The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

tical support and a long-term commit- ment to supply military advisers and arms. On the whole, however, the Cold War played a secondary role to the consistent U.S. concentration on economic devel- opment in Africa. A look at the statistics reveals that most U.S. economic assis- tance went to nonaligned African govern- ments that refused to take sides in the Cold War. Looking back, we have to remember that we were working hard to keep African nations from collapse. Regrettably, impor- tant issues like human rights, good governance and democracy had to wait for better days. Special American friends like Mobutu and Doe were rewarded for their support, but mainly with modest polit- ical and military funding. It was clear that economic development funding in these two countries was useless; therefore very little was given. In addition, many critics of U.S. policy conveniently overlook the fact that virtually all African countries receiv- ing our assistance were corrupt and authoritarian in those days, each in its own way. Into the 1990s With a view to eliminating obstacles to economic development, the George H.W. Bush administration con- centrated its Africa policy on conflict resolution, interven- ing diplomatically in seven civil wars —- Ethiopia, Angola, Mozambique, Sudan, Liberia, Somalia and Rwanda. By the time Bush 41 left office in January 1993, Ethiopia and Mozambique were in post-conflict transition, thanks sub- stantially to U.S. diplomacy. (The other five conflicts raged on into the Clinton administration, which continued intensive diplomacy in the search for peace, with mixed results.) Bush also initiated systematic support for democratization in Africa for the first time. Bill Clinton’s presidency was notable for two major ini- tiatives in Africa, one military and one economic. Observing that African countries were bearing the major burden of supplying troops to U.N. peacekeeping and enforcement operations on the continent, the Clinton administration realized the importance of assisting them to do so. It created the African Crisis Response Initiative to train African military units at the battalion level for inter- vention in conflict situations at the request of the U.N. or the African Union. ACRI proved to be quite successful and continues to the present, though it is now known as the African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance pro- gram. In the economic sector, the Clinton administration worked with Congress to pass the African Growth and Oppor- tunity Act, a trade program allowing eligi- ble African countries to export products to the U.S. duty-free with no require- ment to reciprocate. The purpose was to make African products competitive so that investors would set up enterprises there, creating jobs and bringing in rev- enue. This program quickly became popular, attracting investors to a dozen African countries for the production of apparel under contract to major U.S. retailers. However, AGOA’s overall impact was modest, and its biggest beneficiary was South Africa, which already had a strong industrial base, especially in automobile assembly. It also could not resolve the main obstacles facing investors in Africa: inadequate infrastructure and the high cost of doing business there (e.g., utility pricing, unreliable services, port inefficiencies and low worker productivity). A major blot on the Clinton record was his refusal to allow U.N. intervention to put a stop to genocide in Rwanda during the period April-June 1994, when approx- imately 800,000 ethnic Tutsis were murdered. (Admittedly, this major error in judgment was due in part to the harsh criticism the administration had endured over the disaster in Somalia the previous year.) To his credit, Clinton later went to Rwanda and apologized for his fail- ure to intervene. Picking Winners The George W. Bush administration has paid a surpris- ingly large amount of attention to Africa, especially consid- ering its understandable preoccupation with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the threat of worldwide Islamist extremism. It quickly implemented a policy of selectivity, singling out African economic performers with the poten- tial to forge ahead into the 12-to-18-percent growth rates needed for breakthrough economic development. The vehicle for this new policy is the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a semi-independent agency that selects win- ners of large five-year financing packages on the basis of independently monitored political, economic and social F O C U S 22 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 8 The 1988 New York Accords were a triumph for U.S. diplomacy on several fronts.