Good afternoon. So much for “America First”. The administration of US president Donald Trump seems much more interested in foreign interventions these days. The latest such intervention is the announcement of sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) and four of its senior commanders (see below). There are, of course, several thousand RDF troops operating in Cabo Delgado at the moment, helping to fight the Islamic State-backed insurgency there. And it is ironic that their main purpose is to make the province safe for the big gas projects, one of which is led by the US energy company ExxonMobil, with the enthusiastic support of the US government. The other big project led by TotalEnergies benefits from a $4.7bn US government loan.
While these sanctions are less dramatic than kidnapping or assassinating a head of state, they nevertheless demonstrate the extreme volatility of the United States’ foreign relations, and how Trump can inflict sudden damage on states with whom he finds fault, without stopping to think too hard about how defensible the action is or the wider consequences.
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The sanctions themselves may not have an immediate impact in Mozambique. Indeed, they may not have much impact at all there. Neither ExxonMobil nor TotalEnergies is thought to be in a direct contractual relationship with the RDF or the wider Rwanda Security Forces, the armed forces and police, both of whom operate in Cabo Delgado. The European Union provides funding for the Rwandan mission, but this is denominated in euros and is unlikely to be routed through the United States. Funding that supports the RDF from other sources could be affected; US authorities tend to regard any international payment made in US dollars as involving their financial system. However, that does not mean that that funding would have to stop. The Office of Foreign Assets Control, the unit of the US Department of the Treasury that polices sanctions, has discretion in whether to take action against sanctions violations, and it is allowed to exempt them on humanitarian grounds. Besides, the war against the insurgency can be portrayed as a war against Islamic State, something the US can get behind.
