Barack Obama and John McCain: What's in it for South Africa?

And which US presidential candidate will be better for South Africa and the world?

A significant question perhaps is: what does the US presidential election mean to the world and why should we be concerned about it?

I think the best answer was given by David Milliband, the British Foreign Secretary who recently opined: "None of the world's problems can be solved without the co-operation of the United States."

This is a profound truth. Indeed, Rupert Murdoch's adviser, Irwin Stelzer, who is also a Director of Economic Policy Studies at the Hudson Institute, underlined Milliband's point by saying that "the significance of America's political choice is conceded even by people who wish America would not get involved in quite the way that it sometimes does."

Once again, it would appear that the contrasts between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain are as significant on foreign policy issues as they are in the personal realm. In sum, Obama favours a quicker and more certain exit from Iraq. He favours talking with leaders of regimes hostile to the United States: namely, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea and Cuba with no preconditions.

In contrast McCain insists on conditionality in any engagement with America's enemies (for example, he requires that Iran first abandon its nuclear weapons programme and that Raul Castro release Cuban political prisoners before there is any diplomatic engagement between the United States and those two countries).

But in other respects, the position of the two major candidates is more similar than it might initially appear. They both favour an interventionist and conditional foreign policy which would not simply result in a blank cheque approach to aid, trade and diplomatic engagement.

But before I elaborate on this point it is perhaps worth mentioning that few candidates in the history of the United States have as close ties to Africa as Barack Obama enjoys. It is first of all a question of his Kenyan father (who admittedly abandoned Obama and his mother when Barack was two years old) and the fact that he has a slew of relatives living in East Africa.

But of more significance, while he is not the first presidential candidate to have visited Africa (in fact both Presidents John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon had visited the continent before assuming the presidency) he certainly has the most intense engagement with our continent. Many will remember that he arrived in August 2006 on these shores as part of a five nation tour of Africa. He is certainly the first major presidential candidate to have enjoyed a firsthand acquaintance with South Africa before assuming office.

During his visit he talked about the responsibility of Africans to take action against "the lack of basic rule of law and accountability." This commitment of requiring good governance in Africa has spilled over into his posture on foreign policy generally. He must also be the first United States presidential candidate ever to take issue with a South African Cabinet Minister.

Famously, during his trip to South Africa two years ago, he criticised the South African government's "slow response to Aids" and specifically singled out our maladroit Minister of Health, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang by slating her in the following terms: "The Minister of Health here has tended to equate traditional medicines to anti-retrovirals so the information being provided by her is not accurate. It is not an issue of western science versus African science, it is just science." However, it is probable that Manto Tshabalala-Msimang will be exiting office at the time that the new President of the United States is inaugurated.

In addition, Barack Obama has been responsible for piloting two specific items of legislation through the senate dealing with Africa. He and conservative Republican Senator, Sam Brownback, sponsored the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act which requires the international community to bring more pressure on the Sudanese regime and provides for the deployment of a large, capable UN-led UN-funded force with robust enforcement mandate to stop the killings in Darfur.

He also authored legislation to promote stability in the Congo and provided US$52 million in assistance for the deepening of Congolese democracy. He has also had a major hand in the legislation which led to the establishment of a special court for Sierra Leone and to the imprisonment and trial of warlord Charles Taylor.

What is very striking about Obama and McCain is the way that they have singled out Darfur in the Sudan as an issue of concern deserving American attention. We notice the centrality of this to Obama's approach to foreign policy as demonstrated in his seminal article in Foreign Affairs (July-August 2007), in which he set out, with some definitiveness and precision his foreign policy stall. He writes: "In Africa we have allowed genocide to persist for over four years in Darfur and have not done nearly enough to answer the AU's call for more support to stop the killing. I will rebuild our ties to our allies in Europe and Asia and strengthen our partnerships through the America's and Africa."

It is also interesting that John McCain has a specific and very similar view on Darfur which unites both liberal American student activists and Christian fundamentalists. Note the words that John McCain uses: (See Foreign Affairs magazine, Nov-Dec 2007).

"Africa continues to offer the most compelling case for humanitarian intervention. With respect to the Darfur region of Sudan, we are repeating the mistakes of Bosnia (where we acted too late) and Rwanda (where we stood by and watched the slaughter and later pledged that we would never do so again). The genocide in Darfur demands US leadership. My administration will consider the use of all elements of American power to stop the outrageous acts of human destruction that have unfolded there. Therefore at the very least, we can expect far more pressure should the devastation and killings in Darfur not have been addressed by the AU-UN force even in the next six months."

There is an assumption which I believe to be mistaken, or a far too superficial reading of the situation, that because of Barack Obama's provenance and his sense of identity with Africa, that somehow he will be a soft touch when it comes to our continent. A closer analysis would suggest that his approach could be described as something akin to ‘tough love".

