The Congo Crisis: The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba

[Music] Once again, the United Nations Security Council sits in emergency session on the mounting crisis in the Congo. Representatives of Congo Premier Patrice Lamumba are insisting that the UN take over a Katanga province by force. And the Soviet Union delivers an ultimatum for Belgian troops to get out. Or else. Early in September 1960, the CIA's Chief of Station in Congo, Larry Devlin, received a telegram from headquarters stating that a certain "Jo from Paris" would soon appear and deliver instructions. "Jo" duly arrived in Leopoldville, the capital of the newly independent country, and Devlin recognized him as Sidney Gottlieb, Chief of the Atences Technical Services Division. Gottlieb's instructions were for Devlin's ears only. The station chief was to assassinate the country's prime minister, Trice Lamumba, the first elected leader of what was formerly the Belgian Congo. Toward that end, Gottlieb provided a number of lethal biological agents after the meeting Devlin locked up the biological agents in his personal state. But he had no intention of employing them. He objected to the proposed assassination, both on moral and political grounds. He later buried the biological agents near the Congo River. But a group of Lamumba's Congolese and international enemies weren't so scrupulous. Lamumba was in power for a mere three months before he was summarily dismissed by the new country's president. Lamumba was delivered to Belgian-backed authorities in the breakaway mineral-rich Ketanga province. On January 17, 1961, after being severely tortured, Lamumba was dispatched by a firing squad, assembled under a "remumlit tree". Today, on coming in from the cold, the assassination of Patrice Lamumba, the Congo crisis, and their legacies. [Music] Hello and welcome to Coming in from the cold, a monthly podcast from CNA, which explores long forgotten or never remembered aspects of US national security policy and strategy during the cold. [Music] Hello everyone and welcome. I'm your host, Bill Rose now, a senior analyst with CNA's Security and Development Program. And I'm joined today by Pamela Faber and Judd De Romand. Pamela, a CNA research analyst, is an expert in security and development in conflict and post-conflict regions in Africa and the Middle East. She focuses on terrorism and counterterrorism, insurgency and counterinsurgency, failed in fragile states, non-state armed groups, transnational challenges, and issues of governance. Prior to joining CNA, Pamela's work in research focused on natural resources in Africa. She conducted field work in the Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the impact of international transparency initiatives on conflict minerals, the mining industry, and local development. Pamela, welcome back to coming in from the cold. Thank you so much for having me, Bill. I'm excited to be back. Judd De Romand is the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Prior to joining CSIS, he served as the National Intelligence Officer for Africa in 2015 to 2018. In this position, he led the US intelligence community's analytic efforts on sub-Saharan African issues, and served as the DNI's personal representative at interagency policy meetings. From 2013 to 2015, he was the Central Intelligence Agency's senior political analyst on the sub-Saharan Africa. Judd also served as the National Security Council Director for Somalia, Nigeria, the Sahel, and the African Union from 2011 to 2013. And he's also the host of a wonderful podcast into Africa. Judd, it's great to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for having me, and I should just probably add here that the views that I'm going to express today are my own. They don't reflect the office of the director of national intelligence, the intelligence community, or any other government agency. I'd like to begin with a little scene setting, the run up to Congo's independence, the election and brief administration of Patrice Lamumba, and the role of external actors, including the United States, Belgium, and the United Nations. It's a pretty complex constellation of events and actors and circumstances. I'm wondering Pamela, I know. The wrong get over to you. Do you think you could provide a little broad context for our listeners? Yeah, absolutely. It is exceedingly complex history, but I think that there's a way to kind of just still add down a little bit. The period that we're discussing today is usually called the Congo crisis, and it started just after independence in the 1960s. The Congo crisis was a period of political maneuvering, violence, of internal strife that really started with the end of Belgian colonial rule and ended, if you will, with the ascension of Joseph Mogouto. This time is also now seen as one of the many proxy cold war conflicts between the US and the Soviet Union and Africa. It's a very complex political situation. So to understand it, I suggest that we kind of ask ourselves two