![]() "Rice was a major force in this new, very personalized engagement with a group of leaders who had come to power through military means but who represented, for the Clinton policy people, something new and admirable," he says. Yet Rosenblum believes Rice helped usher in a policy that counted very few successes, even if he says that he has been "very impressed" with her tenure as UN ambassador. Redefining and strengthening Washington's relationship to Africa was a laudable aim that arguably presaged the much greater degree of engagement that followed under George W. Under Clinton's Africa policy, these leaders - all of whom were former rebels who had taken power through violent means - would serve as a vanguard for the social and political transformation of the continent. Above all, they would be treated as normal allies of the United States, regarded as equal partners and autonomous actors, rather than countries that were only important insomuch as they could be exploited or ignored. It was a substantive trip - Albright gathered some of Africa's most dynamic newly-installed heads of state in Entebbe and Addis Ababa, where she articulated America's intention to change its relationship with the continent.īut Rosenblum explains that this approach meant embracing now-problematic leaders like Rwanda's Paul Kagame, Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi, Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, and, to a lesser extent, DRC's Laurent Kabila and Eritrea's Isais Afewerki. As Rosenblum explained in a 2002 article in Current History, the second Clinton administration began with a full-fledged pivot to Africa, with Madeline Albright undertaking a high-profile visit to the continent early in her tenure as secretary of state. Rice served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during Bill Clinton's second term as president. influence was not put to particularly effective use in Africa. government has a very powerful voice and they need to use it."įor some, Rice embodies a period in American policy in which U.S. "It's unacceptable for Rwanda to be violating UN Security Council resolutions and meddling in international peace and security," she says. should be more active in naming potential obstacles in resolving the eastern DRC conflict. Sarah Margon of Human Rights Watch agrees that the U.S. is still there defending the leaders of these countries at a time when many of their other closest allies have just grown sort of increasingly weary and dismayed." "These are the things that in diplomatic settings, they are remarked upon. "It shows is willing to expend political capital to cast something of a shield over Rwanda and Uganda," he says. ![]() Peter Rosenblum, a respected human rights lawyer and professor at Columbia Law School, says that the U.S.'s reticence in singling out state actors is significant, especially at the U.N. attempted to delay the release of a UN Group of Experts report alleging ties between Rwanda and M23. reports provided extensive evidence of official Rwandan and Ugandan support for the M23 rebel group, Rice's delegation blocked any mention of the conflict's most important state actors in a Security Council statement. As the conflict in the Eastern DRC escalated, and as two U.N. Rice, who has been criticized for her promoting a now-disproven explanation for the deadly attack on an American diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, apparently has the full support of the president that could nominate her for the highest diplomatic position in the land. ambassador Susan Rice during a press conference in the White House's Rose Garden, perhaps signaling that he was unworried by the possibility of a drawn-out battle with Republicans looking to block Rice's possible nomination as secretary of state. On November 14, President Obama vigorously defended U.N.
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