Last week President Trump invited reporters to listen in on a call intended to celebrate the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel, a diplomatic achievement that comes with more than a few complications. During the course of the conversation with the Sudanese and Israeli prime ministers, the president of the United States took it upon himself to casually issue a bellicose threat to Ethiopia on behalf of Egypt and its president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a man Trump has referred to as “my favorite dictator.”
Seemingly miffed by the failure of his administration’s clumsy effort to broker a deal on the use of Nile waters now that Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam has become a reality, Trump posited that Egypt “will end up blowing up the dam. . . . they’ll blow up that dam. And they have to do something.. . . They should have stopped it long before it was started.” He also reiterated that he is holding up U.S. assistance to Ethiopia to pressure its government to agree to his administration’s preferred deal.
The notion of casually inciting war in the strategically important Horn of Africa is sickening. The idea that the United States can successfully bully Ethiopia into a deal is ahistorical nonsense—a misreading of the stakes for Addis Ababa and an insult noted throughout the continent. But worse, the president is apparently completely oblivious to the United States’ own interests. The United States doesn’t provide assistance to Ethiopia out of sheer altruism; rather, officials from both parties have long recognized that a stable and successful Ethiopia is critical to the security of the region and an important part of any vision for cooperative, mutually beneficial U.S.-African relations in the future.
If President Trump is re-elected, it is difficult to imagine a change of course. But a Biden Administration would also face the immediate consequences of the damage done by the Trump years. Getting the United States on the firm footing required to meet a more assertive, transforming Africa, finding common ground, and advancing U.S. policy will be a real challenge, and it will need to be addressed immediately.
Unfortunately, history suggests that this might be difficult. New presidential administrations have struggled to get their Africa teams in place quickly. Most egregiously, President Trump’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Tibor Nagy, didn’t take office until July of 2018, a year and a half after Trump was inaugurated. A new U.S. administration will have to move fast with a trusted and empowered team and a clear vision that rejects both business-as-usual and retrograde paradigms. Africa is poised to play a more significant role on the global stage. For the United States to meet the moment, policymakers will first have to climb out of the hole dug by President Trump.
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*Michelle Gavin tracks political and security developments across sub-Saharan Africa. Most weekdays on CFR.
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