questions. The first is, how did we get here? How did we get to the point of the Columbus assassination? And the second is, why does the US care? It's all briefly touched on both of these. To start to understand this, to really break it down, we have to start with the Belgians. Belgians, King Leopold II, ran the DRC as a private enterprise for over a decade. In 1908, he officially annexed the DRC as a Belgian colony. In the 1950s, Belgian rule really started to crumble, and the DRC gained independence in 1960. And this was around the time that many other countries in Africa were starting to really agitate for independence, and they had helped, you know, from external parties and external countries. And so, as mentioned, the Treesk Lamumba was elected as the first prime minister, and Joseph Kassabubu was elected as the first president. What's crucial here is that these were very different men, and we can talk more about this later. Lamumba was seen as more extreme, as more centralist, and Kassabubu and Mobutu as well later on were seen as more moderate, more willing to compromise, more federalist. And so here we are in the summer of 1960. This complex crisis has begun almost immediately after independence, some units of the army were built, and a man named Moise Chambre used this as an opportunity to proclaim the mineral rich Kanga province was deceiving. And so what happened? Well, Belgium came back. They sent in troops, ostensibly to protect Belgian nationals, in reality, they were kind of sustaining Chambre's secessionist regime. And so Lamumba had a choice now, and he appealed to the UN to excel the Belgians, to help him restore internal order. And the UN plays a very important role in which we can come back to, largely because of its lack of action. Lamumba also appealed to the US. Support from these two groups were not forthcoming, and so Lamumba then appealed to the Soviet Union for support, mostly assistance for planes and transporting his troops, etc. So this led to a lot of political infighting between Pasavubu and Lamumba. They each dismissed each other. This was contested by each other. And so now there were two groups that were both claiming to be the legal central government, and there were several groups claiming to lead different secessionist states. Obviously, also this whole time, Joseph Mobutu, who later became president/dikator, was consolidating his power. And so here we are, where we are now in a situation that kind of set the scene for Lamumba's assassination. But that's all largely internal to the DRC. And so very briefly, the second question is, why does the US care? Why is Congo important at this point? Well, the US already had a history in the DRC and in the Ketenga province, largely surrounding uranium and the uranium mine called "Chinkolobwe". This was the highest grade uranium minerals ever found. And this was before the time where there were methods of enriching lower grade uranium. And the US actually used the Schinkler-Bway mine to support the Manhattan Project. So there was a lot of secrecy around this. There was a lot of concern about this falling into the wrong hands. There was also fear around Soviet influence in Central Africa in general, fear about the Soviets taking over Belgian bases. And so there was this growing perception that there was going to be a decisive moment for the US to interfere in the DRC in order to prevent Soviet military intervention. And that kind of says the scene as to how we got to this point and why the US cares. And can I ask, are there one of you about post-independence role of Belgium? Because Belgium is continuing to metal in its former colony. What were the Belgians actually after? I mean, I think that Pamela previewed it very nicely. They were had economic interest in Ketenga that they wanted to have access to. And they were particularly opposed to LaMumba not seeing him as a useful ally. In fact, LaMumba had been incredibly antagonistic towards the Belgians, the Belgian king, the Belgian government. And so he represented the anti-Belgian perspective and a threat to their continued economic interest in influencing the Congo. Whereas Chombé and the Ketenga succession was the key to continuing to be influential in this important country. I just want to turn to the United States for a minute. And yes, Pamela set this up very well. And it really has to do with intelligence analysis. At a meeting of the National Security Council on July 21, 1960, Alan Dulles described LaMumba's background as quote, "heroing." It is safe, he said, to go on the assumption that LaMumba has been bought by the communists. This also, however, fits with his own orientation. And at the same time, CIA and State Department intelligence analyses, and we know this from the foreign relations in the United States, Second Volume on Congo. These analysts at the same time were portraying LaMumba as a proud nationalist and a pan-Africanist who stroked to be neutral in the Cold War. Apparently, this was disregarded. And I'm