On December 13, 2018, National Security Advisor John Bolton announced the Trump administration’s new Africa strategy. “Great power competitors, namely China and Russia, are rapidly expanding their financial and political influence across Africa,” he said, adding, “China uses bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands.” He cited Djibouti, whose debt to China was nearly half the country’s gross domestic product, and noted that after China inaugurated its first overseas naval base in Djibouti, it began blinding U.S. pilots landing nearby with lasers.

While President Joe Biden sought to define his administration in opposition to Donald Trump, he accepted the Trump team’s concern about China in Africa. “The People’s Republic of China…sees the region as an important arena to challenge the rules-based international order, advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests, undermine transparency and openness, and weaken U.S. relations with African peoples and governments,” Biden’s own Africa strategy declared, even as the Biden team chose to emphasize global problems like climate change and global health.

It is easy to voice an agenda and policy priorities; it is harder to implement them. Absent continuous effort from the National Security Council, institutional inertia triumphs, and individual biases overshadow the national interest. This has been the case with the Horn of Africa, where shortsighted agendas and ham-handed implementation have empowered China at the expense of U.S. national interests, counterterrorism, and democracy.

At issue is the State Department’s ossified “One Somalia” policy that diminishes Somaliland, the once-independent country that united with the rest of Somalia in 1960. In 1991, Somaliland re-asserted its independence as the rest of Somalia collapsed into state failure and anarchy. Somaliland rebuilt itself as a functioning country, even if not formally recognized internationally as such. Today, Somaliland has been effectively independent longer than it has been part of Somalia proper. It elects its own government, subsists on tax revenue and customs duties rather than international aid, issues its own passports, and maintains its own currency. It has denied its territory to jihadists and weapons smugglers, and its coastguard has prevented piracy in its waters. Security prevails. I walked around the capital, Hargeisa, and the largest port, Berbera, with my nine-year-old........

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