Tomorrow, Friday January 2017, Donald Trump will formally assume office as the 45th President of the United States. At 70, he will be the oldest person to be elected the President of the United States, beating the record set by Ronald Reagan who became President at 69. The billionaire businessman (worth $3.7bn according to Forbes) will also make history as the first person elected President of the USA with zero government or military experience.
But what will his presidency portend for Africa or Nigeria? True, Mr Trump said pretty awful things about Africans and about every other person who disagreed with his political options. But I think we need to come to terms with the reality of his election to the Presidency and the possibility that he may not turn out to be as bad as he was during the campaign period - and that even if he turns out to be as bad, there are still pretty good options available to us. And that is assuming that both the American and global institutions are unable to restrain him!
I have a number of grounds for this cautious optimism:
One, the late Mario Matthew Cuomo, the American Democratic politician who served as the 52nd Governor of New York State for three consecutive terms, famously said “you campaign in poetry. You govern in prose”. In essence, while you can get away with sound bites during campaigns, it will be a different ball game when it comes to actual governance. As President, Trump will need detailed explanation, costing and probably Congressional authorization to translate many of his sound bites into programmes and projects. In a democracy the wheels of governance turn rather slowly and cautiously so converting a sound bite into a government programme is unlikely to be smooth-selling, especially in a highly litigious country like the USA. I liken several of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric to what boxers would call ‘trash talks’ before a bout. The boxers will often boast of what they will do to each other in the ring - sometimes to psyche themselves up or intimidate their opponents or as a marketing gimmick.
Two, the legitimate angst in the country about Donald Trump’s presidency sometimes presupposes that a Hilary Clinton presidency would have been better for the continent. I am not sure about that. During the campaign, I was as much concerned about a Donald Trump presidency as I was about Clinton’s. For one, I see her as very hawkish. I am among those who believe that her obsession with regime change when she was Secretary of State in countries like Syria and Libya helped to unleash forces that culminated in the emergence of the so-called Islamic State. The vacuum created through such regime changes (or efforts to do so in the case of Syria) also led to ready availability of weapons that helped to fuel insurgency in the Sahel region. In this sense, I do not believe that Clinton was good for Africa - just as there were legitimate concerns about Donald Trump’s outbursts
Three, American foreign policy - just like the foreign policy of most countries- could be interpreted using the Concentric Circles theory. Originally developed by sociologist Ernest Burgess in 1925 to explain urban social structures, Ibrahim Gambari helped to popularize its application in the analysis of Nigeria’s foreign policy. As applied to foreign policy, this theory tells us that every country has core national interests (innermost of the concentric circle) and peripheral interests (the outermost circle). America’s core foreign policy concerns have never really been Africa, explaining why most American Presidents visit Africa or formulate their Africa initiatives only at the twilight of their tenures. In this sense, it does not really matter who becomes America’s President because relations with Canada, Europe, South America and the Middle East will always be privileged over relations with Africa.
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