wondering, Judd, have you had any thoughts on that gap between what Eisenhower's senior lieutenants are arguing and what the intelligence was actually saying? Yeah, this is a fairly common story, particularly in the 1960s. I teach a class at George Washington University on the history of US intelligence analysis in Africa. So this comes out very clearly in a number of countries, particularly in the Congo, but also in Ghana with President Kwame and Krumah. And I think one way to understand this is that the analysts and the policymakers don't live in separate worlds. They're constantly interacting. And so you see, initially, as you suggested, the intelligence analysts are talking about LaMumba as a nationalist and after a pan-African nationalist. The words they tend to use with him, in particular, this earlier period is opportunistic. They seem to be very clear that he's making some of these decisions in part because there was no US help to address the Ketangas' session. But there's an interaction here because as the policymakers continue to read out about their own personal interactions that does shape the way the analysts talk about it. So it's not just delus in others. It's even Ralph Bunch who calls him crazy. There's a number of these inputs that the analysts are getting. And we had a student of ours, Derek Minkle, write analysis about this in our first semester back in 2018. And he has this great analysis where he says it goes from opportunistic. And then the IC starts talking about LaMumba as threatening and inverse to all Belgian activities. And then they start taking a more drastic turn, particularly after dependence. The IAML start calling him a leftist leader who wants to seize all power. And then by September, they start calling him a communist. So you can see this evolution. And I think it's part of this dialogue. And it's a problem, actually, that we can talk about later about sort of maintaining a dispassionate objective viewpoint on these issues. But the policymakers do pull the analyst, I think, into a much more negative and, I think, one dimensional view of LaMumba. Yeah, Bill, if I could jump in here and just add on to that, I think when we're looking at kind of why the trace of LaMumba, why was he seen as such a threat to the US intelligence community, but also others internal to this country and other countries as well. I think that you can kind of look at it in two ways. You can look at him as an individual. And then you can look at his policies and his political goals and who that threatened. And so if you kind of look at him as an individual, he was very intense. You know, he was a charismatic order. He led a nationalist party to victory. But you know, even at that time, early on, his hold on power was still tenuous. And so why was he seen as a threat? Well, there were these series of kind of triggers that happened. Then Judd mentioned some of them that changed perception in the early 1960s. And there was one in the literature that was particularly interesting. It could allow me to quote from this historic speech that LaMumba gave during this ceremonial gathering in early 1960 for the independence of the Congo. And so you have to picture, you know, you have many Congolese and attendance. The Belgians are there. Western media is paying attention to this. And he says, for this independence of the Congo, although being proclaimed today by agreement with Belgium, an amicable country with which we are on equal terms, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that it was by fighting that it has been won. A day to day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation or suffering. And for which we gave our strength and our blood, we are proud of this struggle of tears, of fire and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, an indispensable put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force. And so, you know, you can imagine how this may have shocked people. It shocked the Western media. It was called a venomous pack on the West. Looking back historically, it actually doesn't read as that shocking to perhaps us on the line, but it was a time. And you know, this was a trigger, and so there was that kind of personal element of Lumumba being seen as some of you can't be reasons with. But then there were also his political goals for the DRC. And this focused on the issue of whether or not the DRC was going to centralize the Federal List. And centralization was one of Lumumba's goals. And this was, as Judd mentioned, connected to kind of pan-Africanism and African nationalism in general. But the crucial part here is that leaders of the DRC, even colonial leaders, have struggled to balance central control and decentralized administration. But in general, the decentralized administration that cost the boo-boo and others represented is similar to how the Belgians covered similar to the colonial era. And it largely benefited outsiders because it allowed individuals to develop individual relationships with certain provinces, such