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A new US report claims that China plans to open new military bases across Africa. Getty Images
 

The presence of foreign military personnel is rarely a hot topic in Kenya, except in rare cases of transgressions such as recent reports linking a British soldier to the murder of a woman 10 years ago. And now, a recent US defence report suggested that China could be wooing Kenya (amongst other countries in the region) to host a military base.

China dismissed the claim, accusing the US of stoking old Cold War fears. The Conversation Africa’s George Omondi asked Macharia Munene to make sense of the seemingly high stakes.

What is the foreign military presence in Kenya?

The foreign military presence in Kenya isn’t very pronounced, but British and the American personnel do operate, either in training or assisting in security operations.

About 300 British officers regularly train in Kenya with Kenyan soldiers. They are mostly in Nanyuki, a town located about 285 kms north of Nairobi.

The British have been in Kenya since independence through bilateral security arrangements. Kenya’s dependence on the UK increased after 1964. In that year there was a mutiny at the Lanet military base in Nakuru as well as grumblings at the Langata Barracks in Nairobi.

Soldiers in the Kenya Rifles were demanding pay rises, almost copying what had happened in Tanganyika and Uganda, the two other former British protectorates in East Africa. At the request of Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta, British troops helped to put down the unrest. Kenya’s reliance on Britain subsequently increased. Britain’s Major General Ian H. Freeland commanded Kenyan troops at the time.

 

The initial command of the armed forces was under British officers, on secondment. But the Africanisation policy led to African officers rising up the ranks. The UK helped to establish both the Kenya Navy and the Kenya Air force. Currently, the Chief of Defence Forces, and all service commanders, are Kenyans.

The US military presence in Kenya started largely as part of the Cold War chess game. For example, in 1980 the US entered into an agreement with Kenya for the use of its air-force and naval facilities.

In the post-Cold War period, the American presence in Kenya has largely related to countering terrorist activities in Somalia. For instance, there have been drone strikes against Al-Shabaab leaders in Somalia.

The Americans have made regular visits, mainly naval, throughout the period. Their objectives are to keep rivals off a geo-strategically important state in Eastern Africa, and reportedly give aid of military nature.

Americans are also in Lamu County, located on the Indian Ocean near Kenya’s border with Somalia, where they keep an eye on activities of the Al-Shabaab. The jihadist group has been fighting to overthrow the government in Mogadishu since 2006. It continues to launch regular cross-border raids.

What do we know about China’s reported interests?

The details of Chinese interests are not available. But China generally views Kenya as a gateway to the eastern Africa region. That makes Kenya a key area of focus for its trade and economic strategy in Africa.

In the last few years, it has become clear that there has been a rise in China’s efforts to achieve greater global status and presence. This has been true across all aspects of China’s foreign policies – from cultural, to industrial and trade. It also includes a drive to show a military presence outside China to protect external interests and to flex geopolitical muscles.

President Xi Jingpin is seemingly determined to shape discussions in the world using the slogans of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ and paying attention to global ’common destiny’.

In terms of geo-political projection, China has increased its military presence through UN Peace keeping operations or by opening bases. In the 1960s and 1970s, China assisted liberation forces in Southern Africa’s remnants of colonial white settlerdom militarily. It has roughly 2000 troops as UN peace keepers in countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan and Central Africa Republic.

There are also reports that China could be establishing naval bases in Namibia, Mauritania, and Tanzania. Its established military base nearest to Kenya is in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa.

How does Kenya benefit from having foreign troops on its soil?

Kenya benefits materially and psychologically. Besides donations of armaments, cash and training opportunities, the agreements give Kenya a sense of security, particularly when its neighbours appear to be hostile.

In the 1970s, Kenya had ideological differences with Tanzania while its leader, Kenyatta, had personality clashes with Idi Amin in Uganda. Kenya also faced the irredentist Somalia, Marxist Ethiopia, and unstable Sudan.

These led to the breakdown of the East African Community, the Entebbe raid which involved Israeli forces freeing hostages from a hijacking, influx of refugees to Kenya from unstable neighbours, and increased availability of illicit small arms and ammunition.

There is an assumption that Kenya is responsible for the security and well-being of Eastern Africa as a region. Nevertheless, it cannot do it alone which is why it accommodates friendly big powers to help.

When Kenya acquired American F16 jet fighters between 1975 and 1976, it was a result of a feeling that Kenya, as a Western outpost, was vulnerable in terms of security and ideologically from its ‘socialistic’ neighbours. That was the argument that Kenya’s Foreign Minister Munyua Waiyaki used on US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to get the jets and train the pilots.

Another benefit is that Kenyan officers continue to receive high-level training in the US and the UK.

Would the US feel uneasy about China’s presence?

The US and China are in stiff competition for global dominance. The US has had the upper hand but has become increasingly uncomfortable that it may be losing to China on several fronts. The November 2021 visit by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal, was partly motivated by American desire to counter Chinese inroads in Africa. It is concerned that China, its geopolitical rival, has chance to protect and advance such Chinese global interests in Africa, such as acquisition of strategic raw materials, commerce and financial operations, and gain political leverage.

China is the engine behind the current global power realignment. It has systematically taken advantage of the perceived geopolitical weaknesses of the US and the West. And it has skilfully projected itself globally as the reasonable power when compared to the West.

It has also made use of its new economic muscle. The US realised rather late that it was losing global influence in terms of the economy and geopolitics and thus tries to catch up with China.

US President Joe Biden has stated that competing with – and outdoing China – is a new American pre-occupation. It does not look good for the US to appear as a secondary power to China or any other region.

