French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday sought to reassert the importance of France in its former colony Djibouti with Paris increasingly fearing China’s muscular role in Africa as it expands economic and military influence across the continent.

Djibouti, strategically located at the southern entrance to the Red Sea on the route to the Suez Canal, hosts France’s largest naval base on the continent and is home to some 1,400 personnel used to train African troops as well as to monitor the Horn of Africa and Yemen.

While it was seen as a vital outpost in the past, French administrations have disregarded it in recent years with Macron only the second French leader to visit the East African country in the last 20 years.

“France considered Djibouti for too long to be a territory that was won,” said a senior French diplomat based in the region. “But now the competition from China is fierce.”

Those comments echoed President Ismail Omar Guelleh’s public criticism in 2015 accusing France – from which it gained independence in 1977 – of abandoning Djibouti and investing very little.

Djibouti also hosts a U.S. military base used as a launch pad for operations in Yemen and Somalia, but in 2013, China opened its largest overseas military base in the country rivaling Paris and Washington directly.

In recent years, Beijing has provided economic aid, developed industrial production in the country and invested massively in high-profile public infrastructure projects, including restoring a French-made railway from 1917 linking Djibouti to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

With a population of less than a million, it also handles 95 percent of the goods imported by Ethiopia, its landlocked neighbor with 100 million people.

“Strategically we need to strengthen the French presence threefold: economically, culturally and militarily,” Marielle de Sarnez, the head of France’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said after being dispatched by Macron last May. “It’s urgent. Otherwise we will lose ground.”

The unexpected peace accord between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018 has also reshuffled the cards for Djibouti.

The lifting of the United Nations Security Council’s arms embargo on Eritrea and other sanctions in November sparked Djibouti’s ire. It accuses Eritrea of occupying part of its territory and holding 13 Djiboutian soldiers.

French officials say they have raised this at the U.N. and see it as a way for Paris to assert its diplomatic influence in the region.

“What the Djiboutian authorities are expecting from us is that we remain active so that Djibouti fully has its place in the recomposition of the region,” a French presidential source said.
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Democrats and Republicans are inviting NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to address a joint meeting of Congress next month around the 70th anniversary of the trans-Atlantic alliance.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with agreement from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other members of Congress, is expected to extend the invitation, the leaders’ offices said. The address is expected to be one of several events in the U.S. capital celebrating the treaty’s signing in 1949, congressional officials said.

The bipartisan show of support for NATO comes after President Donald Trump has criticized the alliance’s 29-member nations for, in his view, not paying their fair share to protect against threats, such as Russian aggression. He has threatened to pull the U.S. out of the alliance. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Each of NATO’s countries spends money on its own military capabilities in an effort to lessen dependence on the U.S. for defense against threats. Stoltenberg said that some NATO allies will spend an additional $100 billion by the end of 2020. 

The celebration of the alliance’s anniversary is the latest bipartisan defiance of Trump on the issue. McConnell in particular among Republicans has been outspoken about his support for NATO, issuing a memorable rebuke of Trump’s behavior at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s side in Helsinki last summer. 

“We value the NATO treaty,” McConnell declared. “We believe the European Union counties are our friends, and the Russians are not.”

For his part, Trump campaigned on the idea that the U.S. is paying too much to defend European countries and vowed to make them pay their fair share. In his State of the Union address in January and in Hanoi last week, Trump misleadingly suggested that the U.S. has “picked up” $100 billion from NATO since he’s been president. 

“A hundred billion dollars more has come in,” he said in Hanoi.

In reality, Stoltenberg said on Feb. 15 that NATO allies in Europe and Canada had spent an additional $41 billion on their own defense since 2016, and that by the end of 2020 that figure would rise to $100 billion. So, the $100 billion refers to additional military spending over a four-year period, not over the past two years.

In 2014, during the Obama administration, NATO members agreed to move “toward” spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own defense by 2024. Trump’s pressure may have spurred some countries to increase their spending faster than they planned or to become more serious about moving to the 2 percent goal.

The United States is the biggest and most influential NATO member, contributing about 22 percent of the alliance’s budget. 

Member-state contributions were a central point of friction at a NATO summit in Brussels last year. However, in a January interview with Fox News, Stoltenberg said NATO countries heard Trump “loud and clear” and were “stepping up.”

Some analysts have warned diminished U.S. leadership in NATO has already weakened the alliance. Former Ambassador Nicholas Burns said in a recent report NATO is facing its ”most difficult” crisis in seven decades and “the single greatest threat (to NATO) is the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership for the first time in its history.”

Stoltenberg has said Trump will meet with his counterparts from the military alliance at a summit in London in December.

Stoltenberg said Wednesday that the leaders will “address the security challenges we face now and in the future, and to ensure that NATO continues to adapt in order to keep its population of almost 1 billion people safe.”
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French President Emmanuel Macron heads to East Africa late Monday, on a three-nation trip aimed at expanding French military, business, cultural and environmental ties on the continent and countering newer players in the region, starting with China.

