The Place of Cameroon in US Policy toward Central Africa after the Events of September 11 2001

3. US interests in the sub-region: The intensification of humanitarian interests

One of the inescapable goals of the US in the sub-region of Central Africa is democratization, human rights and disease, here put under humanitarian interests. The question in the minds of US policy makers toward Africa is this: how will Africa be integrated into world economy without human rights? That is there is no development and economic progress without human rights and democracy.^188(*) Speaking about this, the Director of the Office of African Affairs, Office of the Secretary of Defense declared in 2002 just after the events of 9/11, that «One thing we have learned in trying to build African capacity for support and humanitarian relief, it is important to build self-sustaining capacity.»^189(*)

US interests in Africa has been largely shaped by humanitarian concerns. The Clinton Administration divided US interest around the world into three categories; vital interests involving issues of national survival and that of key allies, important national interests relating to economics or trade with key regions in the world, and finally humanitarian interest - democracy, disease and respect for law. According to Rugumamu, «Sub Saharan Africa fell into this last category»^190(*). This assertion makes meaning when we think of the level of involvement of American officials in African issues, the amount of money spent on Africa by the different administration. Similar conclusions were drawn by Lyman when he wrote that «US interests in Africa are usually framed in terms of humanitarian and moral concern over poverty, war, and natural disaster as a reflection of the African American population in the United States, whose advocacy on behalf of Africa needs to be respected».^191(*) But Lyman advocates for a radical change in a new approach to terrorism.

If we define democracy as a way of selecting the government by competitive election involving reasonable political transition, and liberalism as a set of values and institutions, including the rule of law, an independent judiciary, an honest and impartial civil service, a strong respect for human rights and private property,^192(*) we will conclude that there is little liberal democracy in Central Africa. However, democracy can exist without liberalism and vice-versa. In this case, it could be said that of all the regions in Africa, Central Africa exhibits a particular lack of both.

US efforts to build democracy in Africa seem not to be just rhetoric, but a real engagement, a central belief in American political history. American deployment to encourage democracy, facilitate the organization of free and fair elections, build a strong and dynamic civil society, foster the respect for human rights, initiate reforms, is symbolical of how much the US policy-maker believes in these values. In this light, the issue of democracy and the rule of law are hardly absent on the agenda when American officials have to meet African leaders. Almost fifty of the fifty-three countries in Africa have received American aid for democracy and good governance.

Building democracy is more than elections and politics. It involves judicial reforms, a better administration of justice, creation of local resource centers, partnership between the private and the public sectors and improving the condition of women and young girls. In considering the interrelationship between liberalism and democracy, we should recognize that the former is the precondition of a successful implementation of the latter, rather than vice versa. If not, democratic governments can assume intrusive and oppressive power, in the same way as Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stewart Mill worried about the 'tyranny of the majority'.^193(*)

It is for these reasons that Peace Corps Volunteers work in Central Africa to help strengthen the agricultural sector, which will eventually provide food security. The Peace Corps had an estimated 2,700 Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) serving in 26 sub-Saharan countries in 2005, up from an estimated 1,900 in 2002, because of the Administration's Peace Corps expansion program.^194(*) Food security initiatives in the region focus on agricultural diversification, commercialization of farm products, increase in foreign investment in the agricultural sector, fight against parasites that destroy farm products, while widening access to modern farming methods. An enormous amount of money is consecrated to this domain. Two geopolitical reasons explain US investment in this area. First, food insecurity is a cause to disease and socio-political unrest (which threatens US security on the domino theory perspective). The second reason is that, as Nye explained above, hard power has to be associated with soft power. Investment in oil and other resources, as well as military activities are rather repugnant to public opinion, while investment in the social sector brings about appeasement to public minds. Mrs. Frazer expressed this American conception of inter-link between poverty and terrorist activities when she declared during the symposium mentioned above: «The President explicitly said that poverty does not create terrorists. But poverty does create conditions in which terrorists can flourish, and to which youths in particular are quite vulnerable.»^195(*) Poverty alleviation is therefore directly linked to US national security and has constituted one of the areas in which humanitarian interests have increased in Africa.

Agriculture does not receive as much attention as health issues. The fight against infectious diseases such as malaria and AIDS constitute one of the principal humanitarian objectives of the US in Central Africa. The consideration of sub-Saharan Africa on the Western security agenda is new. Before the events of 9/11, the huge human toll of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa was insufficient to seriously engage Western security communities. In was in 1997 that a national program to fight against infectious diseases was launched in the US, followed by the Clinton Administration's declaration of AIDS as `a national security problem' in 2000. The experience of 9/11, when terrorists attacked the US from safe harbors within the failed state of Afghanistan, demonstrated the threat that failed states pose to powerful countries. The 2002 US national security strategy states clearly that «America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones»^196(*). But following the events of 9/11 and global change in US strategy, this program received more funds to fight against malaria. President Bush announced a $15b USD plan for HIV/AIDS for sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. Most of the countries in the 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to benefit from this fund are in the Gulf of Guinea.^197(*) This plan is geared at providing anti-retroviral drugs to at least two million patients, avoid at least seven million new infections and carter for about ten million infected persons, especially orphans, widows and other fragile persons.

US fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa must be understood from a security perspective. The devastating impact of the pandemic in Africa is depriving countries of the ability to gather and field military and public service/private sector personnel. As Scott Evertz put it, «The pandemic in Africa, quite frankly, is threatening the ability of nations to do so [that is fulfill republican duties], and this represents a direct specific threat to their [African countries] ability to operate as effective modern nations.»^198(*) How would these nations then ensure national defense and domestic tranquility, not to mention regional security? Reading AIDS just as a health problem does not bring out these security implications because, in Scott's words, «it is rapidly having negative strategic implications in many African nations». If African nations fail or are devastated by the disease, it is not going to remain an African problem. In a globalized world where one cannot differentiate between domestic and international threats, other peoples are threatened by the pandemic. In US minds, as expressed by Scott, «At the more direct level, the continuing presence of HIV in Africa and around the world presents a public health threat to all nations, the US included.»^199(*) In this sense, Africa's health and America's health are intertwined and must be tackled corporately. After all, failed states provide enough power vacuums for terrorists to infiltrate.

We have only presented here what America intends to do. It is another question altogether whether they are succeeding. Though one could say that American intervention in Germany and Japan produced liberal democracies, one would not say so about other regions in the world. It has dominated the whole of Latin America and the Caribbean for more than two centuries, occupying Haiti and Nicaragua for several years. Harris Owen however notes critically, «Yet from 1900 to this day the region has not produced one genuine, stable democracy.»^200(*) If this bleak record is associated with the failure in effect democracy in the Philippines after 35 years, then there is room to question American success in implementing democracy in Central Africa. Most of these countries, as is the case with Central African countries, did not have liberal institutions as Germany and Japan did.

* ¹⁸⁸ Larry Diamond argues that economic success in Africa is impossible without political reform and offers a number of interesting and perhaps controversial policy recommendations to alter the incentives facing African leaders and increase the costs associated with non-democratic rule. Michael Bratton and Robert Mattes argue that uneven progress toward economic reform may have negative consequences for satisfaction with democracy, concluding that the survival of democracy in Africa faces serious challenges: endemic corruption, the trend toward the regionalization of conflict, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. See these arguments in Gyimah-Boadi (ed) Democratic Reform in Africa: The Quality of Progress, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004. However, several examples in Asia show that democracy is not necessarily a pre-requisite for development. In Africa, countries such as Benin, Mali, etc., which have acceptable democratic institutions, are not necessarily developed.

* ¹⁸⁹ Ms. T heresa Whelan, op, cit.

* ¹⁹⁰ Severine Rugumamu, «Africa Peacekeeping» in Donald Rothchild and Edmond J. Keller (eds) op, cit. p24.

* ¹⁹¹ Princeton N. Lyman, «A Strategic Approach to Terrorism», in Donald Rothchild and Edmond J. Keller (eds) op, cit. p49.

* ¹⁹² See Owen Harries, «A Democratic World», op, cit.

* ¹⁹³ This notion has been adequately explained by Harris Owen, «A Democratic World», op, cit.

* ¹⁹⁴ For further information, see CRS Report RS21168, The Peace Corps: Current Issues, by Curt Tarnoff

* ¹⁹⁵ Her remarks were made in 2002.

* ¹⁹⁶ White House. (2002) The national security strategy of the United States. Washington (D. C.): White House. Available: http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html. For a detailed discussion on the strategic implications of HIV/AIDS, see Feldbaum H, Lee K, Patel P (2006) The National Security Implications of HIV/AIDS. PLoS Med 3(6): e171 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0030171

* ¹⁹⁷ Cameroon is one of the rare countries in sub-Saharan Africa where the US has installed a Center for Disease Control - CDC, a research structure that is working on a possible vaccine for HIV/AIDS with a center in Limbe and another in Yaoundé.

* ¹⁹⁸ Scott Evertz is Director of the White House Office on National AIDS Policy and was speaking during the symposium organized by The African American Institute in Washington, DC on April 24, 2002 on «Is Africa important to the US? Perspectives from the Bush administration»

* ¹⁹⁹ Idem.

* ²⁰⁰ Owen Harris, «A Democratic World», op, cit.