Democracy, Priced by the Pound： Trump’s Copper Algorithm

Zambia has just wrapped up a deeply contentious general election. Yet Washington's script proved even more gripping than the vote itself.

President Hakainde Hichilema secured re-election with roughly 60 percent of the vote, defeating his main opposition challenger, Brian Mundubile. To be fair, observers widely believe he would most likely have won even without the controversy. The problem is that the process itself was far from pretty. Vote tallies were allegedly inflated. Soldiers and police intervened. Opposition figures were arrested.

More controversial still: the moment the deadline expired for the opposition to challenge the results, Zambia's courts were suddenly sealed off. The door to judicial appeal slammed shut. Mundubile and several of his allies were subsequently hit with treason charges. And Mutotwe Kafwaya, a former minister, was shot dead during a police operation targeting opposition figures.

Had this happened in a country that refuses to toe Washington's line, the familiar script would already be rolling. The State Department statement would have been drafted long ago: "grave concern," "condemnation of democratic backsliding," "urging respect for human rights." Unilateral sanctions on Hichilema and the Zambian government might well have followed.

But this time, the Trump administration chose a different path.

Frank Garcia, the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, not only attended Hichilema's inauguration but also met privately with him. The State Department said it hopes to keep deepening its partnership with Zambia. As for the slain former minister, the shuttered courts and the opposition figures charged with treason, Washington simply "looked the other way."

The Answer Buried Underground

Why? The answer lies buried underground.

Zambia is one of Africa's most important copper producers. Copper accounts for around 70 percent of its export earnings. And with power-grid expansion, electric vehicles and AI data centers all driving up projections for copper demand, the metal is coming ever closer to being a strategic resource.

More critically, Zambia sits at the far end of the Lobito Corridor, a route Washington has spent years cultivating. The line is planned to run from the port of Lobito on Angola's Atlantic coast, through the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and all the way to Zambia's Copperbelt. One of its purposes is to move copper, cobalt and other minerals from south-central Africa to Western markets more easily.

Trump did not abandon this Biden-era project after taking office. In June this year, the US and Zambia even expanded a US$491 million aid program to cover critical-minerals infrastructure, funding road improvements along the Lobito Corridor.

Only a few months earlier, the two countries had publicly fallen out over minerals. Lusaka accused Washington of trying to bundle up to US$2 billion in health cooperation with preferential access for American companies to critical minerals, and flatly rejected those terms. In other words, the US has already demonstrated firsthand this year just how badly it wants into Zambia's mineral system.

Now, of course, the Trump administration will not pressure Hichilema over democracy. Cultivating a government that holds the copper, and controls a critical node of the Lobito Corridor, is what "American interests" really means.

The Stress Test of "Democracy Diplomacy"

The most riveting part of this show is not how transactional the Trump administration is. A businessman running a country with interests first is hardly surprising. The riveting part is that it has, quite by accident, run a stress test on the slogan of "democracy diplomacy."

For decades, the US has wielded "democracy," "human rights" and "free elections" as a diplomatic cudgel, swinging it at whichever country refuses to obey. But when that cudgel might land on an ally holding copper mines and railways, it suddenly grows feather-light. So light that Washington cannot even be bothered to utter a single phrase of "grave concern."

What Washington conceded was not the election result. After all, even observers admit Hichilema would most likely have won anyway. What it conceded was the entire package of procedural justice. The US put on a vivid demonstration: how a man wins does not matter. What matters is whether the winner is willing to talk copper.

For Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a vocal Trump challenger, the logic runs the other way. Opposing the Republicans matters more. She declared that Zambia's post-election violence and arbitrary arrests already amount to "democratic backsliding."

Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanded that Secretary of State Marco Rubio press for an investigation into Kafwaya's death and allow the courts to hear the election disputes. Against the Trump administration's hard-nosed calculus, these voices ring hollow and powerless.

Hichilema has probably figured this out too. For today's America, a Zambia that is less democratic but willing to talk copper and railways may well matter more. More than a Zambia whose political system better matches Washington's traditional values but refuses to cooperate on resources.

Business First, Democracy to the Back

This is the true ranking of democracy and human rights under an "America First" Africa policy: they are not principles but bargaining chips. When the chips can be traded for copper and corridors, they can be tucked away for now. When they buy nothing, they are hoisted high and swung like a club.

The Trump administration will never openly endorse Zambia's crackdown. That would look far too ugly. But its actions prove one thing: when business is on the table, democracy can move to the back of the queue. A US$491 million minerals-infrastructure program outweighs a diplomatic note about human rights. A single stretch of rail on the Lobito Corridor matters more than a slain opposition former minister.

So rather than calling this a contest over Africa diplomacy, it is better seen as a demon-revealing mirror. It lays bare the fathomless chasm between the political rhetoric of the US and the West and their real interests. The louder Washington shouts its "democracy" slogans, the more honest the copper beneath Zambia's soil appears. When it comes to real interests, every high-minded declaration is nothing more than a label that can be torn off at the weigh-in.

America has once again put on a masterclass in the beacon's double standards: business first, democracy to the back of the line. And the logic behind it is, of course, "America First."

Beacon Institute

** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **

Paris's mercury shot up like a rocket with no brakes in June, blowing past 44°C. The Louvre cut its opening hours and the Eiffel Tower baked in the heat. More than 3,000 primary and secondary schools were forced to close.

