The Roots of Obama's Rage (29 page)
Read The Roots of Obama's Rage Online
Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
Alas, there is one continent that largely missed out on the growth curve, and that’s Africa. With the exception of South Africa with its diamonds and mineral wealth, and a few other African countries that have oil revenues, the rest of Africa is, as former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan put it, a “cocktail of disasters.”
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A lethal combination of poverty, repression, civil war, and AIDS is now the distinguishing characteristic of this continent. Systemic poverty was once considered an Asian phenomenon; now it is mostly an African phenomenon. Economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin writes that in the 1970s only 11 percent of the world’s poor were in Africa while 76 percent were in Asia; today Africa hosts 66 percent of the world’s poor and Asia’s share has fallen to 15 percent.
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The sad truth is that most of Africa is simply irrelevant: if sub-Saharan Africa were to sink into the ocean tomorrow, the world economy would be largely unaffected.
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A lethal combination of poverty, repression, civil war, and AIDS is now the distinguishing characteristic of this continent. Systemic poverty was once considered an Asian phenomenon; now it is mostly an African phenomenon. Economist Xavier Sala-i-Martin writes that in the 1970s only 11 percent of the world’s poor were in Africa while 76 percent were in Asia; today Africa hosts 66 percent of the world’s poor and Asia’s share has fallen to 15 percent.
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The sad truth is that most of Africa is simply irrelevant: if sub-Saharan Africa were to sink into the ocean tomorrow, the world economy would be largely unaffected.
It is tempting to blame Africa’s problems on colonialism, but let’s remember that most of Africa was only colonized in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1875 more than 90 percent of Africa was still ruled by Africans. For centuries, the white man stayed on the coast of Africa, scared to penetrate the interior because of malaria, yellow fever, and a host of deadly diseases. In fact, the central regions of Africa had the reputation of being the “white man’s grave.” Only with the discovery in the mid-nineteenth century of quinine as a prophylactic against malaria could the white man go into the heart of Africa. The European “scramble for Africa” did not begin in earnest until the 1880s. European rule over the vast majority of Africa was not consolidated until 1914. And the whole colonial enterprise was done by the mid-1960s: Kenya, for example, became a British Protectorate in 1895, officially a British colony in 1920, and was free in 1963. So Africa was colonized for little more than half a century, or a single lifetime.
A strong case can be made that Africa’s problem isn’t colonialism but too little colonialism. Economist P. T. Bauer noted that if you make a list of the poorest regions in the world today—a list that would include Tibet, Nepal, Liberia, and Ethiopia—they are by and large the regions that have had the least contact with the West. Some of the far outposts of the world have aboriginal communities and desert people who remain outside the orbit of Western influence; they are still living at the subsistence levels of three thousand years ago. When we consider the world as a whole, Bauer writes that “the level of material achievement usually diminishes as one moves away from the foci of Western impact.”
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Ethiopia is a good example of Bauer’s point. Except for a three-year period of Italian occupation during the 1930s, Ethiopia was never colonized; it has remained a free country for two millennia. Ethiopia is on the African coast, has an ancient cultural heritage, and has a plentiful supply of natural resources. Still, Ethiopia today is one of the world’s most wretched countries, always on the edge of famine and starvation. If a country is more likely to be poor the farther it is from Western influence, the reverse is also true: the longer a country has been exposed to the West, the more likely it is to have a promising, developing economy. India had the benefit of being colonized for the longest time: the British came in the 1600s, established themselves in the 1700s, ruled virtually the whole country by the mid-1800s, and got out in the middle of the 1900s. So there was plenty of time for Western institutions and indeed the Western worldview to take hold.
In Africa, however, the white man got in and very promptly got out. True, the Europeans in that half-century did little to develop the continent. The Portuguese and the Belgians left almost nothing. The British did stop slavery in Africa, reduce if not prevent tribal conflict, and construct a railway network through Uganda and Kenya—built, by the way, by importing 30,000 “coolies” from India. (Obama knows about this because he writes about it, and I know because my great grandfather was one of those coolies.) But only a tiny fraction of Africans under British rule were provided with decent jobs or a decent education. During this period of ruling Africa, the Western powers were hampered in their attention to the needs of the continent by two world wars and the Great Depression. On the whole, colonization in Africa was a tragedy—but it might not have been had colonization lasted longer, as it did in India.
