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

CHAPTER ONE: FACTORS WITHIN CAMEROON

FOR US INTEREST IN CAMEROON

In traditional interdependence talk, trans-nationalism creates an environment in which domestic-external realms intertwine. In this case, «The line between domestic and foreign policy becomes blurred».^81(*) This implies that what happens in the domestic affairs of a state could and usually does shape the foreign policy of other states vis-à-vis the former. James Rosenau defines transnationalism as «the processes whereby international relations conducted by governments have been supplemented by relations among private individuals, groups, and societies that can and do have important consequences for the course of events.»^82(*) The whole idea here developed is that domestic politics influences foreign policy making. More so, domestic decisions taken in particular states determine the behavior of third party states. It therefore appears that changes within the state of Cameroon are bound to influence the way the US sees and treats Cameroon. In this sense, the history of relations between the two countries, Cameroon's political stability, Cameroon's natural resources, her geopolitical position, her multinational engagements and her cultural prowess, are all factors that need to be reviewed to better understand the place Cameroon occupies in US minds after the 9/11 events.

Section 1: History of US presence in Cameroon as an incentive

The trends of interests observable from 9/11 in Cameroon US relations are a culmination of exchanges between the two political entities for more than a century. Africa, though, has not always been important to the US as E.J. Keller noted, «Africa has never been central to US foreign policy»^83(*) because of its minimal role in world affairs and economic exchanges for several centuries now. Keller dates US relations with Africa back to the 18th century: \u8220°Some US involvement in the continent can be traced to 1789, official US attitudes toward Africa have been marked by at worst indifference and at best neglect\u8221#177;.^84(*) That is why James Dao calls Africa `the neglected stepchild of American diplomacy'.^85(*)

From the late 1890s when the first US missionary reached Cameroonian soil to the end of the Cold War, Cameroon maintained fairly good relations with the US. However, special trends were observable from the 1990s when bilateral relations between the two countries were strained. A significant change was however observable from the turn of the century. Below, we will look at the nature of the history of relations between Cameroon and the US and examine the internal changes in Cameroon that contributed to those changes in US attitude.

1. The period before diplomatic relations

The history of relations between the US and Central African countries dates as far back as the slave trade years. In those years, several Africans were deported to work in plantations in the New World (present day America). Though the exact number of slaves from the continent is highly disputed, and that it is not known how many people came from Central Africa (and worst still from Cameroon), it is likely that several men and women from the region worked in the US hundreds of years before European colonization. This slave trade linkage still stands as an element in relations between the US and Cameron. The linkage works through the Black community that makes up part of American life. The various Black syndicates, NGOs, pressure groups and lobbying forces such as the Congressional Black Caucus militate for US moral responsibilities toward Africa in issues such as humanitarian intervention, human right promotion, democracy, disease, etc.

Very different relations existed in the late 1890s through the actions of American missionaries towards the continent. Mead observed recently that «Religion has always been a major force in U.S. politics, policy, identity, and culture. Religion shapes the nation's character, helps form America's ideas about the world, and influences the ways Americans respond to events beyond their borders.»^86(*) This is not because religion is an official US policy, though the US government is committed to religious freedom, but because the government is bound to protect its citizens. More so, it happens in foreign policy analysis that governments develop interests in particular regions because of the path-finding, exploratory and evangelical work done by missionaries. Evangelical Christians have long played a prominent role in US public life, contributing to a tension between the country's religious impulses and secular leanings.

This hubris has driven the American nation since its foundation, given that the U.S. religious tradition grew out of the sixteenth-century Reformations of England and Scotland. Mead, in this respect observes that «Religion explains both Americans' sense of themselves as a chosen people and their belief that they have a duty to spread their values throughout the world.»^87(*) It is in religion that one of the most important driving forces of US foreign policy, Manifest Destiny, finds explanation.^88(*) America is not only going to be a beacon but a crusader of Christian values.

It is in this sense (for Christian evangelization) that the first American landed on Cameroonian soil. Deutchoua identifies Dr. Aldophus Clemens Good of the Presbyterian Church of America to have reached Cameroonian soil from Gabon in 1890.^89(*) After visiting several Cameroonian localities, he preached the Word of God, created friendship and attempted at integration into the Cameroonian society, before settling at Efoulan in Yaoundé. Before dying of acute malaria in 1894, Dr. Good implanted the first American Presbyterian Mission Station at Efoulan, and was succeeded by Evangelists Frazer and Johnson. As Deutchoua concludes, «So did Dr. Good lay the foundations of the American Presbyterian Mission and consequently the presence of the US in Cameroon.»^90(*)

It is however more appropriate to say that Cameroon was almost inexistent in US minds (at least the public and the government). Relations between pre-independent Cameroon and the US were read within two paradigms, anti-colonialism and an application of the Monroe Doctrine. As missionaries cared about the spiritual welfare of Cameroonians, Cameroon shared with the American people a similar colonial past. Though there are hardly any people on earth who have never been colonized, many Americans sympathized with anti-colonialist activists in Cameroon well before World War II. Though US history abounds with cases of imperialism (San Diego, Hawaii, Philippines, etc.), and that the US averted only some form of colonialism,^91(*) it is important to note that America never supported European colonialism in Africa.^92(*) In relation to the Monroe Doctrine, US preference to remain locked in the western hemisphere, asserting «...as a principle... that the American continents, by the free and independent condition they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects of future colonization by any European power»^93(*), has consisted of the so-called isolationism. This perception of IR contributed in keeping them out of Cameroon.

