The Dissolution of Development Partnerships

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s unfortunate encounter with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office during a pre-meeting press conference may cause African leaders to meditate on the meaning of sovereignty. The denunciation and defenestration of a one-time strategic partner may finally convince them that it is sovereignty that commands respect for a country; not the fact of being received at the White House and other seats of power, but the ability to supply essential services to the citizens of your country.

For perspective, it is necessary to look back to the expectations leading up to the hazing of President Zelensky. Days earlier, host President Trump had stated that he was happy to host Zelensky to discuss a minerals deal. He called it a “big deal” worth potentially “billions or even trillions of dollars”. Having accepted the role of provocateur in the East in return for future membership of NATO, a goal enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution in 2018, Zelensky was expecting more material and matériel support from the United States. Up to that point, the Biden Administration had issued Ukraine with an ATM card only one grade below Israel’s. Some US$175 billion has been given as military aid to Ukraine since 2022. It was accompanied by high-level cheerleading from Secretary of State Antony Blinken who famously said, “Bombing schools and hospitals and apartment buildings to rubble [in Ukraine] is not normal,” even as he did just that in Gaza. 

The drama that began with Ukraine as the hero holding Russia at bay spiralled into a war with no end in sight. In the latter days, Zelensky wanted ̶ needed ̶ more than material support. He needed relief from the stresses of years of war. The whole point of NATO membership is to enhance the standing of members on the international stage. 

To citizens of less developed aid colonies, all the symptoms of Third-World syndrome were apparent. The Western world was talking loudly about the goals of civilisation – freedom of speech, choice, association (and dress) while Ukraine was reduced to abducting and press-ganging young men into the army for want of voluntary recruits. Diaspora Ukrainians found they could no longer renew their passports from abroad but had to return home to do so. Once there, many found themselves caught in the dragnet of compulsory military service.

The evacuation of Kharkiv featured African students being barred from boarding trains and buses carrying people to safety – a colonial project is nothing without racial segregation. At least one African prisoner was extracted from the prison where his Third World student issues had landed him, inserted into the frontline, and held up as a hero in the battle for democracy. African journalists were invited to Kyiv and given an audience with the president before being guided around the city to photograph the results of Russia’s delinquency which they duly reported. That is how Volodymyr Zelensky became a household name on the African continent. Colonial recruits for World War II Burma all over again.

Evidence confirming the Ukraine war to be part of just another imperial venture came with America’s eventual demand that Ukraine sign over half of the value of its rare earth minerals to the United States in return for further military “assistance” and the “right to continue fighting”.

We need to go back a little further in history to see how “universal rights” are limited by the objectives of more powerful nations. In 1916, subjects of the Ottoman Empire gained support for their right to self-determination by agreeing to assist the United Kingdom in toppling the Ottoman Empire. The agreement was that Arab nations would be supported in forming a single, decentralised Arab state. However the 1916 arrangement was superseded by the Sykes-Picot Agreement under which Britain and France agreed to divide the Arab nations into separate mandates governed by Britain and France. Mandatory authorities were charged with preparing the territories for self-rule. The American delegation to the Paris Peace talks (known as the King-Crane Commission) supported the Palestinian position and recommended that Britain prepare Palestine for self-rule by building administrative and educational institutions. It also stated Britain was not to involve Palestine in financial entanglements.

Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan eventually attained independent statehood. Palestine did not. This was because The Balfour Declaration made in 1917 was grafted onto the Palestine Mandate designating Palestine as the Jewish Homeland, ignoring the agreement to guarantee Palestine’s self-determination and making the status of Palestine a subject of debate to the present day. 

The British mandate authority was suddenly speaking the language of partition of the territory. It pivoted more and more towards the wishes of the Zionist Organisation which had access to influential British members of Parliament such as Herbert Samuel who became British High Commissioner to Mandatory Palestine. The General Syrian Congress representing Lebanon and Palestine did not have similar access to decision-makers. Britain’s new partnership arrangement relieved Britain of raising the money to build institutions in Palestine and left them to the financiers of the Zionist Organisation.

Britain borrowed £4,500,000 (£315,333,533.08 in 2023) in Palestine’s name ostensibly to compensate itself for a few miles of railway track and other equipment left behind after the war. The loan was repayable by the eventual Palestinian State. It was believed that it was in exchange for these funds that the Zionists were permitted to form a second legislative council that excluded Palestinian Arabs (UK Hansard archives, Mr. Saklatvala MP column 2021).

This seems to be the model for the United States plan to extract value from its junior partner in the Ukraine war effort – a U-turn on previous understandings and guarantees coupled with demands for asset transfers from the dependent partner. As one British MP described the method in 1939, “The story is one of crude duplicity.”

Ukraine too had expectations of security guarantees but later found that it was expected to pay for the privileges with its rare earth minerals, 50 per cent of them. Worse still, the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, said publicly in the week before Zelensky’s visit to Trump’s office that Ukraine was never promised NATO membership. Rutte, it will be remembered, is the man who, as outgoing Prime Minister of the Netherlands in 2024, was reported to The Hague after asking his legal affairs ministry, “What can we say to make it look like Israel is not committing war crimes?” All former colonies from the Americas via Africa to the Far East are familiar with the slippery underbelly of the imperial beast. 

The president of Ukraine contradicted Trump by referring to the agreement as a “framework” for a potential agreement as opposed to a done deal. His second argument was also sound; he pointed out that his country was on the frontline with Russia while the United States was protected by an ocean. Sound but mistimed; Ukraine’s contiguity with Russia would have been better considered when they were deciding to enter NATO. Zelensky’s attempt to develop the argument by adding that eventually America would experience what Ukraine was experiencing was his undoing.

Zelensky’s plaintive claims that his country had been abandoned earned him accusations of ingratitude for previous military aid from America from VP Vance. It will be recalled that the leaders of Jordan and Egypt had earlier been deemed ungrateful for declining Trump’s proposal to funnel the population of Gaza into their countries while America takes over and owns Gaza, “Well, we pay Jordan and Egypt billions of dollars a year. And I was a little surprised they’d say that, but they did,” he mused.

The more needy Zelensky was told that he was losing the war and that he needed America to win it. He was not spared a reminder from the Veep that he was having to abduct young men off the streets to join his army. To add insult to injury, somebody shouted from the back, “Why don’t you wear a suit?” As Zelensky emerged alone from the White House, the media breathlessly reported that he had been thrown out.

In other developments, the new American administration has carried out its warning made two months ago that it intended to cut international development aid to “development partners”. There has been enough time for affected countries to move from the denial phase of grief to acceptance of the new realities. Those commentators that have long argued that aid dependency for basic services like health, education and water amounts to a loss of sovereignty see the announcement as having the potential to influence the way aid-dependent countries are governed. Proposals for affordable government that were once ridiculed will no doubt be revisited with attention given to cost-cutting. 

There had been hopeful talk about exceptions being made for humanitarian aid. For example, the antiretroviral drugs supplied to ninety-three per cent of Ugandans on treatment for HIV infection receive their medications from USAID’s PEPFAR programme. The communication cancelling PEPFAR support to UNAIDS uses language that belies any claims to partnership or humanitarian concerns:

“Dear Partner, This award is being terminated for the convenience of the U.S. Government…. for alignment with Agency priorities and national interest.”