Understanding Museveni's Foreign Policy Chess Game
With events in the eastern DRC rapidly unfolding, what will Museveni do next
and why?
By <
http://thinkafricapress.com/author/charles-ochen-okwir> Charles Okwir
Article | 29 November 2012 - 5:17pm |
In the latest high-level diplomatic move surrounding the conflict in the
eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Presidents Joseph Kabila of the
DRC, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda yesterday jointly
<
http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/637495-museveni-kagame-demand-m23-rebels-le
ave-goma.html> demanded that the M23 rebels pull out of the
recently-captured town of Goma and end their offensive.
This may seem strange given that many believe M23 is a proxy army of Rwanda
and that in a leaked UN Panel of Experts report, Uganda was also
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19973366> accused of providing more
"subtle" support to the rebels and allowing "the rebel group's political
branch to operate from within Kampala and boost its external relations".
Both Uganda and Rwanda strenuously denied the claims and Uganda's Army and
Defence Spokesman Felix Kulaigye
<
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/10/uganda-rwanda-deny-un-acc
usations-backing-drc-rebels.html> dismissed the report as "hogwash...a mere
rumour that is being taken as a report".
Shortly after, as if to demonstrate its deep displeasure, Ugandan officials
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20187369> threatened to pull out of
international peace-keeping missions in Somalia, the Central African
Republic (CAR), and the DRC. However, Wendy Sherman, US Under Secretary of
State for Political Affairs, amongst others
<
http://news.yahoo.com/u-expects-ugandan-peacekeepers-stay-somalia-224649389
.html> seemed to believe Uganda was calling the international communities
bluff, saying she "fully expects" Uganda to continue playing "the leadership
role it has" in diplomatic and military terms.
With events unfolding quickly in the region, it may be difficult to predict
Museveni's next move and pick apart the short-term motivations behind his
most recent actions, but looking at how he has operated in the region
previously and the issues that take the centre ground in his foreign policy
calculations may offer some insight.
Political survival
One factor that might explain Sherman's confidence in dismissing Uganda's
threat to withdraw international peacekeepers is Washington's history of
cooperation with Museveni on security matters. Following the death of Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia earlier this year, the Ugandan president
is the most powerful and significant pro-Western leader in the region
remaining.
Museveni has been a long-time US ally in regional security in conflicts from
Sudan to the Lord's Resistance Army in central and east Africa to al-Shabaab
in Somalia. Museveni and his military chiefs have done well from these
partnerships and there are whispers suggesting the US is building a military
base in Uganda's north-eastern region of Karamoja.
Another reason for doubting the seriousness of Uganda's threats is that
there is almost always more to Museveni's political moves than meets the
eye. He often proclaims the 'noble aspects' of his foreign ventures whilst
keeping his real motives close to his chest, and has proven himself to be
shrewd operator when it comes to geopolitical and regional issues.
In Somalia, for example, in which Uganda contributes to the AU peacekeeping
force AMISOM, Uganda's Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kutesa
<
http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/ThoughtIdeas/+We+didn+t+go+to+Somalia+fo
r+business+/-/689844/1604532/-/1212c2iz/-/index.html> promised that Uganda's
"primary intention...was not to do business. It was our pan-African role in
ensuring that Somalia ceases to be a failed state."
However if you scratch below the surface, a different picture with possible
ulterior motives emerges. At the time of Uganda's military incursion into
Somalia, the international community was intensifying its calls for a smooth
political transition in Uganda - "transition" possibly being a euphemism for
'a Uganda without Museveni at the helm'. Concerned by these calls, and
perhaps inspired by Muammar Gaddafi's
<
http://www.independent.co.ug/the-last-word/the-last-word/4553-gaddafi-is-go
ne-what-next> advice to him once that "revolutionaries don't retire",
Museveni offered large numbers of Ugandan troops to the mission in Somalia.
Uganda now
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/02/uganda-withdraw-peacekeepers-un
-congo> contributes more than a third of the 17,600 AU peacekeepers
stationed there to combat the militant Islamist and al-Qaeda-linked group
al-Shabaab, and this move effectively established Museveni as one of the
West's indispensible allies in the war on terror.
