Another Case Where Hanging Tough Pays Off

The Big Two of Successful Defiance Of The International Community, Iran and North Korea, have been joined by another practitioner of cocking a snoot at Great Powers and international organizations, the Ivory Coast.  To err on the side of accuracy it is not the country which is flipping the bird at the assorted powers and both the UN and African Union but rather an aging dictator who maintains he did not lose the election which all the others insist he did.  Laurent Gbagbo has been the Man In Charge for a decade or so and intends to keep on doing so no matter what the AU, UN, or assorted others might say.

The situation in the Ivory Coast with Gbagbo, his army, and his militias holding on to power while confining the properly elected new president, Alassane Ouattara, prisoner in a luxury beachfront hotel and forcibly searching the vehicles of the UN peacekeeping force should be a form of comic relief, theater of the absurd.  It is not.  The standoff in Abidjan is no laughing matter because of its possible even probable impact on the twenty countries in Africa which have elections scheduled for this year.

Africa has never shown itself to be overly hospitable to democracy, at least any form of the often altered beast which would be generally recognizable as an open expression of popular will in the choosing of governmental leaders.  The combination of historical, demographic, social, and economic features which typify much of the continent provide very thin soil for democracy of the sort common in Europe or North America.  Rather the environment has proven nourishing to the ambitions and agendas of autocrats, strongmen, the makers of coups and thieves of elections.

If Gbagbo is allowed to get away with his effort to hold on to power, the probability is that democracy will become even more of an endangered species than it has been.  The US, France, the UK, the EU, and the UN have all imposed sanctions and flexed diplomatic jaw muscles.  The regional organization, ECOWAS, as well as the African Union have also imposed financial and economic sanctions in addition to sending diplomatic missions almost by the score.

So far all the diplomatic palaver and sanctions have had no useful effect.  Even the cutting off of governmental access to governmental funds on deposit with the regional central bank did not claw Gbagbo's grasping fingers from the levers of power,  If anything, all the talk, all the sanctions, all the implied threats, all the offered inducements have done nothing but enhance Gbagbo's intransigence.  In connection with this it might be recalled that Gbagbo did something even Vladimir Putin or Hu Jintao would not contemplate--he refused to accept phone calls from President Obama.

When the UN Security Council sent a message by authorizing an increase in the UN peacekeeping force in the Ivory Coast by two thousand men, Gbagbo demonstrated just how scared he was by ordering his troops to stop and inspect UN vehicles.  In a quick and unmistakable way, the incumbent ex-president showed his contempt for the "international community" as he had some weeks earlier blown off Mr Obama.  With the nerve of a World Series of Poker champion, Gbagbo has called every bluff.

The Western countries, even France whose flag once flew over the Ivory Coast, have washed their collective hands of the situation.  After all, chocolate is nice but it is hardly a strategic material.  The UN has made all the right motions but lacks both the capacity and political will to actually do something.  ECIWAS has shot its wad.

This means the decision making and execution ball is firmly in the African Union's court.  This is as it should be.  The fifty-three member bloc has the most at stake in the Affair Of The Tenacious President.  It also has the capacity to employ effective coercion to achieve its policy goals--should such be defined with a degree of specificity.

Many of the AU's member states are functioning but fragile democracies.  It would seem as a result that the AU should operate without delay using all appropriate means to assure that democracy is not put in further peril by Gbagbo's refusal to accept the verdict of the polls.  Anyone who has followed the developing situation in the Ivory Coast must have long realized that this is a case where only the credible threat of force would serve to reinforce less robust mechanisms of coercive diplomacy.

Unfortunately, the AU is badly divided on how to accomplish a broadly accepted aim--the removal of Gbagbo.  Nigeria has called for the use of military force.  South Africa favors more mediation.  Anglola has beat the drum for new elections.  Other member states have aligned behind one or another of these countries.

If there is a consensus, it is against the use of the "military option."  Although arguments against an AU adventure in regime change are usually couched in terms of humanitarian considerations, the subtext is far more realistic.  Many Africa states are of the view that their military forces are not up to the task.  Others fear the unmentionable: Deployment of the army or any sizable contingent would open the domestic door to coup plotters or self-styled revolutionaries.

There is a great deal of rationality to each of these considerations.  Most AU member states possess armies which are internal security oriented.  Few AU national forces assigned to UN peacekeeping missions have demonstrated the necessary levels of professional competence to mount an invasion which is carefully constrained in lethality and destructiveness.  Taking out a regime which enjoys rightly or not a sizable degree of support without leaving behind a failed state would be very difficult for even the best trained and officered military.

A mission of this degree of difficulty is lightyears beyond the competence of any AU member state's military.  This means the AU does not have the credible capacity to coerce Gbagbo from office.  Importantly, both the AU leadership and Gbagbo know this.

The dreary conclusion of this is simple.  Absent a diplomatic miracle which would tax the devious skills of a Talleyrand, Gbagbo will stay in the presidential palace and his rival will remain penned up in the hotel.  This, in turn, implies that democracy in Africa takes one more bullet in the back of the neck.

Let's hear it one more time for the triumphant march of democracy.  Well, it does sound nice, doesn't it?  If it weren't for reality...