"America’s back — you can count on us." That’s what Joe Biden promised voters he would tell world leaders as his first order of business if he was chosen by the people to be the winner of the November presidential elections.
Now, as he assembles a cabinet that places allies and diplomacy ahead of division and discord, he is positioning himself to lead the US, making good on his word.
After a 48-year career in public service, the president-elect will be plotting his own course for the country. He and his foreign policy team will attempt to pull the US back from isolation on the world stage, establish a form of liberal internationalism and restore the democratic ideals lost during Donald Trump’s four years in the White House.
Where Trump’s administration largely ignored Africa in its foreign policy, Biden, 78, and his running mate, Kamala Harris, 56, emphasised that the US relationship with Africa remains high on the Democrats’ priority list on the campaign trail, noting the importance of the African diaspora and laying out an African policy that commits to "supporting democratic institutions on the continent; advancing lasting peace and security; promoting economic growth, trade and investment; and supporting sustainable development". The detailed four-point plan includes a reform programme aimed at "restoring and reinvigorating diplomatic relations with African governments and regional institutions, including the AU", and ensuring representation of the African diaspora in US foreign service appointments.
International relations & co-operation minister Naledi Pandor says: "SA remains committed to improving global governance institutions so that multilateral approaches to meeting the challenges in the international arena are dealt with through dialogue, negotiations and joint actions by governments."
John Stremlau, honorary professor in Wits University’s department of international relations, believes the Biden-Harris "approach to US-African policy is an extremely interesting variation on past US foreign policy for the continent".
"As the presidency was won with significant African American support, black voters are demanding change and representation at all levels of government, including the cabinet," he tells the FM.
Harris will become the first black woman to serve as US vice-president, a critical selection, and a reason that more than 90% of black women voted for the Democrats in the presidential race, according to early exit polls by the Associated Press’s VoteCast.
"It was also Biden who reached out to world leaders with different priorities, including those in India and Chile, as well as … President Cyril Ramaphosa," he adds, referring to Biden’s November 17 phone call with Ramaphosa.
Biden’s act of extending an olive branch to the only African member of the G20, as well as his promise to renew engagement towards Africa, was well received by Ramaphosa. "President Ramaphosa said he looked forward to a strong partnership at a bilateral level" and between the US and Africa, noted Tyrone Seale, acting spokesperson to the president.
Pandor says: "One area in which SA can assist the US to establish a stronger presence in Africa is trade and investment. Agoa [the African Growth & Opportunity Act], which is scheduled to expire in 2025, has been instrumental in increasing trade between the US and Africa.
"Agoa has assisted 38 eligible African countries by giving them preferential market access to the US since the law was passed in May 2000 by US Congress. As a result, African countries have implemented some market-related reforms, increased foreign earnings and exports, and respected human and workers’ rights."
Key to Biden’s foreign policy ambitions will be his secretary of state. He has already nominated Antony Blinken for the top foreign policy post. It’s a choice that suggests a return to a rules-based approach to international engagement, rather than the xenophobic and nationalist "America First" diktat that underscored Trump’s presidency.
In January 2018, Trump infamously alluded to African immigrants, preferring not to have "all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here" to the US. He was only the second president in more than three decades not to have visited Africa. Following a January 2020 visa and travel ban on four additional African countries, Trump sent Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, to represent him on the continent. The visit resulted in creating mixed messages concerning US-Africa policy, as well as a declaration that a US presence prevented further Chinese trade, investment and influence.
In a reversal of US foreign policy, Blinken — a former deputy secretary of state, principal deputy national security adviser in Barack Obama’s administration and national security adviser to then vice-president Biden — is widely expected to forge new alliances, confront authoritarians and ensure the US is positioned to compete with its Chinese and Russian counterparts in the realms of trade, energy and intellectual property.
"A great deal of foreign interaction with Africa will unfortunately not reach the level of the president because these are such unusual times," says Stremlau. With Biden soon having to take responsibility for the US’s coronavirus response — more than 300,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 — "it will be left to Blinken to deal with African interests. In particular, SA must be modest … when planning targets of opportunity for partnerships that attract investment and meet US interests," he says.
Ronak Gopaldas, director of business development at Signal Risk and fellow at the Gordon Institute of Business Science’s Centre for African Management & Markets, believes Africa’s prospects generally will be boosted by the "improved stability, certainty and co-operation in the international order" arising from a Biden presidency.
"The prospect of a major fiscal stimulus, alongside accommodative monetary policy, could act as a tailwind for risk assets — including African currencies and bonds," he said recently, replying to questions from news channel Al Jazeera English.