For example, he believes that United States policy can only work well if there is an effective collaboration on pressing global issues among the major powers and specifically among newly emerging ones, where he identifies South Africa, along with Brazil, India and Nigeria. But he also makes the point that he is immensely dissatisfied with the way in which there has been a kind of "struggle solidarity" within the United Nations and within the councils of the world. For example, while he is in favour of reforming the world order and specifically the reform of the United Nations, he singles out the United Nations Human Rights Council of which he says: "It has passed eight resolutions condemning Israel - but not a single resolution condemning the genocide in Darfur, or human rights abuses in Zimbabwe."

And while he re-dedicates himself to revitalising that organization, he indicates that future American engagement in Africa and the world (in which he sees an increased amount of aid rising to $US50 billion by 2012 and the creation of a global education fund which he would capitalise in the amount of $US2 billion), he will require that any new resources provided by America have to be directed towards worthwhile goals.

Note his qualification on the new levels of aid he intends to provide under his presidency: "But if America is going to help others build more just and secure societies, our trade deals, debt relief and foreign aid must not come as blank cheques. I will couple our support with an insistent call for reform, to combat the corruption that rots societies and governments from within. I will do so not in the spirit of a patron but in the spirit of a partner: a partner mindful of his own imperfections."

The point I'm making here is that contrary to what some of the fabulists among his opposition and perhaps among some wishful thinkers at home in South Africa, Senator Barack Obama is not some effete, limp-wristed, Chardonnay-swilling, latté-drinking defeatist who would withdraw America from world engagement and provide a kind of uncritical mother love and apple pie approach to developing democracies and to global issues.

On the other hand he obviously has sensitivity toward and approval of, international collaboration and a detestation of the unilateralism and pre-emption of George W Bush. But I think that while his involvement with Africa will certainly be more intense (to the extent that other foreign policy challenges allow it to be) it will by no means be uncritical nor will it amount to approval of democratic delinquencies or rights-negations which occur so often on our continent.

While pledging specific action on Darfur as elaborated above, it is perhaps worth mentioning that President George W Bush's aid and trade policies towards Africa have been far more substantive than anything which was provided by President Clinton. This perhaps proves that Republicans in office are sometimes far more unpredictable and positive in their specific approaches to Africa than their more liberal Democratic counterparts.

Senator McCain's foreign policy prescriptions are reasonably well known on the issues that capture the headlines, namely, Iraq where he strongly supports the surge commanded by General David Petraeus and has indicated that, in contrast, to Obama's proposed quick withdrawal, he will stay, if necessary, "for a hundred years." McCain devotes very little attention in his foreign policy to the question of Africa and most of it is fairly boiler-plate and predictable. But there are some interesting proposals buried in the detail of his foreign policy articles which are of direct interest to Africa and not without their controversy.

Senator McCain's centrepiece proposal in this regard is the creation of something he describes as "a world wide league of democracies". He notes that NATO has "begun to fill a gap by promoting a partnership between the alliance and other great democracies in Asia and elsewhere." He, however, believes that this should go further by linking democratic nations together in one common organization: "A world wide league of democracies". He foresees like-minded nations working together for peace and liberty. In his words:

"The organization would act where the United Nations fails - to relieve human suffering in places such as Darfur, combating HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa and fashioning better market access for those who endorse economic and political programmes and take other measures unattainable by existing regional or universal leadership systems."

He envisages the organization as bringing pressure to bear on tyrants and he specifically singles out Burma and Zimbabwe in this regard. In his view: "The ‘League of Democracies' would serve as the handmaiden of freedom." He pledges that within a year of his election he would call a summit of the world's democracies to seek the views of his counterparts and to explore steps necessary to the realisation of this vision.

Of course South Africa's resistance to Africom, the intended United States/African military command and our identification with a more third world solidarity approach to international affairs will probably preclude South Africa's participation in such a scheme. Nonetheless it is interesting that Barack Obama's senior foreign policy adviser, Anthony Lake, has endorsed the proposal. And another foreign policy expert, Iva Daalder, senior international security adviser to the Brookings Institute says that such a league would give democracies a better opportunity to reform the world order.

However, not all foreign policy experts support the proposal. Morton Halperin of the Open Society Institute is utterly dismissive of the ‘League'. He said: "It's hard to imagine how such a global NATO on steroids suggested by McCain could get off the ground. Would countries like South Africa, critical to the functioning of such a ‘League of Democracies', join a new organization in which their interests were not aligned and which would inevitably create major tensions with some of their closest partners?"

It is clear that the world order would probably undergo a significant change under new American leadership, whether or not it is Republican or Democratic.

This is an extract of a speech by Tony Leon, Democratic Alliance spokesperson on foreign affairs, to the Cape Town Press Club June 11 2008