as the Katanga province. And so you had Lumumba who was kind of seen as holding these strident anti-imperialist views and also not being in alignment with what outsiders wanted in order to gain access to certain regions. You know, just listening to your recounting of that speech, these are words that could have been uttered by the Del Castro, almost to the word, or France and on. You had this period of very charismatic leaders of independence movements in the developing world, which, you know, the United States kind of went back and forth on them. These kind of nationalist figures were a mitched bag. It's such an important point to bring up Castro and for listeners to think about how events elsewhere in the world are shaping the way that policymakers and analysts are thinking about specific developments in Africa. And in fact, Delus, the CIA director at the time, actually calls Lumumba a Castro or worse. Nicely underscores your point. I'm wondering if we could turn to the fascinating subject of Joseph Desiree and Mabutu, who's already been mentioned, who mounts at least two coups, the one in 65 where he really becomes the kleptom and Iacle dictator of what would become Zaire. I noticed that any adopts the name, Mabutu, Ceci Seco, which I found out means the old powerful warrior who goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake, 32 years of rule. What I wanted to just point out, and this goes back actually to Lumumba and the West tilting toward Mabutu as a more rational, sensible alternative. And it's almost personalistic. So if you compare with me for just a second, Brian Erquardt, the former Undersecretary General of the United Nations, very amusing writer did a character sketch of these two. And I just want to briefly read this quote, "When I first met Mabutu in July 1960, he was Prime Minister Patrice Lamumba's chief military assistant and had just promoted himself from sergeant to Lieutenant Colonel. By comparison with his boss, Mabutu was a pillar of pragmatism in common sense. It was him that we appealed when our people were arrested by Lamumba's hashish stimulated guards. It was he who would bring up in a disarmingly casual way. Lamumba's most outrageous requests that the UN, for example, meet the payroll of potentially mutinous Congolese army. In those early days, Mabutu seemed a comparatively sensible young man, one who might even at least now and then have been the best interest of his newly independent country at heart." Close quotes. We thoughts on this sort of Mabutu, Lamumba comparison? Yeah, I mean, I think that that was definitely the first option at the time. And I think the story of Mabutu here is really one of an astute, pragmatic, military and political operative. He was able to put himself in positions where he was simultaneously viewed as trusted and non-threatening, but also able to really consolidate power. And one of the ways that he did that was finding different openings. And so this event can be described in many ways. But one thing that it is is a constitutional crisis that happened between the president and the prime minister in 1960. And so this created an opening. And Mabutu took those openings several times, the first in 1961, that's in 1965, in order to carry out a coup. And so he essentially effectively took control of the military. And his first coup was, again, just as steady, because he essentially took power for a short period of time and then gave power back to Kosovou, which, to some degree, again, made him seem extremely reasonable. But did he ever really give power back? They're debates about this. And then the second coup in 1965, that was final. And that ushered in the Mabutu age. And then, as we know, he stayed in power for the next 30 years. But yes, so there was this comparison between him and LaMumba, where LaMumba was seen as kind of extremist. And he was seen as definitely more pragmatic. What's interesting about LaMumba compared to Mabutu is the Mumbas alienating, pushing everyone aside. And Mabutu is embracing. So one of the stories about that first coup that Pamela talks about is he develops a very close relationship with Larry Devlin, the chief of station. And he goes to Larry Devlin says, I'm going to do this coup. Do I have your support? Do I have the US support? And Devlin, he's in haze and says, look, I'm just a junior officer. I can't make these decisions. And he says, do I have your support? And Devlin says, yes. And what he did, essentially, is make the US a partner in that action and bound his fate in the US together. So various stood in the way in which he networked and created a situation where we were all in on the Mabutu project. Asuna, we've mentioned Katanga province. But what more do we need to say about that succession and the crisis that it brought about? What were the causes and how did that succession crisis play out? I was in Katanga in 2014. And I was actually focusing on the mining industry. And so as an American there, Katanga, the story of Mumbas came up many