Foreign Policy Blogs

Dithering and Delay

It seems that some things will never change. One certainty is that American policy toward Africa will nearly always be reactive, and worse yet, those reactions will be slow. Not slow as in deliberative and nuanced, but rather slow as in indecisive and apathetic.  The latest example of this American dithering on Africa comes in the case of the crisis in Guinea. More than a week after that country exploded in violence as the result of security force crackdowns on protesters, Hillary Clinton finally weighed in on behalf of the United States with what seems to me to be both a perfunctory and obvious statement calling for an end to violence and for military junta leader Moussa Dadis Camara to step down. The phrase “a day late and a dollar short” comes to mind.

 

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Author

Derek Catsam
Derek Catsam

Derek Catsam is an associate professor of history at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. Derek writes about race and politics in the United States and Africa, sports, and terrorism. He is currently working on books on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s, the Freedom Rides, and South African resistance politics in the 1980s. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa. He is also a lifelong sports fan, with the Boston Red Sox as his first true love. He was one of about three dozen people to write books about the 2004 World Champion Red Sox, and the result is Bleeding Red: A Red Sox Fan's Diary of the 2004 Season. He writes about politics, sports, travel, pop culture, and just about anything else that comes to mind.

Areas of Focus:
Africa; Zimbabwe; South Africa; Apartheid

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