Beyond a stop in former French colony Djibouti, Macron’s four-day visit includes two rising Anglophone powerhouses, Ethiopia and Kenya — where his visit to Nairobi will be a first by a French president since Kenya’s 1963 independence.

It will also give a nod to other important players, with meetings expected in Ethiopia between Macron and African Union Commission chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat, and in Kenya with newly elected Congolese president Felix Tshisekedi, whose controversial December win was initially criticized by France.

More broadly, it picks up a fundamental theme of Macron’s presidency — reasserting French influence on the world stage, starting with Africa — at a time when he is dogged by problems at home.

“From the start of his presidency, Macron and his team have always made it clear that Africa as a whole is regarded as a priority continent of engagement,” said Paul Melly, a specialist in French-Africa policy at London-based think-tank Chatham House.

After first focusing on France’s traditional ties in primarily francophone West Africa, particularly the restive Sahel region, Macron is now rolling out a second phase of his Africa policy, Melly said, aimed “to put some serious economic effort in the east and the south of the continent.”

Goodbye yellow vests — hello Djibouti

The trip is also the French president’s first extended overseas visit in weeks, following November’s yellow vest uprising. The crisis has subsided for now, and Macron’s approval rating is on the rise after having launched a lengthy national ‘Great Debate’ as a stop-gap measure. Still, a permanent exit strategy remains elusive.

The plane ride to East Africa should give him time to consider “that for the Great Debate, as for airline travel, what counts is the landing,” France’s Le Dauphine Libere wrote in an editorial.

Like recent French presidents, Macron has called for opening a new chapter in French-Africa relations, proclaiming that France-Afrique, a term referring to shadowy business and political ties with former colonies, is old history. Still his first stop is to a familiar country, Djibouti, where he meets longtime leader, Ismail Omar Guelleh, and visits France’s biggest military base in the world.

With its strategically located port, the tiny Horn of African nation is also in hot demand by other nations, hosting a raft of military bases, including the only permanent US base in Africa, and China’s first overseas base.

In an OP-ED carried in the French daily L’Opinion, Djibouti’s ambassador to France, Ayeid Mousseid Yahya, hailed Macron’s visit to Djibouti — only the second by a French president in 20 years — as “an important moment to relaunch strategic ties.”

“It would be very strange if a French president didn’t visit Djibouti” during a trip to the region, Melly said, suggesting the stopover to see French soldiers gives Macron a pretext “without being seen as giving too much of an endorsement” to authoritarian Guelleh.

Cultural ties on spotlight in Ethiopia

A very different agenda and political landscape await Macron in Ethiopia, one of Africa’s most populous and fastest growing countries, which has seen dramatic reforms under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. In both Ethiopia and Kenya, he greets countries in mourning following Sunday’s crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane heading to Nairobi.

Ethiopia “awaits Macron with impatience,” Ethiopia’s first female president and former ambassador to France, Sahle-Work Zewde, told France’s TV5Monde news channel, calling for a reinforcement of “secular ties” with France.

In the ancient town of Lalibella, renowned for its ancient rock-hewn churches, the president is expected announce French support for Ethiopian cultural conservation efforts — echoing a theme aired early on in his presidency, when Macron vowed to return looted artifacts to former francophone colonies.

“It’s a cultural outreach to Africa which, at the moment, other western countries are lagging behind,” said Melly of Chatham House. “This sort of cultural diplomacy, recognizing the inherent value of your counterpart’s culture, matters.”

Ethiopia is also a key French export market, and Macron will be accompanied by dozens top business leaders for both the Ethiopian and Kenyan legs of his journey. Beyond a defense agreement signed between Addis Ababa and Paris, business deals are expected to be cinched in both countries, including more than $3 billion worth of contracts in Kenya.

China in background

A subtext of Macron’s trip is the growing clout of other foreign powers in Africa, starting with China. “Macron in Djibouti to counter China’s growing influence,” read Monday’s headline in France’s conservative Le Figaro newspaper, echoing others.

To be sure, China has secured contracts to build Djibouti’s port, railway to Ethiopia and soon-to-be economic zone. It set up its first military base overseas in the country in 2017, and currently sells more weapons in sub-Saharan Africa than any other nation, according to The Economist.

But while China is a sizable foreign investor whose expansion in Africa worries traditional players, analyst Melly believes France and other Western countries have an edge in other ways. While China may cinch infrastructure development contracts, for example, French businesses may later land contracts to manage projects when they’re up and running.

“A strong point is that conditions attached to western engagement are predictable,” Melly said, said of French and other aid. “They’ve very public and out there. Sometimes African governments like to work with clarity.”

“You don’t counter Chinese strategic influence by trying to block it” in Africa, Melly added. “You balance it by remaining engaged.”

Development and environment

Macron appears to be following this thinking. Since taking office nearly two years ago, he has visited Africa multiple times. As president, he set a goal to sizably increase official development aid to 0.55 percent by 2022, a years-long high for France — albeit still below the 0.7 percent international target.

“The challenge will be to use this power wisely and to ensure that aid increases are not only invested as effectively as possible to fight extreme poverty, but also to help mobilize other actors,” Friederike Röder director of anti-poverty advocacy group One France, wrote in an editorial last year.