times. And I would point to two things about the Katanga succession. The first has to do with how it was part of a wider trend at the time of provinces being the center of different power bases in the Congo. So what do I mean by this? Well, after independence and before independence, there were various political actors who were kind of in charge of and were being enriched by different provinces in the Congo. Katanga was won, but there are also others. And these provinces, they started to kind of dominate the political sphere there. And this goes back to the kind of question of federalism or decentralism in the DRC. There were many unanswered questions about the distribution of political power between the center and the regions. Katanga itself was definitely a prize. It's a mind-rich, mineral-rich area. And so independence kind of triggered an internal scramble over provinces between both high-ranking Congolese individuals and also outsiders. And the other thing that I would point to-- and obviously, this is also complex. There are many other factors, but that is an important one. And the other thing that I would point to that's crucial here is the role of the UN. The UN became a de facto political actor in Katanga's session by refusing to essentially act in the way that would initially help the NUMBA. And so the arrival of the UN mission, UN operation, I should say, it was welcomed by NUMBA. It was seen as, OK, we're going to be able to crush this, and we're going to be able to kind of move on with the very beginning of our independence. But in reality, the UN mandate only covered the maintenance of law and order. And secession was seen as an internal political matter. They didn't want to touch it. The US refused to provide support outside of the UN. And so that then led to what we're discussing with NUMBA going to the Soviet Union, which then precipitated all these plots against him. So later on, actually, the UN did play a more active role in defeating secessionist movements. But at this point in time, the UN did not. And so by not acting, they actually did play a decisive role in precipitating these events. OK, so why don't we take a quick break here? And when we come back, consider some contemporary legacies of Patrice Lemumba and the Congo crisis. Hi, I'm Dave Royals, co-host of CNAS Weekly Podcast AI with AI. Every week, we discuss the latest breakthroughs in AI and their implications for each of our lives. New episodes every Friday. You can find AI with AI on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. OK, we're back. Pamela, you mentioned that when you were doing your field work in Katanga Province, the subject of Lemumba came up quite often. What's your sense? Is he a figure of some respect and reverence? Is there a renewed interest in Lemumba as a pivotal figure in the history of the DRC? I would say that every answer about the DRC needs to start with the complexity of the DRC. But if we're talking specifically about Katanga, then I think the answer is yes. The province has a very strong identity. So to some degree, Lemumba is viewed in that context. And it's definitely mired in external interference. So on the one hand, there's this identity that's separate from Lemumba. This idea that maybe Katanga should be its own country. Maybe Katanga should have access to its minerals and not need to, for instance, distribute that to the rest of the DRC. But then there's also this prevailing idea in many portions of the DRC of Lemumba being this kind of murder for pan-Africanism and kind of representing this anti-imperialist sentiment and being a representation of external exploitation of the DRC's riches. And I think it's important to kind of note if we're talking about the legacy of Lemumba. This is a very evocative story, but this was not the end of US involvement in the DRC. US involvement of a certain type, I should say. The US was involved a few years later in the Simba Rebellion, which was when Maoist inspired militants rose up in the east of the country. And they actually proclaimed the communist country for a time. Belgium and the US intervened militarily to cure a couple of hostages. The US supported the Congolese Air Force directly until 1968 and supported Mobutu in various ways for his maintenance of power and long run. And so I think it all gets very complicated because those who may have in Papanha not necessarily supported Lemumba because perhaps the history of a Sistatianist desire may you have as a symbol to counter kind of Mobutu's oppression. So again, it gets extremely complex, but I will say that him as a symbol is absolutely alive and well throughout the DRC and throughout Africa. Do you actually see pictures of him hanging up in cafes or anything like that? Or is it-- There definitely. year olds. Right, I would say that, you know, there are some beautiful year olds that are usually painted outside of buildings or on kind of the breezeways and the walls in major cities. And I can't recall if they were in Livambashi, but I'm definitely