In any event, what is more important than colonialism is what route countries took after colonialism. For the most part, Africa rejected the route of free market capitalism and adopted a route of centralized planning and African socialism. Overall, Africa rejected Jomo Kenyatta’s approach in favor of the approach of Barack Obama Sr. Over the past half-century, Africa has witnessed a succession of dictators and strongmen such as Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Idi Amin in Uganda, and Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi. These thugs quickly learned the language of anti-colonialism and used it as a pretext to confiscate property and appropriate it for themselves and their cronies. Moreover, these men continued for decades to blame the failures of their societies on the legacy of colonialism, freeing them from the responsibility of raising the people’s standard of living. Even today Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, one of the last of the Big Daddy despots, has declared his mission as one of rooting out the last vestiges of colonial rule from his country. His strategy for doing that is to drive the European and Asian entrepreneurs out of the country and to seize the most productive lands of the white farmers. As a result, Mugabe’s once productive country has been reduced to economic ruins, and most of the population is either starving or running away.
Even as they contemplate their own miseries, however, the Africans can see the progress that is being made around the world. Younger Africans, in particular, are weary of the anti-colonial claptrap and socialist power-grabbing. They want more Western investment in their countries, more free trade, and greater integration into the global economy. The wretched of the earth now realize that they don’t have to remain wretched. They too can exploit “the advantages of backwardness” and become productive citizens who flourish in the world economy. Globalization has opened up new possibilities.
How is Obama responding to those possibilities? We can see the answer by comparing Obama’s attitude to the two countries that shaped his outlook when he was growing up: Indonesia and Kenya. Indonesia is a former colonial country that is moving quickly to become part of the global capitalist economy. Led by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia is following in the way of China and India. Currently it is growing at 6 percent, one of the fastest growth rates in the world.
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So how has Obama treated Indonesia? With “benign neglect,” according to Bara Hasibuan, a leading Indonesian politician. “More talk than substance,” editorialized the
Bangkok Post
recently. When Obama was elected, the Indonesians erected a statue of him in a public park in Jakarta. Now in response to more than 50,000 local signatures, the government has taken the statue down. As Protus Tanuhandaru, who organized the signature campaign, told
Time
magazine, “I’m not against Obama, but it’s wrong to have a statue in a public park of someone who has contributed nothing to Indonesia.”
Time
’s article was about how Obama is perceived not just in Indonesia but throughout a continent: “Why Obama is Disappointing Asia.”
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So how has Obama treated Indonesia? With “benign neglect,” according to Bara Hasibuan, a leading Indonesian politician. “More talk than substance,” editorialized the
Bangkok Post
recently. When Obama was elected, the Indonesians erected a statue of him in a public park in Jakarta. Now in response to more than 50,000 local signatures, the government has taken the statue down. As Protus Tanuhandaru, who organized the signature campaign, told
Time
magazine, “I’m not against Obama, but it’s wrong to have a statue in a public park of someone who has contributed nothing to Indonesia.”
Time
’s article was about how Obama is perceived not just in Indonesia but throughout a continent: “Why Obama is Disappointing Asia.”
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No one can deny, however, that Obama cares deeply about Kenya, and more generally about Africa. So let us follow his sojourns there. In July 2009 President Obama traveled to Africa and spoke to the parliament of Ghana. There was great anticipation, and of course his message was transmitted across Africa. Obama was in a remarkable position. He was the first U.S. president of African descent whose very identity was shaped by his African father. Now he had the power to actually do something about the terrible problems plaguing the continent. What, then, did Obama have to offer today’s Africa?
Obama began his speech in a familiar manner: he blamed Africa’s past problems on colonialism. “I can give you chapter and verse on why the colonial maps that were drawn helped to spur on conflict, and the terms of trade that were uneven emerging out of colonialism.” Then Obama moved to a detailed account of his family history, noting that in his grandfather’s life “colonialism wasn’t simply the creation of unnatural borders or unfair terms of trade—it was something he experienced personally, day after day, year after year.”
Obama recognized, however, that colonialism could not entirely account for Africa’s current situation. Getting to the heart of the matter, he said, “Countries like Kenya had a per capita economy larger than South Korea’s when I was born.” One might expect Obama at this point to advocate that Africa learn from South Korea and liberalize its economy, open up its markets, exploit the advantages of backwardness, and integrate into the world economy. America could provide some of the technological and entrepreneurial knowhow.
