Antoine Perouse de Montclose told the American media. But that takes time. The risk is that if the United States withdraws its support for Barkhane, the French will draw down or even leave. Without the presence of the French military, a huge geographical area becomes more than an ungoverned space; it becomes a playground for jihadis and militants of all stripes.  This has dangerous consequences for U.S. interests, including uncontrolled terrorism, increased migration to Europe—already rattled by the Syrian refugee crisis—and an increased likelihood of further humanitarian crises. A Franco-American drawdown or departure also hands a victory to the jihadists, whose goals include expelling the West from Africa. American support for the modest French military presence in West Africa is a small, albeit still insufficient, price to pay. It is hard to know how exactly things will change if the U.S. follows through, but it is likely to be contrary to U.S. interests.

If he wishes to follow in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's footsteps, U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will need to clarify America's interests, role, and responsibilities in defending the global balance of power.

Qassem Suleimani and Tehran have won the battle for Baghdad. U.S. policymakers should understand that—and leave.

Herman J. Cohen is the former assistant secretary of state for African affairs (1989–1993), the former U.S. ambassador to the Gambia and Senegal (1977–80), and was a member of the U.S. Foreign Service for thirty-eight years. The violent conflict in Cameroon, still rarely discussed in Washington, is becoming increasingly dire. Both President Paul Biya’s Francophone regime in Yaounde and the Anglophone separatists in the southwest region are accused of brutal human rights abuses, including the burning of villages, attacks on schools, and the killing of men, women, and children. Despite mediation attempts by the Swiss government and sanctions by the Trump administration, there are no signs of any progress towards a negotiated settlement.  In 1991, I mediated an end to a different African conflict with some striking similarities: the Eritrean war of independence, which raged for nearly three decades. Lessons from that precedent offer clues to a potential endgame in Cameroon. Colonial-style takeovers Both Eritrea and Cameroon’s Anglophone regions were engaged in governing federations with more powerful nations, then lost autonomy when their counterpart took over after deciding the relationship no longer suited them. The Federation of Ethiopia and Eritrea was inaugurated in 1952, with two separate governments having their own legislatures, internal controls, and flags, while sharing foreign policy, defense, and currency. Ten years later, the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I unilaterally dissolved that arrangement and annexed Eritrea, sparking the long and bloody war.  In 1961, Cameroon’s Anglophone region voted in a UN-sponsored referendum to join Francophone Cameroon in a very similar federal arrangement. Eleven years later, then-President Ahmadou Ahidjo defied the UN to hold his own referendum on whether to effectively annex the Anglophone areas by unifying the two regions, while conveniently providing Ahidjo with expanded powers. Officially, the vote tally was 99.99 percent to dissolve the federation, with 98.2 percent turnout.   A crackdown by the Francophone authorities immediately ensued. Widespread discrimination against Anglophones was compounded by a takeover of the education and judicial systems to abolish the English language. Like the Eritreans subjected to sudden Ethiopian subjugation, this move to consolidate power understandably upset Cameroon’s minority Anglophone population.  What do these parallels tell us about the crisis in Cameroon? Paul Biya cannot expect to win through war Unlike in Eritrea, tensions grew slowly in Cameroon over decades, before boiling over into the open violent conflict of the last several years. But the twenty-nine-year length of the Eritrean war indicates that bloodshed is likely to persist as long as Anglophone Cameroonians feel their culture and autonomy is being stolen by the Yaounde regime (and as long as they have friendly neighbors on their side of the border.) Prolonging this conflict will not lead to a resolution. A mediated negotiation is the only realistic solution, and the United States can lead it The Ethiopia-Eritrea war ended rapidly after the U.S. became the official mediator. In Cameroon, the lack of progress in Swiss mediation does not simply mean the conflict is unsolvable for now. The responsibility to engage in serious negotiations must be made clear to both sides. They will feel comfortable in offering concessions to an influential mediator like the United States that they would not offer each other.  Despite the Trump administration's supposed neglect of Africa, it has in fact been heavily invested in conflict resolution there: currently it is working to end saber-rattling between Egypt and Ethiopia over the latter's move to dam the Nile river. President Trump has appointed a highly capable U.S.-Africa diplomat, Tibor Nagy, to the assistant secretary position I once held. Ambassador Nagy is an excellent choice to oversee this process. There are additional incentives for President Trump to pursue peace in Cameroon. The administration’s efforts to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict are likely to be met with failure. By contrast, ending the Cameroon conflict, while difficult, is within this administration's grasp, and it would do far more to improve U.S. standing in Africa than John Bolton's aggressive anti-China, anti-Russia campaign there. The longer the conflict lasts, the less likely that Cameroon will remain a single nation Eritreans refused to accept any federation with Ethiopia after three decades of war. There was simply too much bitterness. Even after the independence accords, a two-year border war in 1998 killed hundreds of thousands; it did not officially end until Ethiopia’s new premier Abiy Ahmed made an unexpected, unilateral peace overture last year.  It may not be too late to return to the UN-approved federation between Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon that existed prior to 1972. That arrangement would provide Anglophones with the autonomy they deserve. But time is running out. Genuine democracy is a requirement for post-conflict stability For decades, Ethiopia’s domestic politics relied on a coalition of ethnic parties, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which originally fought the military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. Consternation over the dominance of one small ethnic group, the Tigrayans, eventually led to deadly protests and the ouster of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn last year. In November, Prime Minister Abiy moved to merge the EPRDF parties into a single unit, but this was met with protests by the Tigray constituency, and may ultimately lead to further destabilization just as ethnic tensions in the country are especially inflamed. The weakness of Cameroon’s democratic institutions is aggravated by the monopoly of Paul Biya’s ethnic group, the Beti, over political and economic power. Many of the non-Beti French speakers feel just as marginalized as Anglophones. Ethnic domination within a putative democracy is inherently unsustainable. And after thirty-seven years of autocratic rule and fraudulent elections under Biya, Cameroon’s problems may not end with any resolution of the Anglophone crisis.

Each Friday, I look at what the presidential challengers are saying about foreign policy. This week: the Democratic debate, financial corruption, and progressive foreign policy.