kind of remembering some, especially the each that he gave that I quoted from that has been painted several times. To turn to Mabutu, Sase Seiko and his legacy, David Robars, who's a prominent C.I. historian, described it sort of big terms Mabutu in this way and the West relationship with him, the United States relationship quote, over the years Mabutu proved to be the best geopolitical friend the United States had on the continent. But he also turned into one of the worlds most reviled kleptocrats and drove his country into economic ruin and ultimately political chaos. Is that a fair assessment in your view? Well, I agree with the last part that he definitely drove the country into economic ruin. I would actually quibble with the first part that he was the U.S. his best friend or close ally. As we've talked about, he was very savvy and he was very good at extracting concessions from the U.S. in multiple different cases to get what he wanted. He would oftentimes, despite being this sort of paragon of Cold War U.S. ally would flirt with the idea of a relationship with communist China before Nixon went to Beijing. He would push back on any efforts to reform his economy or deal with human rights. There was a real give and take and you see everyone including Kissinger struggling to deal with Mabutu to keep him in quotes in our camp without conceding as much as Mabutu wanted. And he, PNGed, he declared several ambassadors persona non grata. So I just want to make sure that our listeners have a sense of, you know, the push and pull that Mabutu represented for us. And it wasn't as sort of clear cut as just this proxy for the U.S. who did very bad things in Congo. He was a tough partner. He sort of reminds me a bit of descriptions of President Xi'am in South Vietnam before he was murdered. A U.S. official described Xi'am as a puppet who pulled his own strings. Obviously it's important we historians and scholars recognizing the agency of what are described as our clients in the developing world. Yeah, I really like that quote. I think that's applicable to Mabutu in particular, but to many of the leaders who have been sort of described as our proxies or clients in Sub-Saharan Africa during the Cold War. One of Mabutu's less horrifying legacies I suppose, or actions was 1974 rumble in the jungle. Yes, right? In Zaire, right? Muhammad Ali in George Foreman. And those of you actually, it's a brilliant film. You two have probably seen it when we were kings. A documentary about that fight. And Mabutu figures prominently if I recall correctly the idea of staging this ultimate heavyweight out in Zaire was an effort at image polishing primarily. But of course, lots of money changed hands. And I'm sure a good portion of that wound up in Mabutu's pockets. Yeah, it's actually built my favorite movie. It's weird to say that a documentary is your favorite movie, but I watch it at least once a year. I just think it is spectacular. So great. It is certainly one of my top. I don't even want to call it a sports documentary, but my other favorite, this is tangential Harvard BGL 2929. But let me ask you, one scholar, Kangalee scholar, said of Lamumba's legacy is most important legacy. And panel, I think you hit on this quote, the greatest legacy that Lamumba left for Congo is the ideal of national unity. Recently, a Congolese radio station asked me whether the independence of South Sudan should be a matter of concern with respect to national unity in the Congo. I responded that since Patrice Lamumba has died for Congo's unity, our people will remain utterly steadfast in their defense of our national unity. Do you think that's a fair assessment? I think that the legacy of Lamumba and the influence of African nationalism, clearly there are strong themes of that that exist today and many people live and practice and see. I also think that DRC's recent history does show how the impact of conflicts that are on or around its borders impacts ability in the DRC. I mean, if we're talking about Mobutu's downfall, it is clearly linked to economic mismatch in the country, widespread kronism, etc. But it's also heavily linked to the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide that destabilized eastern parts of the country. You know, Laurent Pabela was backed by Rwanda's ruling party when he took power in 1997. And by the way, Pabela was actually a Marxist in the 60s, as opposed to Lamumba. He actually received assistance from Che Guevara and the whole story, which is a different podcast. But the point being that you know, Pabela was supported by Rwandan backers when he fell out with them, that triggered a war. He was then assassinated in 2001, his son Joseph Pabela that took over the point of this whole story is to say it honestly really depends what part of DRC's history you're looking at, which region you're looking at. But I would say that similar to how conflict and instability in the DRC impacts the countries around it, I'm really the whole continent of Africa, conflicts outside of