If there were an administration in the U.S. next year that valued the UN – and multilateralism more broadly – the election of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia to the UN Security Council would be a strategic windfall. Why?
Because all three African non-permanent members of the Security Council next year (DRC, Liberia, Somalia) are relatively pro-American countries (under normal circumstances). That’s rare. Usually there’s more variation across the A3.
The closest during my time at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations with Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield was when Niger and Kenya were on the Council in 2021, and when Ghana and Kenya were on in 2022. But that’s only 2 out of 3.
Since the A3 tend to vote as a bloc, next year’s configuration would have been a bonanza both for U.S. equities in Africa as well as for our global interests.
That doesn’t mean the A3 would have aligned with us 100% of the time. But it does mean that securing votes would have been a much lighter lift than it would have been in the past decade – at least.
Lesley Anne Warner, PhD: Insight | Strategy | Impact 