It is a policy programme Blinken will be tasked with driving. In a scathing 2019 Washington Post column he wrote with Robert Kagan, fellow at the Brookings Institution think-tank, he argued: "Whatever formula we choose, we must convince rivals and adversaries that trying to achieve their objectives by force will fail and that they have more to gain through peaceful co- operation and economic development than through aggression." However, Blinken and Kagan admitted in their column — a blistering indictment of Trump’s failed unilateralism — that, with the end of American exceptionalism and a changing global role, Biden would still be hard-pressed to reposition the US as the world’s most influential actor in war and peace.
The nomination of Linda Thomas- Greenfield as US ambassador to the UN will ensure that a black, female voice is heard when the extended National Security Council discusses the US theatre of operations, and support of its allies, within multilateral frameworks.
"It was important that Biden’s nomination of Thomas-Greenfield to be his UN ambassador will again include cabinet rank. She is not only identified as an Africanist, but was also director-general of the US foreign service, and [she] brings broad foreign policy stature as well," says Stremlau. "Knowing the ambassador in a personal and professional capacity, I am glad she is headed to the UN, after Trump’s evident disdain for the world body. With Biden’s backing, she could press for progress in multilateral co-operation. But it is far too early to tell whether she can gain bipartisan support for greater US funding for vital UN operations."
Thomas-Greenfield, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the state department’s bureau of African affairs, grew up poor in the racially segregated American South. Her town, she said in a 2019 TEDx Talk, had been frequented in the 1960s and 1970s by the white supremacist hate group the Ku Klux Klan.
After witnessing genocide in Rwanda first-hand, Thomas-Greenfield became motivated to right the wrongs in Africa. Her decades-long tenure on the continent included diplomatic stints in Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria and The Gambia. Now, she will be at the UN, assuming the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council on only her 40th day on the job. She will be able to champion Africa, a reprise as the top US diplomat responsible for engaging the continent while in the Obama-Biden administration.
Back in 1861-1865, president Abraham Lincoln assembled a "team of rivals" — a cabinet with diverse ideological leanings that allowed him to bring to a close the US Civil War and avoid a national collapse, despite deep divisions and racial tensions.
From January 20, Biden will have to do much the same.
Political commentators have identified parallels between Lincoln and the president-elect, with both engaging "in a battle for the soul of this nation". It is a phrase Biden repeated often on the campaign trail, most memorably in an October speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of a major Civil War battle and Lincoln’s famous 1863 address.
As Lincoln repaired a nation under siege, so Biden must now mediate a national conversation in search of a more perfect union. In his November 7 victory speech, Biden — like Lincoln — challenged America’s "better angels to prevail".
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, Harvard Business School executive fellow for executive education, notes in Fortune magazine: "A visionary leader … puts together an extraordinary team that will help the leader come up with the right strategies and policies for the right times, properly adjust them as circumstances change, and, most of all, successfully implement them."
To this end, he argues Biden’s cabinet must have "persuasion, influence, political currency and collaborative ability" — and an ambitious first 100 days in office — if it is to resurrect the US’s global reputation.
Daniel Benaim, a former foreign policy speechwriter for Biden, believes the incoming president is more than up to the task — even if it has been complicated by the simultaneous intersection of a health pandemic, climate crisis, global economic depression, rampant gender inequality and casteism.
"He understands what it means to sit across the table from the political leader of another country and to think about how to reach and persuade that person," he says.
However, Robert Gates, defence secretary in the George W Bush and Obama administrations, has strong reservations about the president-elect’s foreign policy decision-making. He argues in his 2014 memoir, Duty, that Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades".
But Biden will not be in it alone. In Harris, Blinken, Thomas-Greenfield, Jake Sullivan, 44, youngest national security adviser in US history, former UN ambassador and national security adviser Susan Rice, retired army general Lloyd Austin as defence secretary and former secretary of state John Kerry, tipped to be the first-ever special presidential envoy for climate as a member of the national security council, Biden has assembled the most qualified foreign policy, defence and national security team in more than a generation.
He will have access to tested, established voices in a diverse cabinet striving to correct the course of US foreign policy while reaching out to allies and adversaries alike.
Obama bestowed a promise on his running mate, that Biden was the last person in the room on every important presidential decision. Now, as Biden re-emerges on the global stage, a new cabinet will ensure the president is fully briefed during his time in office, and true to Biden form, entrusted as the last person in that room.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.