today's Boston Globe
Picking of Powell, Rice spurs a push on
Africa
By Anne E. Kornblut, Globe Staff, 12/25/2000
USTIN, Texas - When Colin L. Powell accepted the nomination for
secretary of state, he embraced the battle for racial equality, thanking
the ''African-Americans who came before me, who never could have risen
to the position because the conditions weren't there.''
But after a lifetime of overcoming barriers, Powell now faces a new set of
racial complexities as he takes command of US strategic interests around
the world, particularly in Africa, a continent wracked by violent conflict and
where 25.3 million people are infected with the AIDS virus.
Joined by Condoleezza Rice, the first black woman chosen as national
security adviser, Powell assumes a role that could have a greater impact on
Africa than almost any other in the world.
Given his commitment to racial equality, African specialists are watching to
see whether Powell brings his influence to bear in helping developing
nations, whose problems have traditionally taken a backseat to those of
America's strategic partners and rivals.
At least one prominent black minister is already pledging to make race an
issue for both Powell and Rice, calling on them to ''remember the land of
their ancestry'' when shaping US policy toward the continent.
And Africa presents an unusual political dilemma for President-elect
George W. Bush: Given his poor showing among black voters, and his
expressed desire to do better among African-Americans, Bush may not
wish to offend supporters of a stronger Africa policy by ignoring the
continent, as he once suggested he might.
''If it was a problem for the Clinton administration, it's going to be an even
bigger problem for the Bush administration,'' said Salih Booker, head of the
Africa Policy Information Center in Washington. ''Under public pressure, I
think there's a real possibility, on at least two issues, the Bush
administration may be forced to do more on Africa than it ever
anticipated.''
Neither Bush nor his running mate, Dick Cheney, has ever expressed much
interest in Africa - and Cheney, who as a congressman voted against
releasing Nelson Mandela from jail and against placing sanctions on
apartheid South Africa, has long been accused of outright antipathy toward
the continent.
Now, the administration is inheriting a thick docket of emergencies in
Africa. Violence in every corner of the continent. A generation of children
ravaged by AIDS. Crushing debts that force more than a dozen countries
to spend more on interest payments than health care and education.
At the same time, the oil industry is booming, with drilling in Angola and
Nigeria becoming ''the most hotly competed oil patches in the world,''
according to one regional specialist. The United States now gets
somewhere between 15 percent and 25 percent of its oil from Africa,
specialists said - making it difficult for Bush to ignore the continent
altogether, considering his ties to the oil industry and his promise to lower
energy prices by creating a ''long-term energy policy.''
When combined, all of those elements could force Bush to rethink his
position on Africa, a place he rarely mentions in his list of international
priorities.
And Powell could make the difference. He has shown a personal interest in
Africa, traveling there in 1999 to oversee the elections in Nigeria. J.
Stephen Morrison, director of the Africa department at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Powell ''knows, he
understands the gravity of the situation,'' and not just from the perspective
of wanting to extract oil.
Still, the early signals from the administration are mixed.
Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president-elect plans to ''work with
our allies to make sure we have stable sources of energy,'' in particular in
the Middle East and Latin America. Asked about Africa, Fleischer said,
''That is not something I'm aware the president-elect addressed during the
campaign.''
During the campaign, Bush barely mentioned Africa, either as a trading
partner or as the epicenter of the biggest global health crisis. And in the
presidential debates, Bush criticized the Clinton administration for
spreading the US military too thin in regions where there was no ''vital
interest'' to America. His approach, he said, would be to limit military
engagement - saying that he, like Clinton, would be reluctant to send troops
to halt even the worst atrocities in Africa, such as the genocide in Rwanda.
Foreign policy specialists believe Bush and Powell learned all too well the
lesson of Somalia, where US soldiers, sent in under the command of the
elder President Bush in 1992, became entangled in fighting there. Eighteen
were killed and 83 were injured in October 1993, prompting Clinton to
withdraw troops from the area.
But neither Bush nor his senior Cabinet members have laid out a detailed
vision of nonmilitary assistance to Africa, an area in which foreign policy
specialists believe the United States could offer tremendous assistance
without risking American lives.
In particular, the specialists said, Bush could begin by increasing the $392
million in US funds now devoted to combating AIDS in developing
countries. No longer viewed on Capitol Hill as a distant humanitarian
problem, the epidemic is now seen as a destabilizing force that could easily
spill into other nations. For that reason, President Clinton reclassified AIDS
in Africa as a national security crisis, and even Senator Jesse Helms, the
chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, agreed to an increase
in AIDS funding.
Will that lead to a swift AIDS initiative by the new Bush administration?
Perhaps not, specialists said. But it could at least put Africa on the priority
list.
''These guys are smart enough to realize that they don't want to be accused
of double standards, of ignoring this happening in a black setting while
doing something in a white setting,'' said Morrison, who worked under
Madeleine Albright at the State Department.
''They're not going to be able to ignore it, even though they put it in the
category of `nonstrategic,''' said Herman J. Cohen, a former assistant
secretary of state for Africa affairs who now runs a consulting firm in
Virginia, Cohen and Woods International. ''HIV/AIDS is a major
humanitarian disaster, and compassionate conservatives don't want to
ignore that.''
At the same time, Africa specialists are looking for signs the new
administration will bolster support for UN efforts on the continent, where
UN troops are engaged in a tumultuous peacekeeping effort in Sierra
Leone.
There are a host of other possible nonmilitary approaches as well: from
helping African nations to obtain drugs that block transmission of AIDS
from mothers to children to persuading American companies to support
embargoes on minerals that fuel wars in Angola and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, and to increasing the rate of debt forgiveness that
now forces at least a dozen nations to pay more in interest than on
combating AIDS, which is in turn killing an entire generation.
''I think they'll try to keep it on the back burner, but they're going to have to
deal with it in some way,'' Cohen said of the new Bush administration.
''There will be a groundswell of opinion.''
The groundswell has already begun, at least at the grassroots level, with the
Rev. Eugene Rivers, the Boston minister who last Wednesday was one of
many clergymen who met with Bush to discuss faith-based charities' role in
society. During that meeting, Rivers brought up Africa, asking Bush how he
would handle the mounting AIDS crisis.
Rivers said he posed the question about a half-hour into the session as
Bush was calling on the clergy room to solicit their concerns. ''I said,
`President-elect Bush, you don't have to answer the question now, but
what will a compassionate conservative foreign policy look like for
Africa?'''
Bush, said Rivers, decided to take the challenge. ''I want to answer it
now,'' Bush said. ''Look, Colin Powell and Condi Rice and I have been in
conversations, and Africa and the AIDS crisis has to be a high priority.
We're going to talk about trade, about health issues. We're going to talk
about the accountability of donor nations and of recipients.''
For Rivers, the initial response from Bush was satisfactory. ''That was a
reasonable response,'' he said. ''This wasn't the State of the Union, and I
wasn't looking for a policy memo.''
Still, Rivers is only cautiously trusting of the new Bush administration,
saying he reserves the right to pressure Bush, Powell and Rice. If the new
White House fails to take action, he said, black ministers around the nation
are prepared to ''go to war with the administration over Africa.''
''Frankly, we would be shocked to discover that they were indifferent to
the suffering of 700 million people on a continent from which their
ancestors came,'' Rivers said. ''Africa is the land of their ancestry. And
while they shouldn't be unobjective, they can't be indifferent. If they are, we
will raise that as an issue.''
He added: ''If the Republicans want to fight against defenseless children,
Jesus, and the black church, they're going to have a lot of fun over the next
four years. There are too many inflamed liberals looking for a reason to
fight.'' |
