Issue No. 58

The Return of Trump

While the dust from the re-election of Donald Trump as US president will continue to swirl for some time, diplomats and politicians in capitals around the world have long been sizing up the implications for their countries and regions. The return of the 'America First' leader to the White House comes at a moment of global polycrises– proliferating armed conflict, intensifying climate crisis, waning multilateralism, the rise of authoritarianism, and a shift from a uni-polar to a multi-polar world. Many of these trends pre-dated the first Trump administration but were turbo-charged and accentuated between 2016 and 2020. And one of the epicentres and regions most impacted by these buffeting winds of geopolitical change is the Horn of Africa and the broader Red Sea, heavily driven by the rise of assertive, transactional 'Middle Powers' in the Gulf. Still, while the 'Pax Americana' of the 2000s may have waned, the US remains the global pre-eminent superpower, underwritten by the largest economy and military.

First, Trump follows a disinterested Biden administration awkwardly caught between a realpolitik instinct to respond to growing Chinese and Russian influence in Africa and normative pressures on democracy, good governance, and human rights. This often led to a contradictory and self-sabotaging set of policies, lecturing African leaders on their neutrality towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine while providing carte blanche for Israel to raze Gaza. Some have speculated that a Trump administration unburdened by these concerns and with an affinity towards 'strong men' may pursue a more pragmatic and reciprocal foreign policy on the continent. Certainly, many autocrats around the world and those rolling back democratic gains in Africa will be relieved at the revival of an administration that is less likely to challenge them on their democratic or human rights records. Egypt, for instance, is a probable beneficiary of Trump's return, with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi a preferred ally and a perceived bulwark against Trump's reviled Iran.

We shouldn't expect too many immediate drastic US policy changes toward African countries, though. For Sudan, the Biden administration was unwilling to use its geopolitical clout to bring pressure to bear on the belligerent's foreign backers, and it is unlikely that a Trump government will either. However, a Trump administration is also more likely to throw its weight behind one of the principal belligerents, unlike the Biden administration, which sought to avoid offending either to its own detriment. For Somalia, meanwhile, there is a risk that Trump could again decide to suddenly withdraw all US forces from the country as part of his first term's haphazard campaign to end America's 'forever wars.'

Large parts of the US foreign aid budget may well be slashed, including money for contraceptives and the PEPFAR programme, for instance, as well as funding for tackling the climate crisis in Africa. The latter is sure to be scrubbed from the domestic and foreign agenda of the incoming administration. Trump pulled out of the 2016 Paris Agreement and may well do so again, while he also gutted the Environmental Protection Agency and expanded oil drilling and fracking rights. Even if some money for climate adaptation remains, a more polluting America spells ill for the extremely climate-vulnerable populations in the Horn.

American Middle East and North Africa (MENA) policy is unlikely to drastically change, with Trump offering full-throated support for Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu in his campaign to destroy Tehran's proxies. The knock-on impact of the Gaza war and broader Middle Eastern conflagration on the Horn has been much underappreciated but will continue to spill over and become more apparent in the coming months and years. During Trump's first term, Washington ceded significant influence and decision-making in the Horn to its closest allies in the Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It has allowed Riyadh and Abu Dhabi free reign of the Horn to engage and invest in a myriad of political and social constituencies for their own, often overlapping and competing, geostrategic interests. And these trends have only intensified under the Biden government, as witnessed by the September US-UAE accord despite Gulf powers playing a central role in the ongoing devastation of Sudan.

There is no indication that a Trump presidency would seek to reign in these powers; it is likely to only accentuate them further. We are entering a new global multi-polar order, perhaps comparable to the 19th century and best encapsulated by the rise of the BRICS multilateral, in which the member states resist the supremacy of the US Dollar and post-World War II international order. The incoming administration's clear preference for bilateralism over multilaterals like NATO and the UN will further amplify this transition to a global order more explicitly defined by reciprocity.

In February 2002, when answering a question about the lack of evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld delivered the enduring line of the dangers of the "unknown unknowns." These words ring particularly true today, with the geopolitical era defined by a certain degree of chaos, and there are innumerable and unknowable ways in which the next Trump term will impact the Horn's governments and populations. Much like the Biden government, steering the Trump administration to prioritise the Horn when they can see few easy wins will be challenging. US officials can understand the humanitarian concerns, the dangers of jihadist proliferation, the backsliding of democracy, and much more, but elevating these issues to the same level of geostrategic competition with Russia or China has proven far more difficult. 

By the Horn Edition Team