The US National Security Strategy for Europe is out. And it reads like a horror story about diversity. Europe, according to Washington, is “unrecognisable”. Its politicians are weak. Its borders are porous. Its people, well, apparently they are a threat to civilisation itself.
Let that sink in. The world’s oldest democracies are in danger – not from foreign armies, not from nuclear weapons, but from migration, multiculturalism and demographic change. The US strategy isn’t critique. It’s fearmongering, dressed in the language of national security.
The obsession with “civilisational continuity” is not new; it is a colonial construct that attempts to divide the world into the “civilised” and the “savage”. It was designed to justify domination, control and resource extraction. “Civilisational continuity” is a fancy phrase for an old colonial trick that marks some people as inherently civilised and others as dangerous.
Under the US strategy for Europe, migration is framed as chaos. Diversity framed as collapse. Europe, the strategy says, must resist; hold its borders and preserve its identity. Otherwise, civilisation as we know it will vanish.
But here’s the twist: the same administration that lectures Europe about borders and identity turns around and treats Africa like a giant piggy bank. Ideology for Europe. Profit for Africa.
A case in point. This week, President Donald Trump welcomed the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the White House. Standing beside Trump, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi looked every inch a schoolboy desperate to please his master, while Rwandan President Paul Kagame seemed almost painfully awkward – both stiff, both constrained, as if the room itself demanded their subservience. A determined Trump declared: “We’ll be sending some of our biggest and greatest companies to extract rare earths… and everybody’s going to make a lot of money.” No pretence. No talk of partnership. No concern for local stability or long-term development.
Africa’s sovereignty, its people and its future were not mentioned in any meaningful way. Trump’s cavalier reference to the war lacked a poignant reflection on the scale of human suffering and instead packaged “peace” as a vehicle for resource access and strategic leverage. In his words: “They spent a lot of time killing each other. And now they’re going to spend a lot of time hugging, holding hands and taking advantage of the United States economically, like every other country does.”
The contrast is striking. National sovereignty matters unless there’s a rare earth mineral under your soil. Civilisational continuity matters, unless there’s money to be made. Diversity is a threat, unless it’s profitable. The rules of engagement shift depending on what suits Washington.
Moraliser, exploiter
This is a blueprint. In Europe, fear of migration justifies tough borders, alarmist rhetoric and pressure on allied nations. In Africa, hunger for minerals justifies transactional diplomacy, resource grabs and a blind eye to instability. European governments are nudged to fear diversity; African governments are nudged to monetise it.
African leaders now must navigate a US that can switch from moraliser to exploiter in a heartbeat.
The stakes are real. Migration policies may harden. Investment flows may skew towards extraction, not development. Diplomatic engagement may prioritise American profits over African priorities. And the message is unmistakable: Africa exists to serve US strategic and economic interests, not the other way around.
The “civilisational continuity” argument Europe faces today is Africa’s warning tomorrow. Fear of diversity is packaged as moral duty in Europe, and greed is packaged as national interest in Africa. The ideological thread is the same: a world divided between those who are to be protected and those who are to be exploited.
Let’s not be subtle. This is neocolonial logic. Africa is not being offered partnership, collaboration or respect. It is being offered extraction, transaction and exploitation. Perhaps African leaders can learn something from a “leaked” conversation between European leaders and Ukraine. They openly warned President Volodymyr Zelensky not to trust US peace deal architecture and underscored its risky and transactional nature. In a moment of collective scepticism, they demonstrated a unified, strategic response, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying “there is a possibility that the US will betray Ukraine”, and German leader Friedrich Merz adding that America’s envoys were “playing games” and Kyiv must be “extremely careful in the coming days”. This is the language of distrust.
For Africa, this is a moment of clarity. The world’s dominant power can no longer be assumed to be a partner, even by its historic allies in Europe. African leaders, civil society and the diaspora must take note. Engagement with the US cannot assume goodwill. It must assume pragmatism, assertiveness and vigilance. Africa must insist on real partnership, not transactional diplomacy. It must protect its resources, its people and its agency. DM
Redi Tlhabi is a South African journalist, producer, author and a former radio presenter.