Ruto faces diplomatic shifts with Trump back in US presidency

Supporters of former US president Donald Trump celebrate his victory near his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 6, 2024. [AFP]

Although Donald Trump, a Republican, becomes the second man to recapture the US presidency after losing a re-election bid, he is the first convict to win a presidential election. The first was Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, who lost in 1888 only to recapture the seat in 1892. Trump recapturing the presidency was even more dramatic than that of Cleveland because he is the opposite of what the drafters of the US Constitution in 1787 had in mind when creating an anti-democratic Electoral College whose purpose was to keep out riff-ruffs. The campaign itself probably made James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay wince in their graves seeing a woman of Indian and Jamaican lineage, Kamala Harris, compete with a man of questionable morals and a criminal convict. Despite their negation of the original intent from, Harris and Trump represented changes in the American socio-political environment and Trump won fair.

Trump’s victory is part of the “New Right” wave that flexed its political muscles in Europe, riding on nativism and hostility to immigrants that are not white. Their intent is to keep the West ‘pure’ in the belief, developed by Robert Kagan and Josep Borrell, that the West is a pristine “Garden” to be protected from Jungle people. Protecting America from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asian and African immigrants was Trump’s trump campaign card and it resonated with many white nativists. In the campaign, Trump even claimed that immigrants from Haiti and the Caribbean ate and depleted the dog population in American towns. The popular ‘MAGA’ slogan implicitly meant making America and the White House white again.

On her part, Harris had handicaps, other than the three strikes of being a woman, Indian, and black. There were similarities with what happened in 1968 when Vice-President Hubert Humphrey had to fill in for Democrats following the withdrawal of President Lyndon B. Johnson and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. She had problems developing her own identity away from Joe Biden’s policies. She tried and, like Humphrey who lost to Richard Nixon, came close but missed the prize.

The reaction to Trump’s victory varies with the place. Each will have to re-evaluate its relations with the United States and prepare for possible changes. In that re-evaluation, countries will need to consider Trump’s statements about cutting foreign expenditures.  If implemented, it will force a lot of global rethinking of various institutions ranging from the war in Ukraine to NATO operations, and Joe Biden’s pet projects such as Haiti. The New Right in Europe will feel emboldened to have a powerful ally like Trump and xenophobic activities might increase.

In Africa, there is not likely to be anything outside Trump’s attitude to Africa in his other administration. Although he thought of Africa as a big human waste dump and fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson when the latter was in Nairobi, he and his new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seemingly got along well with Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta. The question is whether Trump will get along with President William Ruto who was very close to Biden. Will he cut the funding for Ruto’s Haiti mission? Or question Kenya’s None NATO Ally status that Biden gave to Kenya? Ruto’s government will need to take serious relook of its policies and how they might be affected by Trump’s attitude to Barack Obama’s ‘home.’ Ruto’s mandarins at State House and Foreign Affairs have a lot of work preparing for Trump policies that might be hostile to Biden’s pampering.

Trump has Republican advisors whose occupation is to think of likely threats to perceived US interests in Africa and elsewhere and how to counter them. Although Africa may not rank high in the thinking of Trump policy makers, the activities of other powers, existing and rising, will force him to pay attention to particular places. These include the Sahal region which kicked out the French and the Americans while welcoming the Russians. Given the amount of strategic minerals and other natural resources that other powers are likely to get by dealing with Africa in respectful ways, the advisors will convince him to think of ways of countering what other powers do. Other than the Russians and the Chinese, whose growing presence in Africa makes the Conceptual West jittery, the advisors are likely to be concerned with the activities of resurgent Turkey’s dream of a neo-Ottoman empire that stretches to mineral rich areas in Eastern Africa. A midlevel power that aspires to be a great power occasionally rattles NATO, of which it is a member, in part because the Europeans refuse to accept Turkey as European. It uses ‘drone diplomacy’ and commercial incentives to advance its geopolitical interests in Africa. Besides Turkey, the United Arab Emirate activities in Africa, concentrating on port acquisitions, amounts to port imperialism and likely excluding of other interested parties. And there is also assertive India which wants to be in the same league as the US, China, and Russia in the world arena. These countries challenge US dominance and are at times crude in the way they project themselves in Africa, occasionally fueling conflicts as in Sudan and/or bribing officials for exclusive claims to a country’s specific assets.

Trump’s election was not surprising, given internal political dynamics in the United States. The New Right effectively exploited fear of the ‘jungle’ invading the ‘garden’ which Kamala Harris represented because of her Indian and Jamaican lineage. It gives racism and xenophobia some respectability. It also forces many countries, Kenya among them, to reflect and indulge in serious geopolitical reassessment of their positions in the light of Trump’s likely polices.