On Winning Aspirations
Something Rotten in the Biden Strategy for Africa
A new debate has emerged on what went wrong with strategic planning on African affairs under the Biden Administration. One issue that merits closer scrutiny is the failure to articulate a good winning aspiration for African affairs. This short post traces how that happened.
National Security Strategy
First, the U.S. National Security Strategy failed to articulate a good winning aspiration for the U.S. Government in foreign affairs. Simply put, a free, open, secure, and prosperous world was never a genuine, sound, compelling, nor actionable strategic choice. Of course, there were alternatives. For example, the U.S. National Security Strategy could have articulated the sustainment of the US hegemonic world order as the winning aspiration. That would have been aligned with the strategic challenge of major power competition.
U.S. Strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa
Second, the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-saharan Africa failed to articulate a good winning aspiration for the U.S. Government in African affairs. A 21st Century US-African Partnership was never a genuine, sound, compelling, nor actionable strategic choice either. Again, there were alternatives. For example, the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-saharan Africa could have articulated the creation of a regional hub-and-spoke alliance network as the winning aspiration. That would have been aligned with the strategic challenge of major power competition too.
Michael Walsh is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (United States), Visiting Researcher at the University of Granada (Spain), Visiting Research Fellow at LMU Munich (Germany), and Affiliated Researcher at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service (United States).