{"id":29530,"date":"2018-12-27T13:23:14","date_gmt":"2018-12-27T11:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=29530"},"modified":"2018-12-27T16:31:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-27T14:31:30","slug":"bolton-threatens5214","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=29530","title":{"rendered":"Bolton Threatens to Force Africa to Choose Between the US and China"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"By Glen Ford<\/a><\/div>\n
Global Research, December 26, 2018<\/a><\/div>\n
\n

The Americans wager that they can exercise veto power over African political alignments by force of arms, through AFRICOM\u2019s massive military infiltration of the region.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018West\u2019s\u2019 political economies are spent forces, incapable of either keeping up with China\u2019s phenomenal domestic growth or of competing with China in what used to be called the Third World.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Donald Trump<\/strong> last week trotted out his war dog, National Security Advisor John Bolton,<\/strong> to growl and snarl <\/a> over China\u2019s attempts to \u201cgain a competitive advantage\u201d in Africa through \u201cpredatory\u201d practices that supposed include \u201cbribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive\u201d to Beijing\u2019s global schemes.<\/p>\n

Bolton gave his speech at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, a place that specializes in crafting social policies that appeal to white supremacist majorities within the U.S. domestic order. He could be confident that the Heritage audience knows little about the actual state of the world, holds facts in low regard, and gives less than a damn about Africa. There was no need for Bolton, the man with the comic mustache, to make sense with this crowd, so he didn\u2019t even try.<\/p>\n

The net effect of China\u2019s investments in Africa, said the nonsensical Bolton, has been to \u201cstunt\u201d Africa\u2019s economic growth. Only blocks away from the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, the staff and officers of the International Monetary Fund \u2014 the guys that actually do hold much of Africa and the developing world \u201ccaptive\u201d with loan structures and political conditions that stunt the ability of governments to serve their people \u2014 had quite a different assessment of China\u2019s impact on the African continent, whose dramatic growth coincides with Beijing\u2019s rise to number one investor.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina actually increased its contribution to the growth of sub-Saharan African exports, which helped cushion the impact on sub-Saharan Africa growth during the Great Recession.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAccess to new markets for its raw materials has spurred Africa\u2019s exports, which quintupled in real value over the past twenty years <\/a>,\u201d the staffers wrote in their inhouse IMFBlog <\/a>. \u201cBut maybe even more importantly, sub-Saharan Africa\u2019s trade engagement with China and other new trading partners has reduced the volatility in its exports. This helped cushion the impact of the global economic crisis in 2008 and 2009, when advanced economies experienced a deep economic deceleration, and thus curbed their demand for imports. At the same time, China actually increased its contribution to the growth of sub-Saharan African exports, which helped cushion the impact on sub-Saharan Africa growth during the Great Recession. On the import side, access to cheap Chinese consumer goods, from clothing to mopeds, has boosted African living standards and contributed to low and stable inflation.\u201d<\/p>\n

China and its \u201ccommand economy\u201d fared far better than the rest of the world in coping with the \u201cAmerican disease\u201d \u2013 the near melt-down of capitalist financial markets in 2008-09 \u2013 and thus was able to provide Africa and its other trading partners some respite from the chaos and near collapse that enveloped the West. Most importantly, the Chinese offered what even the Americans concede is a \u201cno-strings\u201d arrangement, attaching no political conditions to their loans and projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina was able to provide Africa and its other trading partners some respite from the chaos and near collapse that enveloped the West.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

To be sure, China\u2019s voracious appetite for raw materials to fuel its own miraculous growth is central to its global trade strategy. But the folks at Bloomberg, the American oligarch-owned financial network, testify to the broad and deep character of China\u2019s African trade and investment policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough securing access to natural resources is surely one of China\u2019s goals, its investments in Africa go beyond extractive industries,\u201d wrote Bloomberg opinion columnist Noah Smith <\/a>, in September of this year. \u201cThe sectors receiving the most Chinese money have been business services, wholesale and retail, import and export, construction, transportation, storage and postal services, with mineral products coming in fifth. In Ethiopia, China is pouring money into garment manufacturing \u2014 the traditional first step on the road to industrialization.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is no question that China\u2019s deep penetration of African markets has caused lots of dislocation of existing African enterprises, or that China\u2019s policy of importing its own workforces to staff major projects is cause for resentment among Africans in need of work. It is also true that Chinese entrepreneurs have flooded the nooks and crannies of many African economies, sometimes crowding out real or potential local small businesspeople. But it is generally agreed that China\u2019s trade policies in Africa are not coercive or marked by \u201cbribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive,\u201d as Bolton alleges. Rather, as Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) lead organizer Ajamu Baraka<\/strong> writes in this week\u2019s issue of BAR<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\u201cChina provides African states a modicum of space <\/a> to exercise more effective national sovereignty than had ever been afforded them by the European colonial powers that carved up and unmercifully exploited African labor and land.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAlthough securing access to natural resources is surely one of China\u2019s goals, its investments in Africa go beyond extractive industries.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

As if Africa and the world need to be reminded, it was European colonialism that robbed Africa of people and resources for hundreds of years. Colonial powers claim the right to exclusively exploit the material and human resources of colonized peoples, to treat whole regions of the world as national property. The U.S., as the world\u2019s premier white settler state, assumed the mantle of protector of the international white supremacist order after World War Two, from which it emerged as the top industrial power. In the 21stcentury, however, the U.S. imperialist overlord has been crippled by the accumulated contradictions of late stage capitalism and its own hyper-corruption and racism-induced cognitive incapacities (of which Bolton and Trump are prime, almost farcical examples).<\/p>\n

