On Engagement
The debate over who should meet with whom. Why it paralyzes U.S.-Africa policy.
When I worked in the White House, I spent countless hours arguing about who should meet with whom. Do we invite the Tunisian President to the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit? Should the U.S. Ambassador to the UN stop over in Guinea-Bissau? Which West African coup leaders can attend AFRICOM events? It was a never-ending policy food fight. Was it worth it?
Meeting Whom
In the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, I wrote about engaging with African leaders: “when we have disagreements, we will lean in, agree to meet, and discuss differences head-on.” I meant it. I was inspired by President John Kennedy who bucked the bureaucracy by courting the so-called West African radicals (Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, Guinean President Sekou Toure, and Malian President Modibo Keita). I also had been frustrated by my own experience during the Obama Administration when we privileged leaders, namely those who—in a specific moment of time—were hailed as “democracy darlings.” (That breathless praise, by the way, rarely passed the test of time. See Macky Sall of Senegal, for example.)
In my mind, it was clear: let’s meet. However, despite my principled position, I struggled to remain consistent. As many times as I backed calls for engagement, I also sided with the voices for exclusion. It divided the interagency, which was buffeted and battered by predictable and knee-jerk arguments:
Geostrategic Competition: “If we don’t meet, China and Russia will.”
Statutory Authorities: “We must be able to meet our counterparts.”
Contingency Requirements: “We may need their help one day.”
Public Criticism: “We will be excoriated by activists and the media.”
Congressional Backlash: “Congress will have a field day with this one.”
Consistent Messaging: "It will undercut our public diplomacy.”
We would go round and round, solving very little and leaving everyone frustrated by the exercise. And these interagency wounds would reopen whenever we battled over the next controversial engagement.
Legitimizing How
At the heart of the debate is the question of legitimization and arguably, at least in some circles, the reputational risk to the United States. If a senior official meets with an African leader of ill repute, are we endorsing their actions or turning a blind eye to alleged abuses? Are we abandoning our values if there’s a meeting or a visit or a handshake?
Former Senator Russ Feingold, who served as the U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2013 to 2015, thoughtfully grappled with this issue in a superb interview with Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Michelle Gavin in 2022:
Sometimes when we worry about the visuals and the images and how it's going to come off, we’re really sort of playing to—understandably—advocates for human rights and journalistic freedoms and a host of other things that are very important. But I think in terms of the actual impact of helping or hindering some of these people to do what they do, it may not be as great as we think. And so, we shouldn't use it as a reason to not interface with them to try to get things done.
This is not a new problem. In an oral history interview, former Ambassador Alan Lukens recounts how he fought to secure a meeting between Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso and President Ronald Reagan in 1986. Certain individuals in the White House viewed Sassou as “a two-bit communist” and feared there would be backlash from the president’s conservative supporters. The Congolese leader waited for four days for an appointment to see the president. On the fourth day, an invitation came, but was rescinded at the last moment. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush ended up meeting with Sassou and helped arrange a 15-minute call with Reagan.
I found myself often stuck in this trap. I would worry about how an engagement would play out — and what the loudest voices might say about it. It required a degree of contortion that was time consuming and, in most cases, counterproductive.
We tip-toed around whether President Biden would take a photo with South Sudanese President Salva Kiir at the United Nations General Assembly Leaders’ Reception in 2023.
We had to choreograph an elaborate two-step to keep the U.S. delegation at arms distance from Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa at a Corporate Council on Africa event in 2023.
We tied ourselves into knots to ensure President Joe Biden stood far away from problematic leaders without breaking diplomatic protocol during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in 2022.
Advancing What
Engagement is about protecting and promoting U.S. interests. You have to engage to do hard things, and that often entails talking with people you might disagree with. Indeed, it is partly because you have beef that you have to meet.
The critical part is knowing what you are seeking to do — and why an engagement is worth the flak. We dispatched Under Secretary for Political Affairs Toria Nuland to Niger two weeks after the coup d’etat not because we supported the military takeover, but because we sought a resolution consistent with the Nigerien constitution. Assistant Secretary for State for African Affairs Molly Phee and I traveled to Equatorial Guinea in February 2022 not because we approved of the regime’s human rights record, but because we had significant concerns, including Chinese basing ambitions in the Atlantic Ocean, that we needed to address.
