No nation should have to defend its right to choose its own diplomatic partners. Yet, in recent years, African countries have increasingly been called to account whenever those partners happen to be China or Russia.
When President William Ruto of Kenya visited Beijing in April, his praise for China’s role in shaping a “new world order” and its contributions to Kenya’s development was hardly unprecedented. Dozens of nations in the Global South rely on Chinese financing and infrastructure. Yet in Washington, those words landed with a thud.
