Unmasking Washington's strategic disengagement

Trump’s inflammatory remarks about “white genocide” during President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state visit were not merely offensive; they invoked white nationalist tropes aimed at delegitimising Black leadership on African soil

- Wellington Muzengeza

A tectonic shift is underway in Washington's posture toward Africa, subtle in its choreography, yet unmistakably deliberate.

The diplomatic cancellations, abrupt trade reversals, and rhetorical provocations emerging from the Trump administration in 2025 are not random tremors; they are coordinated signals of a deeper strategic retreat. This is not mere neglect. It is a recalibration rooted in ideological disdain and geopolitical recalculations. When viewed through the lens of historical precedent, from Cold War meddling to postcolonial resource extraction, these actions reveal a familiar pattern: Africa is once again being sidelined, not because it lacks relevance, but precisely because its rising agency threatens entrenched interests. I contend that what we are witnessing is not a lapse in engagement, but a hostile reconfiguration, one that cloaks its intent in indifference while quietly dismantling the scaffolding of partnership. Africa must not misread this moment. It must interrogate it, resist it, and reimagine its place in the global order.

To understand the current trajectory of US-Africa relations, one must first confront the historical architecture upon which they rest, an architecture not of partnership, but of calculated exploitation. Contrary to the sanitised narratives of “development cooperation” and “strategic alliance,” Africa’s engagement with the United States has been marked by asymmetry, manipulation, and imperial self-interest. It has never been a story of mutual benefit but has been a ledger of extraction.

Let us take Henry Kissinger’s intervention in the 1970s Rhodesian conflict during the era of Détente, not as a peacemaker, but as a tactician safeguarding Western hegemony. His diplomacy was designed to preserve white minority rule and protect apartheid’s regional scaffolding under the guise of Cold War stability. This was not an aberration; it was a blueprint.