In Kenya, Macron also gets to burnish his green credentials, as he joins President Uhuru Kenyatta in opening the third edition of the One Planet Summit — an initiative Macron launched in 2017 to drive a global fight against climate change.

The gathering promises to offer a positive counterpoint to France, where the French leader has been sharply criticized by environmental groups for failing to put his climate-friendly rhetoric into action.
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After months of Brexit deadlock, this is it: decision time. At least for now.

With Britain scheduled to leave the European Union in less than three weeks, U.K. lawmakers are poised to choose the country’s immediate direction from among three starkly different choices: deal, no deal or delay.

A look at what might happen:

Deal deja vu

The House of Commons has a second vote scheduled Tuesday on a deal laying out the terms of Britain’s orderly departure from the EU. Prime Minister Theresa May and EU officials agreed to the agreement in December, but U.K. lawmakers voted 432-202 in January to reject it. To get it approved by March 29, the day set for Brexit, May needs to persuade 116 of them to change their minds — a tough task. 

Opposition to the deal in Parliament centers on a section that is designed to ensure there are no customs checks or border posts between EU member Ireland and the U.K.’s Northern Ireland. Pro-Brexit lawmakers dislike that the border “backstop” keeps the U.K. entwined with EU trade rules. May has been seeking changes to reassure them the situation would be temporary, but the EU refuses to reopen the withdrawal agreement.

Around 100 hard-core Brexit supporters in May’s Conservative Party look set to oppose the deal unless the backstop is altered. To offset them, May has courted the opposition Labour Party with promises of money for urban regeneration.

Oliver Patel, a research associate at the European Institute at University College London, says “it’s highly unlikely the deal will be passed. The big question is, what will the margin be?”

If, against the odds, lawmakers approve the deal, a short delay to Brexit may be needed so Parliament can translate the agreement’s terms into British law. But the U.K. would be on course to leave the EU in the next few months, with a long transition period built in to help people and businesses get used to the new relationship.

May will have delivered on her promise of an orderly Brexit — and snatched an astonishing political victory from the jaws of widely predicted defeat.

Destination no-deal

If the deal is rejected, lawmakers expect to vote Wednesday on whether to abandon efforts to secure an agreement and leave the EU as planned on March 29 without a deal.

That idea is backed by a phalanx of pro-Brexit politicians, who say it would cut Britain free of EU rules and red tape, allowing the country to forge an independent global trade policy.

But economists and businesses fear a so-called “no-deal Brexit” would hammer the economy as tariffs and other trade barriers go up between Britain and the EU, its biggest trading partner. 

In the short term, there could be gridlock at British ports and shortages of fresh produce. In the long run, the government says a no-deal scenario would leave the economy 6 percent to 9 percent smaller over 15 years than remaining in the EU.

Last month, Parliament passed a non-binding amendment ruling out a “no-deal” Brexit, so lawmakers are unlikely to go with it now.

Delay, delay, delay

If lawmakers reject leaving the EU without an agreement, they have one choice left: seek more time. A vote scheduled for Thursday would decide whether to ask the EU to delay Britain’s departure by up to three months.

This is likely to pass, since politicians on both sides of the debate fear time is running out to secure an orderly Brexit by March 29.

An extension requires approval from all 27 remaining EU member countries. They will probably agree, possibly at a March 21-22 summit in Brussels. But they are reluctant to grant a delay that stretches past elections for the EU’s legislature, the European Parliament, in late May.

Crisis deferred

Whatever the U.K. Parliament decides, this week will not bring an end to Britain’s Brexit crisis. Both lawmakers and the public remain split between backers of a clean break from the EU and those who favor continuing a close relationship — either through a post-Brexit trade deal or by reversing the decision to leave.

May is unwilling to abandon her hard-won Brexit agreement and might try to put it to Parliament a third time, especially if she loses by a small margin on Tuesday. But some lawmakers want her to have Parliament consider different forms of Brexit to see if there is a majority for any course of action.

Maddy Thimont-Jack, a researcher at the Institute for Government think tank, said this week’s votes could force the famously stubborn May to compromise.

“If she loses the vote by quite a significant margin again, it really suggests that what she has done is just not going to fly,” Thimont-Jack said. “In which case she will be under a lot of pressure to follow what Parliament wants.”

Some think the only way forward is a snap election that could rearrange the forces in Parliament and break the political deadlock. May has ruled that out, but could come to see it as her only option.

And anti-Brexit campaigners haven’t abandoned efforts to secure a new referendum on whether to remain in the EU. The government opposes the idea, which at the moment also lacks majority support in Parliament. 

But that could change if the political paralysis drags on. The Labour Party has said it would support a second referendum if other options were exhausted.

It all means more twists are coming in the Brexit drama.

“No one really believes this is the last chance saloon,” Patel said. 
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The prime ministers of the four NATO nations of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia met Sunday for a ceremony in Warsaw. They watched soldiers practice military drills ahead of deployment to Afghanistan. The high-level meeting marked the anniversaries of the four Central European nations, known as the Visegrad Four (V4), joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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