Hard to figure out SA gains or losses, writes Peter Fabricius.
Trying to discern the foreign policies of US presidential candidates is tricky – it’s even harder to establish their policies on Africa and South Africa.
That’s because American voters are not too interested in foreign policy, except where it involves US national security.
As American University history professor Allan Lichtman recently told the Washington Foreign Press Centre: “They pay attention only when there is a big crisis or victory. So they’ll pay attention to the Iran nuclear treaty law. I promise you they can’t tell you the details. What they might be paying attention to is the potential tensions and conflicts.”
As a result, none of the five remaining candidates – Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio – has expressed a position on Africa.
“It is too early for that level of foreign policy specifics,” says Brooks Spector, a former US diplomat and an expert on US-South Africa/Africa relations at the Daily Maverick.
“They have, however, taken broad positions on trade, defence and terror that can be extrapolated to Africa.
“All of them (except perhaps Clinton) have been less than enthusiastic about free trade and trade agreements, for now.
“On defence and security, Sanders apart, they’re increasingly hard-edged (reflecting voter concerns ) on these points and threats in or from Africa should be seen in this context.
“Realistically, only Clinton has a track record of dealing with Africa. Her positions seem to be in sync with those of the Obama administration in which she served.”
Clinton is a good place to start. Though Vermont’s progressive Senator Bernie Sanders just gave her a scare in the Iowa caucuses, she is still the best bet to win the Democratic Party nomination and is certainly the safest bet for the White House, from an African and South African point of view, not least because she is predictable.
She was President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State. As Spector suggests, she would presumably largely continue Obama’s foreign policy and policy in South Africa.
She established a good relationship with International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane while Secretary of State, so that would be a good thing.
Clinton would surely continue to push strong relations with South Africa and the continent, perpetuating programmes like the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar), which has poured billions of dollars into fighting Aids in Africa and saved the day in South Africa by stepping into the breach left by former president Thabo Mbeki’s denial and neglect of the pandemic.
She would also continue with the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which has been a great boon to South African exports to the US in particular and other Obama projects such as Power Africa, which helps to bring electricity to dark parts of the continent.
Clinton would also probably continue the moves now tentatively under way to go beyond Agoa – which is a non-reciprocal programme that offers eligible African countries duty-free access to the US market – and negotiate conventional reciprocal binding free trade agreements with Africa.
Clinton would also probably back the big free trade agreements Obama has signed on to – the Asia-centred Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the European Union – though she has expressed misgivings about the TPP in particular for jeopardising US jobs.
The danger for Africa is that if it’s not careful the TPP and TTIP will suck a lot of trade and investment out of this continent.
Beyond South Africa, Stephen Walt, Harvard professor of international relations has written in Foreign Policy: “A Clinton foreign policy will look a lot like Barack Obama’s, but with a decidedly more hawkish edge.”
He noted that as a senator she repeatedly backed the use of military force, including in the Iraq war (which she now says was a mistake) “and the ill-conceived toppling of Muammar Gaddafi”.
As Walt notes, Sanders at least had the judgement to oppose the Iraq war. What his Africa policy would be is not known, but it would probably be much the same as Obama’s.
As a socialist-leaning unionist, he is fiercely opposed to international trade deals such as the TPP and TTIP, because he believes they export jobs. This suggests he might also oppose Agoa.
John Stremlau, a former US diplomat and now a professor of international relations at Wits, says that in any case “Bernie Sanders is a loose cannon who can’t govern.”
It is when one comes to the Republicans that the future of US foreign policy, including on Africa and South Africa, looks least predictable and most scary.
Republicans have not always been as bad for us as they were often assumed to be. George W Bush (the son), for instance, proved to be very good for the continent.
He launched both Pepfar and Agoa, which continued to reap benefits for Africa long after his term.
But Stremlau says the current crop of Republican front-runners – Trump, Cruz and Rubio – are a very different breed from the mainstream George Bush or his brother Jeb, who is still in the 2016 race but doesn’t seem to have a chance.
Stremlau says Trump, Cruz and Rubio are ultra-conservatives who would all return the US to isolationism.
“This is not Nixon internationalism,” says Stremlau, who worked for another Republican internationalist, president George H Bush.
“This is pulling up the drawbridge and cutting the US off from the world,” alluding especially to moves such as Trump’s promise to block Muslim migrants and build a wall to keep out Mexicans.
“The US should be engaged with the world,” including Africa, he says, which makes this an important election for the continent.
Part of that isolationism, though, which Stremlau deplores, makes the Republican candidates perhaps less hawkish abroad than Clinton and probably less likely to involve the US in conflicts such as Libya.
They are opposed to building other people’s nations.
Trump, for instance, has at times opposed US involvement in Syria and supported keeping Bashir al-Assad in power – as a better alternative than Islamic State.
Cruz has also opposed US involvement in Syria and Iraq. Rubio’s position on these issues, though, is closer to the current administration’s.
All three of the Republican front runners are also fiscal conservatives and so would probably slash US aid to Africa and elsewhere, Stremlau fears.
“And they are mercantilists – that’s the economic policy which gave us slavery,” he adds.
All three are “America-firsters” who would aggressively promote US economic interests at the expense of other countries, rather than promote open markets and free trade.
“They are bad news, an embarrassment to American democracy and a warning to the rest of the world,” he says.
If one of them makes it to the White House, it will be so bad for US-South Africa relations, Stremlau believes, that the ANC and South Africa in general will have to resuscitate the old engagements they had during the apartheid era with select sympathetic interest groups in the US, such as the African American caucus and the youth, to maintain relations with the US.
Stremlau’s mercantilist criticism certainly applies to Trump, who has vehemently (the only way he knows how) opposed the TPP, TTIP and other free trade agreements because he says they benefit foreign corporations and export US jobs.
He has threatened to take tough action against China for its alleged manipulation of its currency to boost exports.
The other two Republican front runners are more ambivalent about free trade. Cruz backed the TPP in Congress but then said he would seek to renegotiate it if he became president, to secure a better deal for the US.
But he would scrap the Export-Import Bank which could be bad for Africa as it gives credit to investors to invest in places they might otherwise not.
Rubio is the most supportive of free trade, although he also wants to scrap the Export-Import Bank.
For Stremlau, though, South Africa and Africa’s only hope is a Clinton victory. “With Clinton you will have an intelligent interlocutor in the White House to talk to about issues.”
Independent on Saturday