Africa Notes: What Can We Hope For/Expect In a Clinton Africa Policy? - December 1992

Any attempt to predict, as of mid-December 1992, either the substance or the key players who will implement Africa policy in the Clinton era runs into two major barriers:

(1) No selections have been announced for any of the key Africa slots in the Departments of State or Defense, the National Security Council, or USAID and rumors of likely choices change from day to day. (2) Although President-elect Clinton returned election-night congratulatory calls from Nelson Mandela, South African President F.W. de Klerk, and Nigerian President Ibrahim Babangida and in his first postelection policy statement listed the famine in Somalia as one of six pressing foreign policy issues, he also announced that he was "going to focus like a laser beam on this economy, and foreign policy will come into play in part as it affects the economy."

 

Martin Lowenkopf