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The Donald Trump administration has finally appointed a State Department undersecretary to head up Africa policy. Tibor Nagy, the new assistant secretary of state, inherits an American imperialist attitude and big business dominated mess that can only get worse for Africans. While America and the world are busy with information overload, American lawmakers are about to take over Africa before the Chinese do.
All set to push through something called the International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC), Nagy gave the U.S. Senate what they all wanted to hear when he plugged the use the bipartisan Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development (BUILD) Act now before legislators. Gone are the days when gentlemanly subterfuge was an art, U.S. bureaucrats, and career politicians tell it like it is in today’s age of arrogance and exceptionalism. Nagy is already trumpeting the Trumpist rough as a cob rhetoric and prophesying developmental aid to Africa geared to provide opportunities for U.S. businesses. No kidding, the new appointee just comes out and says this.
One Senator, Democrat Chris Coons from Delaware, made no secret about the strategic intentions of BUILD when he told the foreign relations committee that the IDFC, “would shape efforts to counterbalance China’s growing economic influence on the continent.” So, there it is. Coons, who co-sponsored the bill, cut a bazaar figure in the Senate. The former Republican whom some say is more amoral than Dick Cheney, is a hardliner like Lindsey Graham and John McCain where U.S. policy in is concerned. His views on the Ukraine and Syria proxy wars are almost homicidal. This is not surprising since Coons is owned by the Israeli lobby AIPAC. But, let’s move on to Nagy and the plan for Africa.
This bill essentially empowers the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is everyone knows a CIA controlled operation, to fund and empower a the IDFC to bankroll the US. Hegemony and new colonialism in Africa. The legislation provides for the IDFC to absorb assets from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a business connective that put the U.S. government and companies like Total and initiatives such as Power Africa. The whole process is a front for assisting big money in taking advantage of such industries as oil and gas, geothermal, hydro, wind, solar and biomass, as well as infrastructure projects. The mission of Tibor Nagy will be to implement the core and ancillary effects of BUILD. To better understand these renewed efforts in Africa and Nagy’s role, all we need to do is look at who is for and against BUILD.
Searching proponents of BUILD the Center for Global Development think tank in Washington popped up like the proverbial red flag. CGD is one of the most influential NGOs that focus on Africa, and a functioning arm of the West’s central bankers. Former World Bank Chief Economist, and Bill Clinton Treasury Secretary, Lawrence Summers has been the head of the think tank since 2014. I could roast Summers over the pit of burnt financial potential in volumes, but his advocacy and role in the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, which led to the financial catastrophe of 2007-2008 is proof enough CGD has nothing good in store for Africa. Here’s CGD’s bid of support for BUILD.
Not many readers of NEO will be surprised to find the Brookings Institute at the top of a list of backers for this new Africa imperialism. “Building a robust US development finance institution” reads, by senior fellow George Ingram, reads like hedge fund billionaire George Soros wrote it before bed one night. Ingram is also a fellow at CGD, the chair of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC) think tank, the Eurasia Foundation, and the Executive Council on Diplomacy, to name a few. Reading the USGLC’s mission objective, described as supporting, “a smart power approach of elevating diplomacy and development alongside defense in order to build a better, safer world,” there’s little ambiguity about the purpose of Ingram’s support for BUILD. Ingram is an interesting case, but let’s move forward.
Interestingly, the Heritage Foundation’s James M. Roberts and Brett Schaefer offer a clarifying dissent on the value of this BUILD legislation. By “clarifying” I mean revealing. First of all, the think tank scholars tell us that the Trump backed reorganization of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is nothing more than a supersized and more austere financial lever of big business. Of course, this is not what the fellows intend to reveal, but if we assume all government-backed Africa aid is a strategy, then BUILD seems suspect. Read how the duo at Heritage tell us BUILD is a function of strategic interest against China:
“Moreover, the BUILD Act would not require any specific focus on countering Chinese investment and influence, which is the main reason why the Trump administration and conservatives would consider supporting the legislation in the first place.”
I guess think-tank brains figure ordinary citizens never read up on their big plans? Ever more frequently we find the American people and their interests taken over by these aristocratic philosopher kings. God knows what they’re planning in secret. But let’s move on.
James Jay Carafano is the director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies and the deputy director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies at The Heritage Foundation. His ideas on BUILD dash my hopes Heritage Foundation would suppress U.S. imperialistic ideas. It turns out that Heritage is not against BUILD, they just want the new entity to help big business more. They want to take over Africa before China does! Carafano’s recent contribution at The Hill talks about what BUILD will and won’t do, which tells us what U.S. aid to Africa is all about:
“But it ignores other priorities, such as cutting budgets, supporting U.S. business, and providing an explicit mandate to counter America’s competitors (China, in particular).”
If the average American citizen had time to study, he or she would be appalled at what the crooks in Washington are up to. The dog and pony show looks like a bipartisan discussion in the corporate-owned newspapers. But Trump and the legislators are actually on the same page for helping the elite money make more elite money off privateering disguised as aid to needy people.
The Trump National Security Strategy (NSS) has surprisingly elevated China and Russia to the top spot as America’s greatest global security threat, which sent international terrorism into second place as our greatest fear. And Russia’s cooperation with Zambia and South Africa in the nuclear field have sent quivers of fear down the halls of U.S. hegemony. From the recent revelation that it was a CIA tip-off that led to the now legendary Nelson Mandela’s original arrest, to the more muted hints policy is all about greed by U.S. companies, our policies are as bad, if not worse, than the overt actions that caused the world wars. After all, what is the difference between material invasion and subversion and theft? I say the former is more honest, for one thing. This BUILD legislation looks like the elites building a bigger investment backed by Treasury certificates.
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Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.
Featured image is from the author.