American interests, which include the image, require that it pays attention to Chinese interests in Kenya which it considers to be part of its geopolitical backyard in Africa. The Conversations

President Joe Biden will host 110 nations for a vitual “summit for democracy”.CREDIT:AP

In the first year of his presidency, Joe Biden has used a single, epochal theme to frame an array of policy announcements. Sharing vaccines with developing nations and investing in America’s decaying infrastructure were not just important initiatives in themselves; they were ways to demonstrate that democracies can still deliver for their citizens in an age of rising authoritarianism.

He even said, in his first presidential press conference in March, that it was “absolutely clear” the world was witnessing “a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies”.

On Friday (AEDT) Biden will thrust that battle into the global spotlight by hosting a virtual two-day Summit for Democracy – fulfilling a pledge he made during the 2020 election campaign.

The Biden administration says it wants to use the summit to “build a shared foundation for global democratic renewal”, and there is no doubt that democracy is under siege around the globe

In its 2021 report, democratic monitoring group Freedom House found that less than 20 per cent of the world’s population lives in countries it classifies as “free” – the smallest proportion since 1995. Meanwhile, the proportion of countries listed as “not free” is at the highest it has been in 15 years.

The scores are based on Freedom House’s annual analysis of citizens’ access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries.

Disturbingly, India, the world’s most populous democracy, dropped from “free” to “partly free” as Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government displayed increasingly repressive tendencies.

Meanwhile, the United States was listed as a “backsliding democracy” for the first time this year by the Swedish-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance following the January 6 Capitol riot and new restrictions on voting rights in several Republican-controlled states.

Given the increasingly blurred lines between democracy and autocracy, deciding whom to invite to the summit was always going to be somewhat arbitrary. Even so, Biden’s list of quests features several striking omissions and inclusions. 

Pakistan, Iraq, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are among the 110 countries invited to the summit despite being classified as “not free” by Freedom House. Pakistan appears to have made the cut because it is a longstanding US security partner in the war on terror. Had Iraq not been invited then Israel would have been the only Middle Eastern country in attendance.

Meanwhile, countries with significantly higher democracy ratings from Freedom House – including Hungary, Singapore, Bolivia and Sri Lanka – did not receive an invitation. Hungary’s far-right Prime Minister Victor Orban is up for re-election early next year, and the White House appears not to have wanted to boost his standing by inviting him to the summit.

Not invited: Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Not invited: Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. CREDIT:AP

University of Sydney politics professor John Keane, the author of The Life and Death of Democracy, says the White House came up with a “cynically drawn up, bureaucratically crafted, agency-structured invitation list that includes states that by any measure are falling way down the democracy rankings or aren’t democracies at all”.

 

“The great danger I see is with the summit is that democracy gets dragged into power posturing and increases public cynicism towards the ideals of democracy,” Keane says.

“Like the Quad [grouping of the US, Australia, India and Japan], the summit can’t be understood outside an attempt by the US to build an anti-hegemonic – read: anti-China – coalition.”

Daniel Nexon, an international relations expert at Georgetown University, says the composition of the summit reflects a combination of an “anti-China geopolitical agenda” and an attempt to punish specific backsliding democracies.

Women work at a brick factory in Baghdad’s south-east suburb of Nahrawan, Iraq. They work 12 hours a day for about $US15 ($20). Iraq has been invited to Joe Biden’s summit of democracy.

Women work at a brick factory in Baghdad’s south-east suburb of Nahrawan, Iraq. They work 12 hours a day for about $US15 ($20). Iraq has been invited to Joe Biden’s summit of democracy.CREDIT:AP

Anatol Lieven, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says hosting the summit exposes the US to charges of hypocrisy. 

“I fear the summit will draw attention to the fact that in many parts of the world the United States supports authoritarian regimes and of course also highly illiberal democracies,” he says.

 

“In fact US primacy in the Middle East and elsewhere rests on these authoritarian allies or client states in very much the same way that Russia’s geopolitical position rests on authoritarian states like Belarus and Syria.”

Herve Lemahieu, director of the power and diplomacy program at the Lowy Institute, says there is an inherent tension between Biden’s goals of promoting democracy and competing with China for global supremacy.

“The US needs to mobilise a broad church of countries concerned about China and not all of those countries are democracies” Lemahieu says. “In fact, most ASEAN countries are either authoritarian regimes or flawed democracies.” 

He says the perception the US is forming an “exclusive club” of democracies risks alienating strategically significant countries which are currently hedging their bets between China and the US.

He points to South-east Asian nations such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand – none of which were invited.

Writing in USA Today this week US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Biden administration was not trying to carve up the world into “rigid ideological blocs”, noting that the countries at the summit “represent a spectrum, from rock-solid democracies to ones that have backslid”.

Rather than a mere talk fest, he said: “All participating governments will make concrete commitments toward three goals: countering authoritarianism, fighting corruption and protecting human rights. 

“To encourage accountability, President Biden will bring everyone together in a year to report our progress. The United States will be making commitments, too.” Byb Matthew Knott, The Sidney Morning Herald

Meg Whitman, chief executive officer of Quibi SA, listens during The Wall Street Journal Tech Live Conference in Laguna Beach, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019. The Tech Live conference brings together investors, founders and executives to foster innovation and drive growth within the tech industry. Photo Bloomberg

 

(Bloomberg) -- Former tech executive Meg Whitman is President Joe Biden’s pick to be U.S. ambassador to Kenya, the White House said Wednesday.

Whitman, who until earlier this year was chief executive of media content app Quibi, ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010. She has supported Democrats in the last two presidential elections. 

She was previously CEO of eBay Inc. and HP Inc. - Jennifer Epstein, Bloomberg News

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