At the same time, not all engagements with difficult partners are worth it. For instance, I had a hard time co-signing on invitations for coup leaders to join AFRICOM conferences, when they had been expelled by the African Union and West Africa’s regional economic community. Most of these events are held in swanky locations, and largely focused on relationship-building. (AFRICOM is hosting its annual African Chiefs of Defense Conference in Nairobi this week.)
The choice of messenger is also critical. Whereas a U.S. diplomat usually makes the most sense, there are circumstances when a non-diplomat can move the needle on a specific topic. You have to be clear-eyed about the prospective envoy. It is not just about the title, they must have the personal acumen to carry out the task. That’s why we were fortunate that Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines agreed in November 2024 to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda to deescalate tensions in Great Lakes region. The DNI brought gravitas and unique credibility as an intelligence officer, but she also was adept at engaging both sides with humility and sensitivity to the dynamics at play.
Explaining Why
Part of the problem with U.S. engagement in Africa is that we don’t effectively communicate our intentions. When we issue anodyne statements about upcoming meetings and equally bland readouts, we miss an opportunity to explain that we raised issues of concern and talked about the troubling dimensions of our relationship. In other words, we don’t adequately frame our engagements.
One important exception was ahead of President Biden‘s meeting with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in October 2021. Just before the two leaders were about to meet, leaked documents, known as the Pandora Papers, indicated that the Kenyatta family secretly owned offshore shell companies. It led to questions about the wisdom of continuing with the engagement. We held our ground, and then-White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki delivered a pitch perfect answer:
the President has a range of meetings diplomatically with leaders where he has shared interests of the United States and their country, and may also have areas where there’s disagreement. And the President has been quite vocal, as you all know, about the inequities in the international system — financial system and also domestically…But that doesn’t mean you don’t meet with people you have disagreements on…his view on this has been quite clear, and I don’t think he will hold back. But I would remem- — I would remind you: We have a range of interests in working with Kenya and working with them on issues in Africa, in the region, and that will be the primary focus of the meeting.”
It is OK to be forthright about disagreements. In my opinion, it a sign of a mature partnership when you can talk openly about bilateral concerns while still engaging on areas of mutual interest. It is certainly more effective to acknowledge contentious issues and underscore our resolve to address them. Even trite diplomatic phraseology like a “candid and constructive discussion” and “frank and substantive exchange of views” could be used to greater effect in U.S.-Africa policy. We should leave less to the imagination.
A related point is that there is little to no benefit to cancelling a meeting or declining to invite a foreign counterpart to a conference if no one is aware of your decision. For example, we opted not to send a presidential delegation to Sierra Leone in 2023 due to its flawed election, but we failed to explain this decision to the broader public. How do we expect to affect a policy change when our diplomatic actions, especially punitive ones, aren’t communicated?
The Burden of U.S.-Africa Policy
If I’m being honest, my biggest gripe is that there is a double standard here. While Africanists agonize about who we meet with and how some people might react, our colleagues in other regional offices scheduled a meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro, arranged a State Visit for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and planned a presidential trip to Saudi Arabia. To be sure, these engagements had their critics, but they went forward because there were clear policy priorities to pursue.
In the U.S.-Africa space, there is a tendency to view engagements as deliverables in and of themselves, and that only the most pristine leaders should be granted access. Maybe that’s because we have relatively few opportunities (see my previous post), but I also think we do it to ourselves. The harshest criticism regarding Kenyan President William Ruto’s State Visit or President Biden’s visit to Angola came from former U.S. officials and African intellectuals. The point of an engagement is to advance U.S. policy, not applaud an African leader’s past deeds. It should be substantive and prospective, not symbolic and retrospective.
Post-Strategy
I think I’m ending where I started: we should meet. It should be often, and we should be more transparent about our objectives, especially when we have disagreements. In the rare circumstance where we decline to meet, we should do so because there’s a policy rationale behind the decision.
Going forward, I suggest we should care less about what people may say. Sure, we should endeavor to understand the critics’ perspective, but, at the end of the day, we have to do what’s best for our policies and our interests. Ultimately, history will judge us by the progress we made — not by who sat next to whom.
I’ve always thought that refusing to meet people as a “punishment” was silly. I’ve never seen any evidence that it gets anything more than momentary improvements in behavior, and it costs opportunities to speak hard truths. This is especially true if there isn’t a global effort to isolate a particular regime.
I’ve worked Africa policy for almost two-decades- this is the best lay out of the issues I’ve read. Thanks!!