Strategic Repositioning

Behold the magnificence of the lame duck! While the rest of us were busying ourselves with talk of election dates and party nominations, President Kibaki was pulling off the neatest sleight-of-hand since Vice President Moi convinced everyone that he was a colourless cipher. President Kibaki has been a pretty lousy politician, little-bothered with the nooks and crannies of electoral affairs. The most visible parts of his legacy, or so we thought for a long while, is that you did not need to change the suspension of your car quite so often, because the President had finally restored motorability to our roads. However, what Kibaki has quietly pulled off is one of the most significant shifts in foreign policy in Africa in decades.

When President Kibaki broke ground on the Lamu Port project, most people looked at it from the rather narrow perspective of opening up the northern part of the country, and linking up Kenya with South Sudan and Ethiopia. This may be the obvious stuff, but it is part of a much broader plan that strategically realigns Kenya, and whose import will be felt for decades to come. If you were to grade this on a continuum with the military action in Somalia, Kenya has now claimed the strategic centre in Africa in a way that reverses decades of neglect.

For a long time, Kenya’s strategic posture, both regionally and in the wider world, was based on a naïve interpretation of our inherent power. Yes, the moral stance taken by the Moi government meant that we pulled off some pretty significant coups, including eventually delivering independence to South Sudan, and helping to birth peace in Uganda and other neighbouring troublespots. But we adhered too closely to the Rooseveltian dictum – we spoke softly indeed, but no one was even sure we owned a big stick.

The primary foreign policy experiments of the Kibaki government seemed wasteful, or clumsy. The state visit by the President (and the First Lady) to the Bush White House in October 2003 did little except to cement an obvious, if stale, friendship. This was not helped later when we seemed to be overreaching in our claims to Barack Obama, whose tough love policy towards us seemed to either be haughty or the result of unresolved paternal issues.

Last year saw the comically embarrassing efforts by Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka to indulge in a bit of fantasy – ‘shuttle diplomacy’ in the service of a lost cause. So instead of images of the swashbuckling Henry Kissinger (the inventor of the strategy, and term) bringing peace to the world, we cringed on seeing images of the President’s deputy hobnobbing with the soon-to-be-toppled Muammar Gaddafi, and dirty dictators like Teodoro Obiang Nguema. If one is to be charitable, however, one can argue that the President’s strategic instincts in this case were clouded by personal considerations, primarily the need to do all he could for his under-siege chief of staff, Francis Muthaura.

There is nothing but clear-eyed, cold-blooded thinking in the design of the LAPSSET project, however, and, of a piece, the invasion of Somalia. First, the police action against the Shabaab might finally have put paid to the image of Kenyan military power as soft, in all senses of the word. Presidents Kagame and Museveni – military officers themselves – were openly disdainful of Kenyan military prowess, seeing as our troops had not been blooded in decades. But the fact that now that we have spent blood and treasure on territory that even the United States fears to step into may give pause to anyone with thoughts of a flabby military power.

The LAPSSET element is the most exciting one, strategically. South Sudan and Ethiopia, in desperate need of maritime outlets, have now been umbilically tied to Kenya, in a way that is they will find difficult to extricate themselves from. While the move has not severed Juba’s ties with Uganda, President Museveni was so hot under the collar that he had to be mollified by a Prime Ministerial visit from Raila Odinga. Museveni is still in a huff, though, as Kenya has interposed itself into the ‘natural’ ties between east Africa’s two rising oil powers.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi managed to do two things when he was in Kenya. The loud bit was being part of the groundbreaking triumvirate at Lamu. The other one was the signing of the power purchase agreement between the two countries. It begins with a 400MW deal, but might eventually be the core of a true regional power pool that will turbocharge the economic development of the region. What the closer ties certainly mean is that Ethiopia – all 80 million people and 8% growth rate – will be bosom buddies with the traditional economic power in Lesser East Africa. It also helps to make the case for inclusion of Ethiopia into the club.

There are two final elements. First, as the Times of London reported a few weeks ago, there could be oil off the coast of Somalia. This would not only put the London conference on Somalia into its full, greedy context, but would also inject added urgency into our Somali adventure. Second are the whispers in the corridors of power that Uganda and Rwanda have been trying to convince Tanzania to lease them the port of Tanga, to bypass the inefficient port of Mombasa, and in an attempt to pre-empt another 2008 moment. While this may be prudent thinking on the part of the three countries, the Lamu development may mean that the shinier, more exciting parts of East African development are further north.

All in all, then, there is a lot to be chewed over by strategic thinkers and PhD candidates across the continent and elsewhere. The full implications of President Kibaki’s moves are still being digested, although what is certain is that the action in eastern Africa finally moves away from the Great Lakes and onto the eastern seaboard. The legacy of Kibaki’s ten years, then, may not be the depths of the 2008 horror, or a superhighway, but a muscularity in Kenyan foreign policy that is unprecedented. And all this from a man on his last legs.