In view of its diplomatic career, Senegal has been able to build lasting independence in 62 years of existence as a nation, writes Yohann C. Ripert.
In their struggle to free themselves from France, the Senegalese people understood perfectly well that obtaining their independence would not be enough. The real victory would be to achieve lasting independence.
Sixty-two years later, one of the most significant milestones is what I call the "decolonized diplomacy" from Senegal.
Indeed, one cannot help but wonder if the famous political stability of Senegal is the result of his diplomacy or his cause.
Of its smooth presidential transitions to network of embassies, which rivals that of much larger and wealthier nation-states, this country owes its success to political governance based on a distinctive complicity between domestic and foreign politics.
This complicity was forged within the framework of a strongly “presidentialist” approach to diplomacy – much like France, its former colonial authority.
However, Senegalese diplomacy has largely been shielded from the personal preferences of its heads of state. This norm remained, even after the revision of the constitution in 1963, which gave its first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor, a quasi-exclusive power on international affairs.
In one article published last year, I analyzed the decolonization of this country's diplomacy over a two-year period – from 1961 to 1963 – and the relationship between Senghor and his American counterpart John F. Kennedy.
Although Africa was never of primary political interest to the United States, Kennedy took a much publicized turn toward the continent. He invited more African statesmen in the White House than any other president before him or since. He appointed top diplomats to manage African affairs at home and abroad.
My article covers a brief period during which the leaders of Senegal and the United States worked together to develop an unprecedented relationship, far from the framework inherited from colonialism.
Reading the recently declassified correspondence between Senghor and Kennedy allowed me to describe an unfinished political project which, in its essence, envisaged the possibility of looking at the world from a decolonized perspective. Kennedy's “Africa Policy” was neither a success nor a failure in policy-making. Rather, it was a terrain in which the two men fought ethnocentric and colonial ideologies inherited from the past and the Cold War, so much so that resistance to ideologies had become the new diplomatic objective. It was about decolonizing politics.
Hopes and shortcomings
The Senghor-Kennedy correspondence should be considered not as a political document that provides factual data, but rather as a literary text that opens onto a fictional world. Their correspondence represents both a real program that the two leaders could have implemented and an imaginary representation of an ideal world that they wished to see emerge.
The correspondence exchanged was that of two newly elected leaders who shared a Catholic faith not shared by a large majority of those who elected them. They both used the traditional instruments of foreign policy, namely: cooperation, trade, economic sanctions, military force and foreign aid. They relied on these levers to make art an instrument to combat colonial ideologies.
The behind-the-scenes policies of the World Festival of Negro Arts are a perfect illustration of this. Senghor and Kennedy did not turn to what is sometimes called “soft” or “cultural” diplomacy, what is sometimes called “influence” or “cultural” diplomacy. Rather, art has been used as a new, in its own right, way of shaping policy and as a means of resisting ideologies. Rather, art was used as a new way to craft politics in its own right, as a means of resisting inherited ideologies.
The brevity of John F. Kennedy's term in the White House makes it difficult to assess his desire to “decolonize diplomacy”. Nevertheless, I invite everyone to consider its limits… I invite us, nevertheless, to consider its limits and failures not as failures, but as symptoms of the omnipresence of colonial ideology. And the need to resist it with perseverance.
During the three years that elapsed between the last Senghor-Kennedy correspondence and the opening date of the First World Festival of Negro Arts which was held in Dakar in April 1966, the two parties collaborated little. And the new era of African relations was again relegated to the margins of American interests after Kennedy's death, November 22, 1963.
Nevertheless, this heritage has survived in one of the most unsuspected political domains, that of ideology. Of course there were limits. This manifested itself in Kennedy's inability to ease the terms of American loans as well as Senghor's failure to divest himself of the influence of Britain and France.
But, in my opinion, this is not a sign of a diplomatic failure. Rather, it demonstrates a sustained commitment to the service of an ideological reorientation.
Continuity
In the years that followed, Senegal underwent significant transformations related to the nature of its presidential regime and in terms of approaches to international cooperation. He has, for example, constantly renegotiated the long-established relations with France, on the political, economic, cultural and military levels.
Successive presidents certainly took a different approach than Senghor, but they pursued a diplomacy that reconciled national and international interests.
In 1991, for example, President Abdou Diouf joined the US-led international coalition against Iraq. It was not so much a question of currying favor with the United States as of settling a more local geopolitical question: Saddam Hussein's supply of military equipment to Mauritania, Senegal's neighbor to the north.
The same year, Diouf hosted the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Dakar – a first in sub-Saharan Africa. This initiative was reiterated by Abdoulaye Wade in 2008.
More recently, President Macky Sall sent Senegalese troops in Saudi Arabia in 2015, despite considerable linguistic and logistical obstacles. Officially, the objective was to “protect the holy places of Islam”.
The same year, Sall also renegotiated a nearly half a billion dollar contract with the Saudi Bin Laden Group to complete the monumental Blaise Diagne International Airport. The project had been initiated by Wade nearly ten years earlier.
Today, the airport is a major gateway for Senegal's partners on the continent, contributing to the development of the country's other foreign policy priority: African integration.
Indeed, his constitution contains a call to
spare no effort for the achievement of African unity.
As far as France is concerned, Senegal has tried – and, in my opinion, succeeded – in remaining sovereign in a decision-making process that has evolved over time.
When Paris closed its base in 2010, some have deplored the maintenance of 300 soldiers in Dakar. Yet one of the most obvious signs of decolonized diplomacy is the ability to have a range of options, not being tied to policies inherited from previous administrations or influenced by neocolonial actors.
Senghor once said which
independence is a dream in a world where the interdependence of peoples is so manifestly affirmed.
Judging by its decolonized diplomatic journey, Senegal has gone beyond the dream to achieve something greater: lasting independence.
Yohann C. Ripert, Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies, Stetson University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.