Official relations with government implications toward Cameroon were noticed at the dawn of WWI. This happened when the US government signed conventions in 1919 with the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon to get WWI veterans employed in the social and religious sectors in Cameroon. This accord opened the way for several doctors, engineers and teachers from the US and other countries such as Canada and Switzerland, to come to Cameroon.^94(*) The 13^th February 1923 treaty signed between France and the United States further consolidated the intentions of the US government to invest in religious and social projects in Cameroon and marked the beginning of the arrival of a significant amount of US citizens on Cameroonian territory.^95(*)

After WWII, relations between Cameroon and the US were managed in the general context of US policy toward Africa. The US needed to get more directly involved in what was happening in this European backyard. In 1951, US vice consul in Leopoldville (headquarters of Afrique Équatoriale Française - AEF) visited Cameroon to talk about security issues as well as the opening of a US consulate in Douala. Closer relations between the two entities could be explained at the time by the fear of communist threats in Africa, reasons why a percentage of the Marshall Plan funds were destined for European possessions in Africa among which was Cameroon.

Between WWII and 1960, US-Cameroon relations were marked «... by an incoherence of US policy shared between anti-colonialism and anti-communism, between its past beliefs and the realities of present stakes of international issues.»^96(*) At the time when a nationalistic spirit was vibrating in Cameroonians, a spirit attributed to American Presbyterian Church missionaries such as the famous singer Rosa Page Welch who invited Cameroonians to catch `the democratic spirit of the great American nation', the US was confronted to communist inspired nationalists. Consequently, the US aligned behind the French in all UN resolutions relating to Cameroon.^97(*) It could be said that the US supported nationalism only as much as it did not bear communist threats. But the missionary schools had already fashioned Cameroonian minds, as was the tradition of missionary thinking in those days, in traditional Wilsonian idealism-to struggle for independence.

* ⁸¹ Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1977, p. 23.

* ⁸² James Rosenau, The Study of Global Interdependence: Essays on the Transnationalisation of World Affairs, New York: Nichols, p. 1.

* ⁸³ E.J. Keller, «Africa and the United States; Meeting the Challenges of Globalization in Donald» Rothchild and Edmond J. Keller (eds), Africa - US Relations. Strategic Encounters, Colorado, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006 p.3.

* ⁸⁴ Idem.

* ⁸⁵ James Dao, «In Quietly Courting Africa, U.S. Likes the Dowry: Oil», New York Times, Thursday, September 19, 2002

* ⁸⁶ Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and his article is «God's Country?» appearing in Foreign Affairs, HYPERLINK "" September/October 2006, obtainable at HYPERLINK "" www.foreignaffairs.org/mead_reading.

* ⁸⁷ Mead, op, cit.

* ⁸⁸ The phrase "Manifest Destiny" was first used primarily by Jackson Democrats in the 1840s to promote the annexation of much of what is now the Western United States (the Oregon Territory, the Texas Annexation, and the Mexican Cession). The term was revived in the 1890s, this time with Republican supporters, as a theoretical justification for U.S. expansion outside of North America. The term fell out of usage by U.S. policy makers early in the 20th century, but it could be argued that aspects of Manifest Destiny, particularly the belief in an American "mission" to promote and defend democracy throughout the world, continued to have an influence on American political ideology. Wilsonian and Cartesian idealism largely carries components of Manifest Destiny, so does post 9/11.

* ⁸⁹ Deutchoua Xavie, in Les Cahiers de la Mutations, op, cit. p. 15.

* ⁹⁰ Idem.

* ⁹¹ For an in-depth analysis of US imperialism, both proclaimed and denied, from independence to present day, see Niall Ferguson's two books; Colossus; The Price of America's Empire, 2004 and Empire; The Rise and Demise of British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, New York; Penguin, 2003.

* ⁹² Critics of American foreign policy argue that US anti-colonization was a way of expressing envy over European possessions.

* ⁹³ Ferguson, Colossus; The Price of America's Empire, 2004, p. 42.

* ⁹⁴ This accord was facilitated by the fact that Cameroon was a League of Nations Mandate, therefore exempted from the colonial pact of protectionism.

* ⁹⁵ It is reported by Deutchoua, op. cit. idem.

* ⁹⁶ Deutchoua, idem.

* ⁹⁷ This paradox undermined the public esteem built in Cameroonians for close to a century, especially that the US supported the nationalist party in the case of Togo where the nationalists were not cloth in red.