Political scientists call it, "let us define our dependent variables," but little kids are more honest. Politicians call it "nation-building," but little kids are more honest. The UN calls it "responsibility to protect," but little kids are more honest.
Little kids call it, "Let's pretend."
And here we are today playing let's pretend under all the upscale rubrics mentioned. We are playing it in the Ivory Coast. We are playing it in Yemen. We are playing it in Libya.
In each case our opponent in this great game is called a "strongman," or a "dictator," or, more politely, an "authoritarian ruler." In each case the venue of this great game is called a "state," or a "nation," or a "country." In each case we maintain with the straightest of faces that our goal is to "support the people," or "to promote the rights of the citizens," or, most simply, to gain "democracy," or, even simpler and hazier, to seek "reform."
All the terms, all the fine sounding words, all the lofty thoughts behind the words constitute a lie. Perhaps not an intentional lie, but an untruth nonetheless. Tergiversation by volitional ignorance covers the situation.
Each of the venues mentioned as well as others such as Sudan or Somalia are not by any realistic understanding "nations," let alone "nation-states." All are geographical expressions inhabited by assorted tribal peoples of differing, even antipodal, customs, values, norms, and, most important, senses of identification. Each of the "dictators" is actually nothing more than the accepted leader of one tribe. None are national leaders for none has a unified nation to lead.
In the Ivory Coast the ousted former president is actually the leader by tacit acceptance if not more active support of the Southern, non-Muslim tribal confederation while the new guy is the tacitly accepted leader of the Northern, Muslim tribal groupings. In Yemen, the embattled Saleh emerged from the base of support of one tribe and maintained his power by playing off the other tribes against each other. And, in Libya, Brother Leader is likewise a tribal chieftain whose rivals are from another, far larger tribal assembly located in the far east of the country.
Tribal leaders are not and never will be national politicians as the term is understood in the West. Nor are the agglutinations of tribes under their authority "nations" as the word is applied in the West. The absence of national identity means that by definition there can be no nation-state, no truly national polity controlling the instruments of government.
Tribal leaders including the die hard "dictators" of Yemen, Libya, and the Ivory Coast are motivated by deep and powerful considerations such as personal and group honor which have been moribund for many, many generations in the US and the rest of the West. The tribal leader incarnates in himself not only his personal honor, his personal power, but that of his family, clan, and tribe. This is at a far cry from the motivators of contemporary Western politicos. It is even at some distance from the motivators of more typical dictators of the ideological sort, for these may have an inflated sense of self but rarely believe the entire honor, potency, and status of a social group is embodied in their person.
When Gaddafi cried, "I am history! I am the revolution! I am Libya!," he was not simply exhibiting what in the West would be considered a psychopathology but stating a ground truth that would have been (and was) understood by tribal leaders around the world. Gbagbo in his upmarket bunker understood. So also did Saleh as the vipers on whose heads he danced squirmed and twisted. Karzai all the way off in Afghanistan understood, despite his status as an "elected" leader. So also did Maliki in Iraq, again regardless of the special cachet of a Western approved "election."
Tribal leaders, all of whom have "death before dishonor" in an invisible tattoo inscribed across their chests, do not think like Western politicians. Their calculus of political rationality is completely different. It would require the resurrection of an American politician such as Andrew Jackson to have an effective translator. Andy Jackson, like the majority of domestic politicos of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries was a tribal leader in transition. While focused on developing a nation, these men were emerging from sectional identities equivalent to those of a tribe.
Other countries throughout the West had their own transitional figures, men part way between the tribal, regional past and the nation-state future. History demonstrates that the process of congealing a true national identity is one of equal parts time and blood. War as well as the passage of decades of shared experience and defining mythology is needed to overcome the inertia of the tribal/regional past. The West has had the time--and more to the point--the spilled blood necessary to forge national identities and politics, to become full fledged nations and nation-states.
Libya and the Ivory Coast had any organic centripetal movement put in stasis by periods of colonization. And Yemen never emerged from a tribal, feudal dynamic. (Neither did Afghanistan despite the existence of a monarchy other than brief periods when under external threat.) The attempt by the well intended statesmen of the West and the diplomats and the bureaucrats of the UN to create actual functioning nation-states from the tribal cloth of the Ivory Coast or Yemen or Libya will be unsuccessful.
It is not a matter of money. Consider that the EU and France have offered 840 million bucks to the Ivory Coast; that is not mere chump change. Neither is the vast quantity of American and other peoples' money spent on civilian development and governance programs in Afghanistan. The sands of Libya will ultimately soak up as much international aid as the wealth of its oil fields produced to date. None will matter.
