Modern Mining December 2024

COLUMN

Unfettered resource extraction funds formal wars.

Catching the US cold By Dr Ross Harvey, director of research and programmes at Good Governance Africa (GGA)

B y the time this column goes to print, Donald Trump will be firmly re-established in the White House. The day before the election, The Economist predicted a Kamala Harris win, but its model appeared to be overly sensitive to small-sample polls and insufficiently sensitive to Trump’s popularity in the swing states. Most pundits and western media are horrified at the prospect of Trump in the White House. How is it that the leader of the free world is again a man who lacks moral fibre, integrity and compassion for the poor? At the same time, some policies pursued by the Biden Administration have been equally suboptimal, especially for sub-Saharan Africa. It is of course easy to point fingers at the US. The rest of the world has depended on it for too long to maintain the so-called post-Cold War multilateral rules-based order. This order has fractured severely since the global financial crisis of 2008. China has become less open, and Xi Jinping continues to tighten his iron grip over a Chinese Communist Party increasingly committed to rewriting history and suppressing civil liberties. China has also supported Russia’s disastrous territory-expansion grabs. US and European support for Ukraine’s defence has been laudable, but as Richard Haas recently

pointed out, the current strategy makes for an unwinnable war. Growing domestic fractiousness within the US and across the EU, combined with the extensive opportunity costs of funding expensive wars, has rendered Russia bolder than ever. This is not helped by Iran now openly supporting Russia, at the same time as funding Hezbollah and aggravating geopolitical disorder in the Middle East. While Israel has broken the back of Hamas and Hezbollah, the destruction of Palestinian and Lebanese societies through the process has left support for Israel in tatters. Western media outlets appear to have been guilty of severely biased reporting, too, which does not help to reduce polarisation. US support for Israel has also cost the country soft power capital even while it has spent a fortune on hard power capital in arming Ukraine. Within the US, the domestic landscape is fractious. AI-driven disinformation poses a serious threat to national harmony and is being weaponised by rogue players not only to sow discord in the US, but to drive down trust in democratic institutions all over the world. Democratic backsliding paves the way for populist autocrats everywhere to gain traction.

Dr Ross Harvey, director of research and programmes at Good Governance Africa (GGA).

36  MODERN MINING  www.modernminingmagazine.co.za | DECEMBER 2024