But Obama said none of this. Instead, he offered some useless exhortation. “I have come here, to Ghana, for a simple reason: the twenty-first century will be shaped by what happens not just in Rome or Moscow or Washington, but what happens in Accra as well.” And some more useless exhortation. “With strong institutions and a strong will, I know that Africans can live their dreams in Nairobi and Lagos, Kigali, Kinshasa, Harare, and right here in Accra.” Earlier that day Obama had taken his family to the Cape Coast Castle which for centuries served as a Portuguese depot for slaves bound for America and the Caribbean. There Obama had offered still more useless exhortation: “I think that [this site] helps to teach all of us that we have to do what we can to fight against the kinds of evils that sadly still exist in our world not just on this continent but in every corner of the globe.”
Speaking before Ghana’s parliament, he did finally get down to practical issues. He called on Africa to set up “public-private partnerships that invest in better roads and electricity.” He called for a U.S.–Africa partnership to combat climate change since “Africa gives off less greenhouse gas than any other part of the world, but it is the most threatened by climate change.” He did pledge “substantial increases in our foreign assistance,” including technical assistance for crop production. Obama expressed his hope that Ghana would not only feed its population but one day become a food exporter. And that was it. Falling back into campaign mode, Obama concluded, “Yes, we can! Thank you very much.”
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So this is what this son of Africa came to offer Africa: virtually nothing. He now has the power, but he doesn’t know how to use it effectively. That’s because Obama still cannot bring himself to abandon his father’s anti-colonial ideology. That ideology calls for transfers of wealth from the colonizers to the colonized. If Obama can’t convince Congress to approve more foreign aid for Africa, then he has no idea what else to do. The tragedy is that even if Congress were to approve the aid, it would not provide any lasting benefit. President Obama is still trying to apply his father’s discredited formulas from the 1950s even though they have no relevance to the world we live in today.
The blunt truth is that anti-colonialism is dead; no one in today’s world cares about it—except the man in the White House. He is the last anti-colonial. The rest of the world has no interest in how many schools the Belgians built, or didn’t build, in the Congo, or how British officials in Kenya used to beat their house servants with canes. We are now living in a new world. And while most of the world is facing the challenges and seizing the opportunities of the twenty-first century, Obama refuses to embrace the promise of that growth—for his African homeland or for the country he was elected to lead. Instead, President Obama is committed to bring down the “neocolonial” forces in the economy and to lasso the rogue elephant that is America.
Sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses, but his intent is immutable. He is like the toy soldier; even when he walks into the wall, he keeps going. Don’t expect him to change direction or turn around. He cannot change; he is in too deep. Moreover, he doesn’t want to change; he thinks of himself as on a righteous course, one that demands his own singular leadership at this crucial moment in history. While Obama regards himself as a model of confident cosmopolitanism, in fact he has the narrow clarity of the one-eyed man.
But what harm can one man do? Obama may have nothing to offer Africa, but are his policies harming people today? Even with the power of the presidency, Obama is not going to stop globalization or the information revolution. But there is another way that he could gravely damage the engine of global prosperity: that is by removing its cordon of protection, a cordon that is provided by the United States. Trade, after all, is vulnerable; it has always been vulnerable to thugs who want to disrupt trade routes and save themselves the trouble of buying and selling by taking and plundering. That’s why, contrary to the views of some economists, global free trade cannot by itself solve the world’s problems of scarcity and want. The world needs a policeman, and in case you haven’t yet figured it out, the United States has that job.
Call it empire if you will, but America’s role is very different from that of previous empires. Contrary to the charges of the anti-colonialists, the United States today has no intention of ruling or seeking tribute from other countries; America’s foreign policy goals are basically to encourage people to trade with us and to make sure they don’t bomb us. That’s pretty much it. Of course America could stop being the global policeman, but then there wouldn’t be anyone to deter North Korea from nuking South Korea or to prevent China from kicking around the small countries in its neighborhood, or to put a stop to genocidal wars in Bosnia or Rwanda or the Middle East. Someone has got to be the cop, and it’s a role I wouldn’t want to hand over to China, Russia, or the United Nations. There is currently no alternative to American leadership in the world, and deep down even American liberals know this.
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