the DRC impact the stability of the DRC. And this has to do with a lot of reasons, including, you know, kind of the ethnic diversity that that stands borders among others. So, you know, I think that there's some truth to that statement and there's also a lot of complexity to it. Just thinking about what you said about Cabela's Marxist days, I'm thinking about another one of our one of our clients in another part of Africa and Angola, the founder and leader of the Unita Movement, fighting the ruling MPLA during the 1980s. And Sevimbi himself had been a not not even just your ordinary Marxist Londonist, but you know, a full-blown Maoist, but you know, maybe gave him certain ideas about how to wage war and wage that kind of struggle. Cabela and Judd, we're coming to the end of our time. Any final thoughts, any idea, any suggestions for the incoming administration and US policy to the extent we will have one on the DRC? For me, there has been some tremendous changes in the last couple of years in the Congo when Joseph Cabela finally agreed to step down from office. He held an election. His candidate lost. In fact, his candidate lost very badly, came in third place. The candidate who did with Martin Fuyulu was denied his office, denied the presidency and Cabela made a deal with Felix Chitsikati to become president. Now, there has been a lot of critiques around what the US did, which is very quickly recognized Chitsikati's win, but now is 2020 and the new administration will come into power in 2021, the US administration that is. And Chitsikati is trying to establish himself to break some of the commitments he made to Cabela to essentially share power. He will be the new head of the African Union for this year, 2021. And so I think that there are really important engagements we need to be doing with the Chitsikati government to assist them, to free themselves from the previous government's influence, specifically Joseph Cabela, and then working with this country in civil society to address some of the deep systemic challenges around governance and security to push forward a more positive pathway for this country at the heart of the continent. And as I think Pamela has eloquently pointed out, a country that its insecurity deeply affects its neighbors and its neighbors and securities deeply affect Congo, a strong united, peaceful Congo that works is to everyone's benefit. So the fine hair is agenda for Africa, the African diaspora was just recently released and obviously this isn't specific to the Congo, but it does have a few interesting points and there are also many gaps in it. And clearly it's not a full policy, it's just a one page on a website. But at the same time, from what we can glean from that, restoring diplomatic relations with African governments in the African Union was mentioned specifically, but there's no reference to really any specific kind of funding development projects or no reference to any specific focus. of Africa's security challenges. And so I think when any new administration comes in, it isn't opportunity for expanding, kind of retooling the aperture of US Africa policy. And part of this is not coming in with a limiting mindset where an administration might assume the strategic importance of certain African countries. As we know, the past several administrations US Africa policy has been largely dominated by counterterrorism concerns. And now there's this real possibility that Africa policy will be kind of clouded by the lens of great power competition. And Africa will be kind of seen as this stage for prophycalculative again. So instead, I would hope that the Biden-Harris administration kind of view African countries with the individual complexity that they deserve, including looking at countries as possible partners on various fronts, like trade and investment. And one way to do this is kind of put people on a job who do know this, surrounding yourself with experts, even if you're not an Africa expert. And so I was kind of optimistic. I know these are very early days, but President-elect Biden announced his attention to nominate Lentitama Springfield as the US ambassador to the UN. And she served as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. She was the ambassador to Liberia. She's a deep understanding of African-Field politics. So it'll be interesting to kind of see how that plays out, and if that foretends any changes in US-Africa policy moving forward. - Pamela Faber, you had the last word. I want to thank you and Judd Devermont for just fascinating discussion. We can push out your social media handles, if you'd like. - Sure, I'm at Jay Devermont. So Jay, D-E-V-E-R, M-O-N-T. - Yes, and I'm at Pamela_Favor. - Wonderful. Well, thank you very much. I'd also like to thank our producer, Jon Stimson. And finally, thanks to all of our coming in from the Cold listeners. Until next time, stay warm out there. - Coming in from the Cold is produced, edited and mixed by Jon Stimson. 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