The simple, yet earth-shaking truth is: the United States and western Europe lack the capacity to mount investments in Africa that are conducive to the continent\u2019s economic and social development. The same applies to Latin America, where China is the number one trade and investment partner. The \u201cWest\u2019s\u201d political economies are spent forces, incapable of either keeping up with China\u2019s phenomenal domestic growth \u2014 which should be seen as Beijing\u2019s re-assumption of its historical status as the center of the world economy \u2014 or of competing with China in what used to be called the Third World. The system is collapsing at its imperial center, the United States, which is incapable of investing in its own crumbling infrastructure<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is generally agreed that China\u2019s trade policies in Africa are not coercive or marked by \u2018bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The United States does not have an Africa problem, it has a capitalism problem that is made more acute \u2014 at home and abroad \u2014 by its deep history of white supremacism and insular ignorance. U.S. elites wish they could muster the \u201csoft power\u201d to effectively penetrate and dominate the economies of Africa, Latin America and central, south and southeast Asia, but U.S. power is instead diminishing, daily. Except for the dollar\u2019s artificial status as world reserve currency, the U.S. is no longer an economic superpower; it can only intervene decisively in global affairs by force of arms and military intimidation. China is truly a global economic superpower, capable of credibly launching a multi-continental Belt and Road (and maritime) new order in industrial production and trade \u2013 not a socialist order, but one that is far more equitable and voluntary than the western, neocolonial model \u2014 which it is offering to Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. is no longer an economic superpower; it can only intervene decisively in global affairs by force of arms and military intimidation.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The United States offers only \u201cmore guns, more bases and more subversion,\u201d in Ajamu Baraka\u2019s words. Since the inception of AFRICOM, the U.S. Military Command in Africa, in 2008, Washington has placed its strategic bets on dominating Africa by converting the continent\u2019s military class into servants of U.S. empire. The Americans wager that they can exercise veto power over African political alignments by force of arms, through AFRICOM\u2019s massive military infiltration of the region. U.S. strategic thinkers are wagering that, should African nations become too enamored of the Chinese economic model, Washington can call on its dependent African war dogs to create regime change, or to sow chaos and genocidal warfare, as Uganda and Rwanda have been doing in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a generation.<\/p>\n

John Bolton, a truly freakish example of the American that is always eager to annihilate non-white people, is threatening to exercise that U.S. military veto in Africa, with his warning to the natives not to get too close to the Chinese (or Russians \u2014 he threw them in the pot for good measure). That\u2019s the meaning of his warning that\u00a0the U.S. will now choose its African partners more carefully; it implicitly threatens to put some regimes and social movements on an enemies list. Bolton\u2019s threats to curtail U.S. \u201cforeign aid\u201d have far more military than economic weight, since most U.S. \u201caid\u201d is military, or contingent on military cooperation with AFRICOM.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is truly a global economic superpower, capable of credibly launching a multi-continental Belt and Road (and maritime) new order in industrial production and trade.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

U.S. \u201ceconomic\u201d assistance is hopelessly entangled with mandates that Africans contract with American corporations whose services are so vastly overpriced as to be worse than useless for national development. But such is also the case on the American domestic scene, where late stage capitalism cannot build even one mile of high-speed rail, while China has constructed 15,500 miles of ultra-modern railway, and is extending these veins of trade and communication throughout Eurasia.<\/p>\n

African civil society will have to choose between a U.S. alignment that over-arms the continent\u2019s militaries for the benefit of Euro-American multinational corporations, or takes advantage of China\u2019s offer of structural development with no strings attached and a multiplicity of markets and investors \u2014 the freedom to shop around for partners in progress. John Bolton and his boss, being professional racists, are boorishly forcing the issue on Africa, but the Democrats offer the same dead-end deal, only in more diplomatic language.<\/p>\n

\u201cLate stage [US] capitalism cannot build even one mile of high-speed rail, while China has constructed 15,500 miles of ultra-modern railway.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is not a peculiarly African dilemma, or even strictly a problem of developing nations. U.S. elites have no program for their own citizens other than endless austerity and war. The corporate oligarchy is incapable of remaking the U.S. national infrastructure, despite the fact that tools for national regeneration are available and have already been deployed<\/a>, during the Great Depression. Their only vision is of capitalist \u201ccreative destruction\u201d devoid of security for the masses of people, and to prevail against foreign threats to their global dominion by force of arms. They have now weaponized the dollar through sanctions against everyone <\/em>that disobeys U.S. foreign policy dictates, including putative U.S. allies.<\/p>\n

If, in the end, bullies and abusers have no friends, then we are close to the end of U.S. imperialism.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.<\/p>\n

BAR executive editor Glen Ford<\/strong> can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.<\/em><\/p>\n

Featured image is from BAR<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Read More: Guns Versus Trade: U.S. and China Rivalry over Africa\u2019s Riches<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The original source of this article is Black Agenda Report<\/a><\/div>\n
Copyright \u00a9 Glen Ford<\/a>, Black Agenda Report<\/a>, 2018<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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