U.S. Aims to Thwart China’s Plan for Atlantic Base in Africa
An American delegation
wants to convince Equatorial Guinea against giving Beijing a launchpad
in waters the U.S. considers its backyard
A ferry near Bata, Equatorial Guinea, which already has a Chinese-built commercial port. Photo:
David Degner/Getty Images
Feb. 11, 2022
NAIROBI—The Biden administration is intensifying its campaign to persuade Equatorial Guinea to reject China’s bid to build a military base on the country’s Atlantic Coast.
A delegation of senior U.S. diplomatic and military personnel
plans to visit the small Central African nation next week, according to
government officials, and is expected to discuss American counter-piracy
assistance and other inducements intended to convince Equatorial
Guinean President
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo
to spurn Beijing’s advances.
The delegation will be led by the State Department’s top Africa official,
Molly Phee,
and Maj. Gen.
Kenneth Ekman
of the military’s Africa Command.
The visit coincides with rising American concern about China’s
global expansionism and its pursuit of a permanent military presence on
waters the U.S. considers home turf.
“We’d really, really not like to see a Chinese facility” on the Atlantic, said
Tibor Nagy,
Ms. Phee’s predecessor as assistant secretary of state for African affairs.
The Wall Street Journal reported last year that classified U.S.
intelligence reports suggest China intends to build its first Atlantic
base in Equatorial Guinea, likely in the city of Bata. Bata already has a
Chinese-built commercial port with water deep enough to dock naval
vessels.
The head of U.S. Africa Command, Gen.
Stephen Townsend,
later repeated the reports’ findings, telling Voice of America in
January that Beijing is “intent on building a military air base and/or
naval facility in Equatorial Guinea.”
A Chinese Embassy spokesperson in Washington didn’t comment
directly on Beijing’s aspirations on Africa’s west coast, but added that
“China is committed to a defensive national defense policy and is
always a builder of world peace.”
Chinese state-owned companies are building ports and other infrastructure all across Africa,
from highways in Kenya to hospitals in Equatorial Guinea’s hinterlands.
A military base in Bata would fit the Chinese model of integrating
commercial and political ends, China experts say, because it would both
give China’s military a place to refit and rearm warships in the
Atlantic and give Chinese companies access to the interior of Central
Africa via Equatorial Guinea’s excellent highways.
The U.S. is hoping to quash any deal before it is signed, and
Equatorial Guinea’s leaders appear aware of the potential leverage they
now hold.
In December, the president’s son and heir apparent, Vice
President Teodoro “Teodorin” Nguema Obiang Mangue, tweeted: “China is
the model of a friendly nation and strategic partner, but, for now,
there is no agreement.”
In October last year, a senior White House official visited Mr.
Obiang and his son in Malabo—the capital city, situated on the island
of Bioko—to raise U.S. objections to China’s basing plans.
“We’re not asking [Equatorial Guinea] to choose between China
and us,” Gen. Townsend told VOA. “What we’re asking them to do is
consider their other international partners and their concerns, because a
Chinese military base in Equatorial Guinea is of great concern to the
U.S. and all of their other partners.”
Equatorial Guinea
was Spain’s only colony in sub-Saharan Africa. Since its independence
in 1968, the country has been ruled by members of a single family.
Mr. Obiang came to power in 1979, after overthrowing his infamously brutal uncle, Francisco Macias.
Successive U.S. administrations have condemned Mr. Obiang for
his regime’s alleged corruption, human-rights abuses and dictatorial
rule.
In a 2014 civil settlement, the Justice Department took
possession of a mansion, a Ferrari and Michael Jackson memorabilia worth
tens of millions of dollars, assets the government alleged that the
president’s son Mr. Obiang Mangue acquired corruptly.
At the time, Mr. Obiang Mangue denied having gotten rich by raiding state coffers.
Oil minister
Gabriel Mbaga Obiang Lima,
another of the president’s children and often the regime’s public
face, didn’t respond to requests for comment on the allegations against
his family and U.S. concerns about Chinese military overtures.
U.S. concerns about corruption and human-rights violations
limit the tools the Biden administration has at its disposal in
negotiating with the Obiangs, according to U.S. diplomats.
But American officials believe they might make headway by
helping Equatorial Guinea secure the pirate-infested waters of the Gulf
of Guinea.
The country is split between a mainland section bordering
Cameroon and Gabon and a set of islands in the Gulf of Guinea. Those
waters generate the bulk of the country’s income, in the form of
revenues from offshore oil and gas deposits developed by American energy
companies.
In recent years, the Gulf of Guinea has seen a surge in piracy,
threatening both the oil industry and sea traffic in Equatorial
Guinea’s waters. Over the past two years, there have been 54 incidents
in which pirates have succeeded in boarding commercial or private
vessels, as well as four more that ended in gunfire, according to Gulf
of Guinea-wide data collected by the British and French navies.
On Jan. 29, armed attackers in a speed boat approached a
passenger boat between Bata and Malabo, prompting a firefight between
the pirates and the boat’s security team.
“That has now become the most dangerous waterway in the world as far as piracy is concerned,” said Mr. Nagy.
U.S. officials are linking maritime-security assistance to their effort to woo Equatorial Guinea away from the Chinese.
Gen. Townsend told reporters this month that the U.S. supports
creation of an international task force to combat piracy in the Gulf of
Guinea, akin to an effort that has apparently succeeded in eliminating
such crimes on the other side of the continent, off the Horn of Africa.