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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/21/the-bolton-speech-on-africa-a-case-of-the-wolf-and-the-foxes/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/12/21/the-bolton-speech-on-africa-a-case-of-the-wolf-and-the-foxes/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">The Bolton Speech on Africa: A Case of
the Wolf and the Foxes</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cuxere/"
rel="nofollow">Ajamu Baraka</a> - December 21, 2018</span></div>
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<p>Malcolm X reminded us that we had to be careful about
the difference between the wolf and the fox. The wolf
for black people were the hardcore, racist white folks
with the hoods and clearly articulated stance in support
of white supremacy. The fox, on the other hand were the
liberals who were supposed to be our friends. Their
ultimate support for white supremacy was always just as
deadly but sugarcoated in diversionary language like
“humanitarian intervention” and the “responsibility to
protect.” The game, according to Malcolm, was that black
folks would recognize danger of the wolf and run from
the wolf straight into the jaws of the fox with the
consequence being just as fatal because both the fox and
the wolf are members of the same canine family.</p>
<p>This captures in many ways not only the nature of the
ongoing saga of U.S. politics in general where there is
really no substantial difference in the class interests
and fundamental priorities of the two capitalist
parties, but specific policies like U.S. policy in
Africa.</p>
<p>In a speech last week before an audience at the
right-wing Heritage Foundation, John Bolton unveiled the
Trump administrations’ <a
href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/421179-bolton-warns-russia-china-threaten-us-in-africa">“new
Africa Strategy</a>.” In what could only be
characterized as another example of the White
supremacist racial blind-spot, Bolton revealed an
understanding of Africa and the role played by the U.S.
and Europe that was a compete departure from the reality
of the systematic underdevelopment of that continent by
Europe and the U.S.</p>
<p>In Bolton’s world, the predatory powers in Africa were
not the European powers that raided the continent for
black bodies to create the wealth of Europe and then
carved up a weakened and devastated Africa among those
same powers in 1884. It wasn’t the U.S. that murdered
African leaders, overthrew African states and imposed
brutal neocolonial leaders. No, the real threat to
African states were the “predatory” Chinese and, for
whatever reasons he threw in the Russians, that,
according to Bolton “stunt economic growth in Africa
and…threaten financial independence of African nations.”</p>
<p>Therefore, in typical colonialist arrogance in which
Bolton’s analysis represents objective truth, he states
that African states have a choice. Either surrender to
Chinese and Russia interests, or aligned themselves with
the U.S. to secure “foreign aid” and avoid subversion
from the U.S.!</p>
<p>Of course, there is a different position, a reading of
African history from the point of view of the African.
From that perspective, it was the predatory practices of
European and U.S. imperialist policies that reduced
Africa to its present situation as the richest continent
on the planet in terms of natural resources, land and
people – to a balkanized continent of 54 nations,
economically disarticulated, politically fragmented and
still suffering the cultural effects of alien colonial
cultural imposition.</p>
<p>Whatever the national intentions of China or Russia may
have in Africa, only the most jaded or confused could
conclude that economic relations with these states and
in particular with China provides African states <a
href="https://fpif.org/america_vs_china_in_africa/">a
modicum of space</a> to exercise more effective
national sovereignty than had ever afforded them by the
European colonial powers that craved up and unmercifully
exploited African labor and land.</p>
<p>But that is the point and the intent of U.S. Africa
policy over the last seven three years since the end of
the second imperialist war in 1945.</p>
<p>Bolton and the racist policy-makers in Washington don’t
want to see Africa nations with any space to act
independently of the dependence imposes on them by
predatory trade regimes, the world Bank and
International Monetary Fund debt peonage.</p>
<p>While China provides investment in African
infrastructure and production capacities, the U.S.
offers Africa militarism and subversion from Libya to
the Democratic Republic of the Congo.</p>
<p>Bolton didn’t mention in his statement that U.S.