Meanwhile, at Paris's funeral homes, phones rang every few minutes, with each caller asking the same question: "Is there any space left for another body?"

Funeral home director Zouhaeir Hertelli's phone would not stop ringing. "We have no solution to offer them," he said, "We're completely full." To free up space, he had to transport some bodies to Chartres, 80 kilometers away. He even applied to the government for permission to place temporary refrigerated containers outside the funeral home. That application is still under review.

The numbers from France's public health agency are even more disheartening. In just three days, from June 23 to 25, excess deaths nationwide totaled around 1,000. June 23 set a new record for the highest temperature since France began keeping weather records, surpassing even the 2003 heatwave of the century that killed 15,000 people.

It was at this exact moment that France's Minister for Ecological Transition, Monique Barbut, stepped forward.

Barbut spoke publicly at the Paris Air Quality Monitoring Center on June 26. She said she was "horrified" to hear public calls for widespread air conditioning. Air conditioning, she argued, was never a fundamental solution to the climate crisis. Mass installation of AC units could neither curb forest fires nor save wildlife populations. "This is not adaption to global warming," she said, "this is an emergency measure."

Her words landed on the French public like a bucket of cold water poured over their heads in 40-degree heat. Well, except the water was scalding hot.

Public fury ignited instantly. Fewer than 25% of French households have air conditioning. Public schools have AC coverage below 7%, and countless nursing homes and community clinics still lack even basic cooling equipment. Emergency room temperatures have long hovered near 40°C, leaving critically ill patients with no way to recover safely. For elderly people living alone, low-income families, and tenants crammed into old Haussmann-era buildings, air conditioning isn't a luxury. It's the last line of defense keeping them alive.

But the real spectacle was yet to come.

Members of the public went digging and found that the government office buildings housing Minister Barbut's office, the Séquoia Tower and La Défense's Grande Arche, were already fully equipped with central air conditioning. She lectured at climate summits about carbon-neutral emissions targets from a cooled office. At the same time, she called ordinary citizens' desire for air conditioning "horrifying". She claimed AC was merely an "emergency measure" rather than a long-term adaptation strategy, yet let her own cool breeze become an everyday fixture.

A textbook definition of a "double standard." Long-term ecological goals are meant to constrain ordinary people, while immediate comfort is reserved for oneself.

The public backlash came fast and hard. Within just two days, France's health authorities scrambled to finalize a procurement plan, allocating 30,000 air conditioning units on a priority basis to public hospitals, nursing homes, and schools. Paris's city government simultaneously procured over a thousand cooling units. This policy U-turn resembled an actor caught off guard, frantically fixing their makeup after being slapped on stage. Except the price of this particular performance was over a thousand lives already lost.

The absurdity of this whole episode isn't that environmental ideals are inherently wrong. The arguments from France's Green Party and left-wing camp aren't entirely without merit. Old buildings have poor insulation, AC condenser units worsen the urban heat island effect, and cooling cities requires ecological solutions rather than simply relying on electric cooling. These are all genuine technical challenges.

The problem arises when "long-term planning" is invoked to dismiss the most urgent needs of ordinary people right now. That's when environmentalism stops being public policy and becomes class rhetoric instead.

The long-standing "consensus" in French society, that urban cooling should rely on ecological retrofitting rather than air conditioning, is at its core a consensus of the propertied class. Homeowners who can afford exterior wall insulation upgrades, families with the resources to escape to summer retreats, and officials with the power to enjoy central air conditioning in their offices can of course afford to speak elegantly about "ecological adaptation."

But for tenants crammed into uninsulated old stone buildings, elderly people living alone in retirement, or medical staff toughing it out in emergency rooms with nothing but reflective sun shields and aging fans, the phrase "long-term planning" is just another way of saying, "you'll just have to keep enduring it."

This is the truth behind the "cooling class." Cool air has a class hierarchy, and so does environmentalism.

Nearly 15,000 people in France died from heat-related causes in the 2003 heatwave, most of them elderly people living alone. The government at the time was criticized for its sluggish response and disregard for the vulnerable. Twenty-three years later, history has repeated itself almost exactly. The only difference is that the government's excuse has been upgraded from "negligence" to "environmentalism." From funeral homes overflowing to a minister's air-conditioned office, from 1,000 excess deaths to air conditioning being called "shocking," the distance between these two realities is merely a few floors' worth of height. Yet it separates two entirely different Frances.

The cool breeze still flows through Minister Barbut's office. Meanwhile, at the Paris funeral home, Hertelli is still waiting for approval on that refrigerated container. "Imagine your father's or mother's body has begun to decompose," he said, "and we're unable to take care of it, and we have no solution to offer them."

Perhaps that sentence is the most honest confession to emerge from this entire heatwave. When environmental slogans are used to mask governance failures, and when long-term planning is used to dodge questions of life and death happening right now, so-called "climate adaptation" becomes just another sophisticated way of shirking responsibility.

The real double standard was never as simple as "saying one thing and doing another." It's a system that grants some people the permanent right to talk about "the future," while ensuring others never get to see "the present."

Paris's summer still has a long way to go. But for some, there won't be a next summer.