Regional power game
Apart from the need to deflect attention from his "life presidency" project,
another of Museveni's key objectives for going into Somalia was possibly to
secure an alternative sea port to Kenya's Mombasa as an alternative for
exporting
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/25/uganda-oil-find-energy-companie
s> newly-discovered Ugandan oil.
Additionally, by establishing a Ugandan presence in Somalia, Museveni likely
hoped to ensure any future Kenyan president would have to accept his
hegemony in the interests of Kenya's security, especially in the
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17231889> critical northern corridor
around Lamu port, where multi-billion dollar oil, rail, and road
infrastructure projects are underway.
Considering the odds-on
<
http://thinkafricapress.com/kenya/projections-upcoming-2013-elections>
favourite to become Kenya's next president is the current PM Raila Odinga, a
man who has had a love-hate relation with Museveni, we can see what
journalist Charles Onyango Obbo meant when he
<
http://www.deegaan.com/?p=6887> suggested that success in Somalia would be
Museveni's greatest victory. Success in Somalia would firmly enable Museveni
to gain strategic leverage over a country that has shown signs of discomfort
with Museveni's ambition to become, and perhaps even retire as, the first
president of the proposed East African Community (EAC) federation.
But Kenya is not, and never has been, a passive observer in Museveni's
regional power games. It saw what was coming and decided to follow Museveni
into Somalia under the AMISOM umbrella. That move pulled a strategic rag
from under Museveni's feet, although Ugandan troops remain crucial in
Somalia.
What next for Museveni?
The security threat from eastern DRC was always likely to be Museveni's next
foreign policy theatre. Indeed, in his reaction to the UN report, Uganda's
International Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem expressed Uganda's
displeasure at the handling of the region,
<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19973366> telling the BBC that "the
UN was seeking to blame others for the failure of its own peacekeeping force
in the eastern Congo".
This may explain why the Great Lakes leaders, led by Museveni and Rwanda's
President Kagame, decided to push ahead with the creation of a
<
http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?i=15079&a=56906> neutral force to
pacify the region despite the fact the UN had given the idea a rather
lukewarm reception.
Both Kampala and Kigali seem to believe one of the most important solutions
to the crisis in eastern DRC is for the President Kabila to end to what
Museveni and Kagame see as his persecution of immigrant Tutsis who have
ancestral ties in Rwanda and Burundi. This would be one of the reasons
behind creating a regional force.
And according to a Ugandan analyst speaking to Think Africa Press on the
condition of anonymity, although the US has been quick to show it is
critical of Rwanda's alleged support for the M23 rebels, it has also shown
signs of sympathy for the positions being pursued by Museveni and Kagame. It
would not be against US interests, for example, for a neutral force to
impose a federal state system in the DRC, nor - taken to the next extreme -
for the expansive DRC to be broken up into smaller states.
The threat looms that emerging powers might be able to detract from the US'
influence in the region, to which Uganda is crucial, and in a
<
http://www.monitor.co.ug/Magazines/ThoughtIdeas/+We+didn+t+go+to+Somalia+fo
r+business+/-/689844/1604532/-/1212c2iz/-/index.html> recent interview,
Uganda's Foreign Minister declared that Uganda will now be "looking at
countries like China, Brazil and India" and reposition itself "because there
is a shift in the economies of the world and we must position ourselves to
take advantage of all this". How Museveni exploits these tensions will be
one of the hallmarks of his legacy.
All in all, it is not difficult to agree with those who think Museveni
actually sees himself as an African "political architect". As one analyst
put it, the foreign policy chess game "motivates him like hell".
http://thinkafricapress.com/sites/default/files/styles/400xy/public/museveni
-chessgame.jpg
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni (left), US President Barak Obama (centre),
Secretary General Ban ki-Moon (right) at a UN lunch in 2010. Photograph by
UNDP.
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Received on Thu Nov 29 2012 - 17:31:35 EST