strategy for Africa which centers military
recolonization would be a continuation of the U.S.
policies of the last few decades and in particularly
during the Obama administration that saw the expansion
of the U.S. military <a
href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HL0bYvJya2UUi2ROVbeDHCaiyX-U0Fc1/view">presence
by 1,900 %.</a></p>
<p>It is clear that the Trump “strategy” offers nothing
substantially different. The policy continues to be more
guns, more bases and more subversion.</p>
<p>The destruction of Libya that resulted in the enhanced
military capacities of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,
Boko Haram in Nigeria, Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, the
disastrous decision to carve up the Sudan and create yet
another colonial entity called South Sudan, military and
political support for PresidentKagame of Rwanda,
President Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
President Museveni of Uganda and expansion of AFRICOM
reflects the murderous continuity of U.S. African
policy.</p>
<p>When Bolton claims that in order to assist with African
economic development it is “developing a new initiative
called “Prosper Africa,” which will support U.S.
investment across the continent, grow Africa’s middle
class, and improve the overall business climate in the
region.”</p>
<p>This approach is not in any way a departure from the <a
href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2013/08/16/agoa-forum-promoting-sustainable-growth-africa-through-trade-and-technology">Bush-Obama
“African Growth and Opportunity Act,</a>” which made
similar claims and focused on a concentration on
extractive trade policies to exploit African natural
resources and served as basis of continued conflict over
those resources in nations like the Democratic Republic
of the Congo where more than six million Africans have
died in resource based conflicts.</p>
<p>Bolton’s claim that it is Russia and China that “stunt
economic growth in Africa, and “threaten financial
independence of African nations, “represents another
example of either cynicism or the psychopathology of the
white supremacist colonialist mind that renders it
unable to cognitively apprehend objective reality.</p>
<p>Therefore, Bolton’s speech and Trump administration
policy was not so much a new strategy but a cruder
reaffirmation of a political stance on Africa that has
always put U.S. interests first, absent the flowery
language and liberal <a
href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/25/obamas-last-chance-africa">pretentions
of Obama’s Cairo speech earlier in his administration</a>.
From Obama’s “exceptional nation” to Trumps’ “Make
American Great Again,” it has always been about putting
the interest of U.S. imperialism first.</p>
<p>The people of Africa must not allow the African
continent to be drawn into competing blocs during last
death thrones of a dying neoliberal capitalist world
system.</p>
<p>We say to Bolton, Trump and the neoliberal democrats <a
href="https://blackallianceforpeace.com/usoutofafrica/">– U.S. out of
Africa, Shut down AFRICOM, Africa for Africans at home
and abroad!</a></p>
<p>Our radical imaginations can conceive of a world in
which the choice is beyond the wolf and the fox. We are
on the side of the majority, the majority of the world
that is suffering the structural violence of global
neoliberal capitalist/imperialist system. But Africans
in the U.S. must make a choice. Malcolm said you cannot
sit at the table and not have any food on front of you
and call yourself a dinner. Africans in the U.S. have
been siting at the table of U.S. citizenship and calling
themselves “Americans” while our people are murdered,
confined to cages in prisons, die giving birth to our
children, die disproportionately before the age of five,
live in poverty, are disrespected and dehumanized. A
choice must be made, do you throw in with this dying
system or do you align with the working class and
oppressed peoples of the world.</p>
<p>The people of the global South are clear. They can make
intelligent distinctions between friends and enemies,
between their national interests and the national
interests of other nations and where those interest
might converge, if only temporarily. But the one thing
that are also clear about is that the U.S. and Europe
has nothing to offer for the new world that must be
built. In fact, when Europe and the U.S. are reduced in
power and influence globally, it will be one of the most
important events for collective humanity in the last
thousand years.</p>
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<p> <em><strong>Ajamu Baraka</strong> is the national
organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the
2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party
ticket. He is an editor and contributing columnist for
the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for
Counterpunch magazine. </em> </p>
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