President Joe Biden sought to make Africa a cornerstone of his foreign policy legacy. Inviting leaders to the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December 2022, Biden spoke about “the United States’s enduring commitment to Africa [and] the importance of U.S.-Africa relations.”
While Biden’s team can claim credit for tamping down the Ethiopian civil war, it did so only at the expense of allowing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to get away with genocide. Even the follow-up to the leaders’ summit fell flat. Biden appointed former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson to be his special presidential representative to implement the promises and commitments Biden made at the summit. Carson apparently traveled to Africa only once subsequently, as current Assistant Secretary Molly Phee refused to facilitate or release any budget to a man she saw as competition.
The Biden team’s outreach to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia has likewise been a disaster. The State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Kinshasa and Mogadishu only to have their presidents embezzle, hire mercenaries and purchase drones, use their militaries to target opposition leaders rather than terrorists, and offer lucrative contracts to China.
Perhaps the greatest legacy of the Biden administration’s stewardship of Africa policy has been the advance of Russia across the Sahel. In February 2021, the five Sahel countries held a regional summit. French President Emmanuel Macron attended by video conference but remained live online for hours after his initial speech. Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov spent days in Burkina Faso before the summit, cultivating leaders prior to the pro-Russia coup the following year. Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent prerecorded remarks, most of which appeared cut-and-pasted from previous administration officials.
Even after the leaders of Mali, and then Burkina Faso and Niger, fell to coups, the Biden administration showed a distinct lack of seriousness about the region. The Pentagon puts a defense attaché in Chad but gives no meaningful program budget. When Rwanda buffets the Central African Republic and considers doing likewise with Benin, Phee and USAID Administrator Samantha Power respond with gratuitous insults.
Now, it appears the Russian Wagner Group is moving forward with its ambition to move into Liberia and Sierra Leone, thereby establishing an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean. Under the guise of building a resort on Liberia’s Lake Piso, not far from the strategic town of Robertsport, Wagner last month moved into the country and now appears at work on a deep water port capable of accommodating Russian warships. Melee Kermue, a Liberian wheeler-dealer convicted in 2009 in Ohio of healthcare fraud, now acts as Russia’s honorary consul and uses his romantic relationship with former Vice President Jewel Taylor to advance Russian interests in the country.
Russia, meanwhile, has opened an embassy in Sierra Leone and vowed in May to increase the number of scholarships for Sierra Leonean students to study abroad. Russian energy corporation Lukoil, meanwhile, has a concession just offshore.
As the Wagner Group wins contracts and Russia solidifies its interests, the Biden administration uses its local leverage not to push back on the Wagner Group and Kremlin ambitions but rather to self-deal so that American activists disqualified in Liberian eyes for their involvement in pay-for-testimony and fraud can dominate Liberia’s War and Economic Crimes Court and the funding supporting it.
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Former President George W. Bush’s legacy in Africa was the fight against HIV. Africans remember former Presidents Barack Obama chiefly for his drones and Donald Trump for his dismissive “s***hole countries” remark. Biden’s legacy today is the strategic surrender of the Horn of Africa to China and the Sahel to Russia.
U.S. adversaries always take advantage of Washington distraction during election season, believing they will face no serious pushback. With Biden no longer seeking reelection, he has the opportunity to repair his legacy and defend America’s strategic interests. Whether or not Liberia’s and Sierra Leone’s leaders are willing, it is time for Washington to stop Wagner’s drive to the Atlantic.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.