“Abandoning diplomacy for confrontation.....is a dive over a cliff,” - Antonio Guterres, UN Chief

Former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in her biography describes Uhuru Kenyatta as capitalist and western schooled because of their family businesses and having studied in America respectively. Anderson (2003) asserts that Uhuru belongs to the powerful lineage of the Kenyatta family and was thrown into national politics by President Daniel Arap Moi untested and inexperienced. He was Moi’s chosen successor but lost to Mwai Kibaki in the 2002 general elections. He later joined Kibaki’s administration as Deputy Prime Minister in the coalition government. After being indicted by the International Criminal Court over the 2007-8 post-election violence together with William Ruto, the two used radio stations like Kameme FM and Kass FM to portray themselves as victims (International Crisis Group [ICG], 2012). According to Malik (2016), the ICC indictments enabled them to consolidate Kikuyu and Kalenjin support leading to their ascension to power in 2013 something that shows...

The aim of this paper is to give a broad analysis of the circumstances that surrounded the rise of Daniel Toroitich arap Moi to become the longest serving president in the history of Kenya, starting in the year 1978 after the death of the first president Mzee Jomo Kenyatta all the way to 2002 when he handed over power. According to Kissinger (1966), foreign policy begins where domestic policy ends and that domestic structures must respond to the requirements of the environment. He then submits that the first goal of a statesman is survival. A key focus will be how the self-proclaimed ‘professor’ of politics went about his foreign policy and how the conditions at home shaped his decision making when dealing with other states. This will be presented in three parts that is his experience as he rose to power, the domestic scene and finally how he responded to the external environment.   The Rise of the ‘professor’ of Politics Daniel Arap Moi was the Chairman of Kenya African Democr...

Colonization can be defined as a way of establishing control over a given area or domain to your own benefit. In my last article, soft power was referred to as the ability to shape the preferences of others or essentially when one country influences the desired outcomes of other states through persuasion, education, public opinion, and appeal of cultural ideals and customs. For starters, America’s soft power and generally western European values have shaped for years the push for democracy, human rights, freedom of speech among other things across the globe with great effect whether you are talking about the lead to the collapse of the Berlin wall marking the end of the Cold war or democratic struggles in Africa, Asia and South America. However, the rise of China as a global power with an economy only second to the United States has raised concerns as to whether they can be tamed by such values. In his book on soft power, Joseph Nye clearly states how Western music, movies and radi...