Africa Position in US grand Strategy, John Mearsheimer and Paul Kennedy Answer
Channel: International Relations & Politics
Date: 2022-04-06

Talk given on March 22nd 2022,on C-Span.
To watch the whole interview
https://youtu.be/TLxkHSX6cZI

In general terms, the foreign policy of African governments involves targets in promoting national interests, mainly economic, political, and security interests. In achieving their foreign policy governments use several ways that range from peaceful negotiation and diplomacy to the use of military power.

The US views Africa as of Little strategic importance in balancing against China or any major power.US foreign policy as such views Africa as only a region of little economic Importance.

For nearly three decades after the end of the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy was characterized by a bipartisan consensus: that as the world’s “indispensable nation” and with no competitor, the United States had little choice but to pursue a transformational agenda on the world stage. Over the last few years, however, that consensus has collapsed. A growing chorus of voices are advocating a strategy of restraint—a less activist approach that focuses on diplomatic and economic engagement over military intervention.

International Relations scholar and offensive realist John Mearsheimer has blamed the United States (US) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) for the current crisis in Ukraine. Mearsheimer, who has been critical of US foreign policy since the Cold War, said in an interview with The New Yorker that NATO’s eastward expansion and its establishment of “close ties” with Ukraine have increased the chances of war between the US and Russia.
He said that the roots of the current crisis has its origins in 2008, when NATO agreed to admit Georgia and Ukraine. “The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand,” Mearsheimer notes. During the same year, Russia invaded Georgia and occupied the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Mearsheimer also notes that the European Union’s (EU) efforts to integrate Ukraine into its fold have unsettled Russia, which views the prospect of a “pro-American liberal democracy” at its doorstep as a grave security threat. According to him, the three core concerns of Russia are: EU expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.

Keeping this in mind, Mearsheimer posits that Ukraine joining the EU, NATO, and becoming a democracy would be seen by Moscow as “categorically unacceptable.” A better way of approaching this situation, he says, is if Ukraine just became a democracy and had friendly ties with the US, rather than joining the EU and NATO. Ukraine “could probably get away with that,” Mearsheimer argues.

When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate,” he emphasised. Regarding Ukraine, Russia has taken a leaf out of the US playbook, Mearsheimer said, referring to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which that the US will not tolerate a distant power bringing military forces into the region.

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