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Africa: McCain's Vision for Freedom, Peace and Prosperity

J. Peter Pham

29 September 2008

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guest column

Washington, DC — J. Peter Pham, a foreign policy and national security advisor to the campaign to elect Senator John McCain as President of the United States, outlines McCain’s approach to Africa.

While the many challenges faced by Africa—political instability and violent conflict, economic stagnation and poverty, disease and malnutrition—are well-known, Senator McCain has long believed that the continent also holds incredible promise, reminding his audience earlier this year in his speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, for example, that “we must refocus on the bright promise offered by many countries on that continent,” rather than being fixated on its problems. And he has repeatedly pledged to stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends in Africa who share our faith in the God-given dignity of our common humanity, the liberating power of human freedom, and the uplifting wealth-producing potential of free markets.

Republicans believe that, together in partnership, Americans and Africans can promote a true renaissance of liberty, security, and prosperity that can be shared by all the nations from the Mediterranean to the Cape of Good Hope and from the Gulf of Guinea to the Horn of Africa. We acknowledge, however, that the problems confronting Africa can only be overcome in partnership with Africans.

We therefore applaud the historic steps which President George W. Bush has taken to engage the nations and leaders of the continent. Not only has the President visited South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Botswana, Uganda, Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, and Liberia—becoming the first President of the United States travel to sub-Saharan Africa twice during his presidency—but the current administration, working with Congress, launched a number of significant initiatives whose impact will be felt for years to come.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), established in 2004, is perhaps the most important innovation in foreign assistance in a generation. Access to the MCC’s Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) is premised upon the recognition that generous grants of development aid are for naught if the recipients lack a democratic polity and basic capacity for good governance.

By linking eligibility for MCA funds to demonstrated commitment to policies that promote political and economic freedom, investments in education and health, control of corruption, and respect for civil liberties and the rule of law by performing well on seventeen different policy indicators, the MCC reaffirms our belief that nurturing freedom is an essential component of the process of development.

We are greatly encouraged at the number of African nations which, by embracing economic, political, and social reform, have become eligible for MCA funding, either as “threshold countries” or full-fledged “compact countries,” including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

Republicans believe that over the long term the path to prosperity for Africa lies in Africans becoming full participants in the global marketplace. Thus we also applaud the Bush administration for working with Congress to consolidate the comprehensive trade and investment policy for Africa introduced in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) of 2000, which substantially lowered commercial barriers with the United States and allowed sub-Saharan African countries to qualify for trade benefits such as having goods from their nascent manufacturing sectors imported into the United States tariff-free.

As a direct result of AGOA, for example, trade between the United States and Africa has increased several times over since 2001. A McCain Administration would not stop there, however, but also work to help Africans better utilize and more broadly benefit from the opportunities offered by AGOA with renewed emphasis on fostering those small-to-medium-sized enterprises that best empower economies of all sizes.

We would also look to go beyond AGOA, opening up additional trade opportunities for African economies, calling for a concerted effort to mobilize the private sector to invest in Africa, creating new opportunities not only for American business, but also for Africans to achieve their own dreams. In this regard, we also call for an intensified effort by African governments to eliminate unnecessary barriers and disincentives that continue to discourage both African and foreign private investors.

On the question of economic opportunities, Senator McCain strongly believes that it is not only in our national interest, but also the right thing to do, if we put an end to subsidy-ridden U.S. agricultural policies—including some which were unfortunately continued in the farm bill legislated earlier this year, which Senator McCain voted against—which benefit a wealthy minority of American farmers at the expense of American consumers and African farmers.

In contrast to his Democratic opponent, who has not articulated a consistent position on the question of these wasteful subsidies, Senator John McCain has a longstanding and principled opposition to the payments which he repeated this year—in a campaign swing through Des Moines, no less—when it made it clear that he would have vetoed the farm bill if he were president “because I believe that subsidies are unnecessary.”

Moving away from just the cotton subsidy, for example, would have a direct impact on global welfare, including some of the poorest countries in Africa where the fiber accounts for at least two-thirds of agricultural revenues—places like Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali, which stand at the precipice because of the current inflation of prices. Were this subsidy, which costs American taxpayers between $3-5 billion annually, to be eliminated, world cotton prices would increase by six to 14 percent, while West African cotton farmers in particular would see a five to 12 percent increase in their incomes, substantially increasing the living standards of some 10 million people.

While the absolute numbers involved—$46 to $114 per family annually—seem paltry, in the sub-region that much money is the equivalent of school tuition for two children as well as ordinary healthcare for an entire family. It should be added that the cotton subsidy makes a special mockery of American foreign assistance: last year, for example, Burkina Faso received approximately $18 million in aid through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), while the economic impact of the federal cotton subsidy actually drained at least $40 million from the country’s economy.

Republicans strongly support pursuing the ultimate goal of energy independence for the United States. However, in the meantime we must seek to diversify sources for such resources as we must import. To this end, we recognize the importance of Africa’s vast natural wealth to our own national security and endeavor to work with Africans both to protect access to it and to ensure that Africa benefits from its contribution to the world economy.

We view any third party efforts to impose monopolistic and other unfair trade regimes as distinctly unfavorable actions, prejudicial not only to Africans, but also to relations with the United States. While we are prepared to engage with all who would join us in contributing to a freer, more peaceful, and more prosperous Africa, we also serve notice that those who would exploit their ties to unaccountable regimes for profit or who would enable such regimes to oppress their people will find that such actions will affect not only their standing in the court of global public opinion, but also their relations with the United States.

Africa faces many problems which are beyond its capacity to deal with alone. HIV/Aids and malaria are but two of the health challenges which disproportionately affect Africans and which America’s interests and ideals compel us to act energetically to help overcome. President Bush made fighting HIV/Aids a major priority, with 12 of the 15 focus countries in the $15 billion President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) being in Africa, including Botswana, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

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