When Franklin Delano Roosevelt hosted Saudi King Ibn Saud onboard the USS Quincy as he returned from the 1945 Yalta Conference, few expected that the meeting would define the world economy for the second half of the 20th century. The U.S.-Saudi oil-for-security partnership helped enable Western prosperity and the free world’s Cold War victory.
President Joe Biden has had an opportunity to construct as consequential a relationship for the 21st century, but as his administration ticks down, he appears determined to fumble the opportunity instead.
The issue is broadly related to Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), more specifically. Biden entered office seeking to make Africa a cornerstone of his legacy. He was ahead of the curve in recognizing the danger Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed posed, though he then appeased him against the backdrop of the Tigray genocide. Biden showed his human rights rhetoric to be hollow when Secretary of State Antony Blinken removed Nigeria from the religious freedom watch list even as state militias undertook pogroms against the country’s Christians. While Biden said he hosted the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit to highlight the continent’s importance, his appointment of 81-year-old retired diplomat Johnnie Carson instead showed America’s anemic approach; Carson made only one subsequent trip to Africa to sit on the sidelines of a conference.
These failures pale compared to how the Biden administration has fumbled DRC policy. The DRC is Africa’s second-largest country in terms of size and population. If it were not for poor governance and systematic corruption, it would be its wealthiest instead of the seventh poorest country on Earth. Geologists estimate that the DRC has at least $24 trillion in natural resources. Importantly, for the 21st century, it is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, a metal necessary to produce lithium batteries. Kinshasa might seem far-flung and barely relevant today, but had Roosevelt been as dismissive toward Saudi Arabia; the United States would not have been able to fund its rise and support its industry through the late 20th century.
Biden’s team sought to ingratiate themselves with Congolese leaders but failed to heed the warning signs, and the State Department’s bets went bad. This has been the case with Felix Tshisekedi. When Tshisekedi became president in 2019, the United States celebrated him. “The United States salutes the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo for their insistence on a peaceful and democratic transfer of power,” the State Department, then under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, declared. “We also recognize outgoing President Joseph Kabila’s commitment to becoming the first President in DRC history to cede power peacefully through an electoral process.” In reality, Tshisekedi had not won the election; opposition leader Martin Fayulu had, but Tshisekedi’s supporters bribed the right people between the election and its certification.
Recognizing the DRC’s importance, the United States was willing to accept the fiction of the DRC’s democracy and Tshisekedi’s victory. Ambassador Mike Hammer, like many State Department public diplomacy specialists, confused popularity with the American national interest. In Tshisekedi’s case, that meant lobbying Blinken successfully to resolve one of the DRC’s top grievances: UN reporting requirement on DRC military purchases. After the Biden administration agreed to use its Security Council perch to lift it, Tshisekedi began purchasing advanced drones and other weaponry from China while also hiring East European mercenaries to advance his personal agenda in the DRC and against neighboring countries. Even by his own admission, Tshisekedi did not achieve much during his first term; he blamed the constraints of power-sharing for his failures. As new elections approached, he traded competence for ethnic incitement ahead of the 2023 elections. That—and a healthy dose of fraud—won him reelection, but the cost is tremendous. Eastern DRC faces a Rwanda-like genocide, and ethnic unrest even destabilizes the DRC’s quieter west. While China has been the biggest beneficiary of the Tshisekedi years, in terms of not only military ties but also contracts for rare earths, the State Department has doubled down on its failed bet.
The DRC constitution limits presidents to two terms; Tshisekedi today seeks to change the constitution to enable his permanent rule. In effect, he aspires to become the DRC’s equivalent of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian chair who now serves the 20th year of his four-year term. Like Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Tshisekedi has approached peace talks insincerely, refusing to accept the deals hashed out by his own team. Just as with the Palestinians, corrupt rule and tolerance for terror would lead to chaos, not stabilize Africa, bring prosperity to the Congolese people, or ensure the free world rather than China determines the trajectory of the minerals and metals upon which the 21st-century economy will be based.
Biden plans to visit Angola in December in what will be his first visit to Africa as president and his last international trip. In Angola, once one of the Cold War’s prime battlefields and now site of peace talks to bring peace between the DRC and its neighbors, Biden hopes to push a corridor to reorient African trade from China and the Indian Ocean basin to the Atlantic and the United States.
It is a good idea but one that Biden’s own team subverts. If Biden is going to succeed in Africa, he must stop his juniors from bashing American allies like Rwanda and Uganda, cease their distracting emphasis on LGBTQ+ diplomacy, and force the State Department’s Africa Bureau to cut their losses and recognize Tshisekedi is a losing bet. Rather than become a democratic leader to usher peace and prosperity in Congo, Tshisekedi is a corrupt despot who serves his own and Beijing’s interests more than the DRC’s.
Biden’s team can no longer be absent without leave as Tshisekedi sends Congo hurdling off the precipice in order to cement lifelong tenure. Biden may have fumbled much of his Africa policy, but he can still salvage some victory and goodwill if he makes clear to Tshisekedi and all Congolese that Tshisekedi must abide by the DRC’s constitution and make this term his last. The alternative would be a Third Congo War that no one but China would win.
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and pre-and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For over a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics. The opinions and views expressed are his own.