American power struggles mean little for Kenya's real challenges

People walk past a TV showing US election results in Ajijic, Jalisco state, Mexico on November 5, 2024. [AFP]

The concluded American presidential election is largely an academic and ambivalent happening for the sensitive global citizen. It is good stuff for academic seminar rooms. It will generate rich debates in social science journals on contests for power. But, beyond that, it rests in the space of common ambivalence.

You see, a lot of useful global energy has been poured into mutual harangues that don’t matter. They have been about the suitability of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris for the White House. In the end, Trump bounced back. Harris is melting into the shadows, with a brave face. She has conceded the election, she says. But not what the election fought for. Both the return of Trump and the Harris surrender will be good fodder for journal papers and academic dissertations. But they will not improve our lives.

American elections are about Americans. Fine, they may have some impact on the availability and cost of stuff on international markets. They may impact money markets, the dollar and all that. But if anything good from that spills over to the rest of the world, it is only incidental. Hans Morgenthau, the German father of diplomacy, told the present world – as early as 1948 –  that politics among nations is about self-interest. Subsequent scholars have come up with numerous labels and descriptors of relations among nations. The realistic bottom line, however, remains self-interest.

The fundamentals of American self-interest in the global arena will not change. Certainly not just because the Democrats are in power, or that the Republicans bounce back. They remain geopolitical, geostrategic, and geo-dominant. For the rest of the world, what is crucial is how you organise your own political economy. Ours in Kenya is a bandit political economy. That is what should worry us. How do we get out of this rut? How do African citizens get out of the shackles of local foxes that join hands with local vultures, to dine with foreign jackals?

Gen-Z uprisings

The June–July Gen-Z uprisings in Kenya and Nigeria worried the two African governments and foreign interests in the countries in equal measure. It was not that the foreigners cared about the potential fall of the African governments. They worried more about the possible overthrow of the established order, and their interests in it. You see, the removal of one set of rulers and their replacement with another set does not amount to a revolution. That is why, one election euphoria after the other, Africans find themselves complaining about the same old challenges. The fundamentals remain the same, the political economy groove unchanged; new forests, same old monkeys with the same old tricks.

Accordingly, it is not very useful to celebrate President Trump’s return or to shed tears for Harris. Those are things America. Back in Kenya, the Americans have looked on without a word as the country has steadily morphed into a latter-day butchery. Ambassador Meg Whitman remained silent amidst unexplained disappearances of people, daylight abductions, murders and dumping of the dead in quarries. The Biden regime feted the Kenyan royalty in the White House, amidst some of these most appalling assaults against human rights. Kenyan royalty sampled Biden’s Oval Office chair, for frivolous photo opportunities. And President Ruto jocularly referred to Whitman as “Kenya’s Ambassador to the United States”.

Now this is where we are located in the midst of American political competition. We are cast between the proverbial Greek Scylla and Charybdis, the rock and the hard place, when the American Republicans and Democrats wrestle for power. So, let Meg Whitman go home, as I have seen many clamours on social media. Let Trump take over and send a new envoy to Nairobi. The difference will be the same. Provided that State House plays ball, President Ruto will be swivelling in President Trump’s official chair in the White House, sometime before Kenya’s 2027 presidential election.

One big lesson remains. Politics among nations is not about moralism and liberalism. Nor is it about some neo-constructivist abracadabra. It is about the self-seeking reality that sends nations out to interact with others. They engage both cooperatively and competitively. Sometimes, the competition may explode into full-blown aggressions and wars. The side taken is defined in terms of self-interest. It’s not about who is right or wrong. But the explanation given is about “right and wrong”. And local wrongs will be ignored by our powerful global partners in exchange for interests. Accordingly, our solutions rest with us, and not with the American Democrats or Republicans. What shall we do about us?

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke