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

  Abstract Each time a new administration takes over in the United States, there is a level of expectation whether good or bad regarding how it will deal with the rest of the world. This paper looks at some of those expectations from Africa by zeroing in on the presidencies of George Walker Bush and his successor Barack Hussein Obama. The first part covers what Africa really wanted followed by the limitations both administrations had to deal with and finally a way forward. What did Africa want? The election of George W. Bush in the year 2000 did not carry a lot of euphoria on the African continent if what we saw in 2008 was anything to go by. During the presidential debates, Bush blatantly stated that Africa was of no strategic importance to the United States only to surprise his critics by implementing policies towards the continent that turned out to be one of his much talked about legacies (Layman and Robinette, 2009). Meanwhile, the election of Barack H. Obama as the 44...

A review of the article titled The Evolution of Operational Code Analysis by  Stephen G. Walker Stephen Walker’s article on “The Evolution of Operational Code Analysis ” aims at documenting the journey operational code analysis has taken starting with the classical works of Nathan Leites to the input of Alexander George and Ole Holsti as well as other scholars who followed thereafter (Walker, 1990, pp. 403). Walker opines that it is Leites who elevated operational code construct into the realms of political psychology with his thesis on The O perational code of the Politburo (1951) and A study of Bolshevism (1953) although he borrowed the term “ operational code ” from Merton. The term was initially a reference to how an individual acquires values or worldviews and its associated responses which are then shared with others within a specific organization. Leites extended this by bringing in pyschocultural analysis of the fundamental motivations and how these varied depending o...

A review of the article titled Foreign Policy Analysis: Actor-Specific Theory and the Ground of International Relations by Valerie M. Hudson In her article on foreign policy analysis, Hudson (2005) endeavors not only to give us the cornerstone of this subfield but makes a case of how relevant it is in providing the basis for all international relations theory. She builds on this by taking us through the actor-specific theory and contrasting it with what she calls actor-general theory as well as identifying the ground of international relations where contemporary theories tend to focus more on states at the expense of individuals or to the very least make it look like everything is about states. The author asserts that when it comes to international relations (IR) as a field of study, whatever goes on between states is grounded in “human decision makers acting singly or in groups” hence it is critical to understand how such individuals interpret and react to the world around them in...