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The Biden administration is reportedly in panic mode over China’s apparent ambitions to develop a military base in Equatorial Guinea and is sending top officials to the country in an effort to dissuade Malabo from agreeing to any deal with Beijing, which has already made significant inroads in the West African country.
The U.S. team will be led by Molly Phee, the State Department’s top Africa official, who served as Washington’s ambassador to South Sudan and deputy chief of mission of the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa. She will try to convince Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo that Washington would make it worth his while to spurn Beijing’s advances.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Malabo seems to be enjoying the attention of the two competing powers. Teodoro “Tenodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue, the vice president and son of the current president, tweeted in December, “China is the model of a friendly nation and strategic partner, but, for now, there is no agreement.”
Gen. Stephen Townsend, the head of U.S. Africa Command, told VOA that Washington has no interest in asking Equatorial Guinea to choose between the U.S. and China.
“What we’re asking them to do is consider their other international partners and their concerns,” he said.
The Journal first reported on China’s ambitions with the country of two million in December, citing classified U.S. intelligence. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy hopes to “rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon,” these officials told the paper late last year.
The paper reported that last April, Townsend addressed the Senate Armed Services Committees and said he believed the most significant threat from China would be a military useful naval facility on the Atlantic coast of Africa.
“And by ‘militarily useful,’ I mean something more than a place that can make port calls and get gas and groceries. I’m talking about a port where they can rearm with munitions and repair naval vessels.” He said China is working “aggressively” to achieve that and that is his “number one global power competition concern.”
AllAfrica.com reported that the Biden administration’s official position is “neutral” when it comes to African countries and their ties with Beijing. The website reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured some of these African countries in November and said the U.S. does not want to have these countries choose between Washington and Beijing.
“We want to make your partnerships with us even stronger. We don’t want to make you choose. We want to give you choices,” he said. But the report said the U.S. looks at the possible development of a naval base in Equatorial Guinea as something that would raise “national-security concerns.”
One senior congressional aide told Politico that some countries will be forced to choose or they’re “not going to rebuff China on key national security issues such as this.”
TREND FORECAST: Despite U.S. comments of “neutrality,” as evidenced by President Biden ramping up the U.S. war with Yemen and escalating the Ukraine crisis, America is once again on the warpath. And, President Biden has said one of his top geopolitical objectives is to prevent China from surpassing the U.S. in power. (SEE: “CHINA WON’T STOP AT TAIWAN, SO WHERE SHOULD AMERICA DRAW THE LINE?” “SPOTLIGHT: THE RISE OF CHINA,” “BIDEN RAMPS UP PRESSURE ON CHINA,” “U.S. LAUNCHES COLD WAR 2.0: CHINA LAMBASTS ‘COLD-WAR MENTALITY’” and “BIDEN VS. CHINA’S BELT & ROAD INITIATIVE: U.S. LOSES.”)
TRENDSPOST: Washington Monthly pointed out in an article last month that The Journal’s report failed to mention that Chevron and Exxon, two U.S. oil giants have been “economic mainstays” in the county for two decades. The report pointed out that Chevron just signed a new deal with the corrupt Obiang regime after the first WSJ report emerged about the base.
The Obiang family has been accused of taking hundreds of millions from these oil deals while the rest of the country lives in poverty, the Washington Monthly reported. The report said the Biden administration would do well to inquire why these companies continue to subsidize a regime that may allow the base in Bata.
James North, the journalist, recalled a time he visited the country about 10 years ago. He recalled visiting a restaurant called Pizza Place.
“On hot, muggy afternoons, groups of white oil workers from Europe and America, dressed in jeans and T-shirts, watched European soccer on big-screen televisions. Other tables were filled with dark-suited, senior Equatorial Guinean government officials, wearing lapel pins with President Obiang’s likeness, drinking Moët champagne over very long lunches,” he wrote.