Money does not create a state. Neither do good intentions. Nor do military interventions. American and other governments had best realize that in none of these cases as well as others yet to occur will the end product be other than confederations of tribes riven with animosities old and new. No matter what is done by outsiders, the Ivory Coast, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, or even Iraq will not become genuine nation-states in the near- or mid-term future.
In a very real sense the less that is done by the outsiders under any of the noble terms referenced above, the better the results for the locals. The less done for the suffering locals, the faster they will have to weld together their own nation by their own blood and sweat. They will have to do what all of us in the West have done--bring about a national identity and a national polity by passion and suffering over time.
There is no faster way to do it. And, history shows, no better method. It seems to be written in our DNA, to suffer is to progress.
Showing posts with label Ivory Coast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ivory Coast. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Form Up The Battalions!
The French are not only punching above their weight in the tough arena of coercive diplomacy, the go-out-and-get-them approach of President Nicholas Sarkozy has taken France from the doldrums of diplomatic irrelevance where it languished as recently as February to the position of calling the West's diplomatic tune. Not a bad record even for an inveterate gambler, addicted to high-risk, high-payoff ways of playing politics with enough personal energy to (if focused) replace the lost Japanese nuclear reactors.
Sarko currently has French forces deployed in six actual or nearly actual shooting wars--Ivory Coast, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Somalia. As one French observer noted recently, in comparison George W. Bush was a blooming pacifist. While the French public has exhibited a fair degree of disenchantment with the Afghan operation, the other "overseas contingency operations" have not met with significant disapprobation.
More than a little ink--both physical and virtual--has been expended on the possible motives for the new French assertiveness. To many onlookers, the prime reason has been assigned to Sarkozy's political ambitions coupled with his low standing in the polls, strong opposition, and poor showing in recent municipal elections. While there is some measure of truth in this interpretation, it is doubtful it is the whole story.
Another input to the Sarko decision making process in recent weeks has been the embarrassment caused by France having botched policy during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Make no mistake about it, the French policy debacle was an embarrassment to Sarkozy, his party, and, most importantly, the French public. Simply sending an inept--or merely unfortunate--foreign minister to the scaffold was not enough to repair the damage to both reputation and influence.
Another input may well have been a strong desire on the part of Sarkozy to step out from the shadow cast by Germany and its chancellor in the Eurozone. Germany and France have not been good yokemates, to say the least, with respect to the economic challenges which have beset the EU the past several months. But, foreign policy gave France--and Sarkozy personally--the chance to shine, shine much brighter than the timid Germans with their fear of all things military and love of all things financial.
Not to be dismissed without consideration is the gentlemanly pushing and shoving between Sarkozy and David Cameron regarding leadership in the newly emerging military relationship. A robust policy backed by military force gave the French a leg up by demonstrating just which country had the real muscle now.
Nor is it possible to overlook the role played by the US. Or, somewhat more accurately, the failure of the US to act in its traditional Great Power role. Whether this deficiency was attributed to the cover story of American overextension and budgetary limitations or the weak kneed nature of the American president, the vacuum existed at the top. And, Sarkozy well understands that international politics like nature abhors a vacuum.
Then, of course, one might take Sarkozy at his word. France does have a set of norms, values, and customs by which right is parsed from wrong. Acting quickly and robustly to protect unarmed civilians from mortal harm at the hands of a regime which had announced its intentions to inflict bloody repression was in complete tandem with French norms and values. Bombing tanks in Libya or mortar positions in Ivory Coast were exercises meeting the highest tests of French morality regarding governmental conduct.
M. Sarkozy's motives were, as psychiatrists would put it, "overdetermined." They were the expectable mix of the cynical and the principled, the transient and the eternal, the personal and the disinterested. The issues which matter most are not those of motivation or intent but rather those of outcome and precedent.
Both Libya and the Ivory Coast constitute situations in which the outcome is not clear. Should, as seems quite likely at the present, the war in Libya bog down into a protracted stalemate with a de facto partition of the place, the cheers which met Sarko's actions initially are highly likely to turn into jeers of disillusionment. In the Ivory Coast should it prove out that the supporters of the internationally recognized incoming president, Ouattara, have been responsible for atrocities on a large scale (again as currently appears to have been the case) the applause within France will be replaced by shrugs of disengagement and sneers of disapproval.
In either case the presumption of failed overreach will go a long way to assuring that M. Sarkozy is a one term president. High-risk, high-payoff gambles are like that. And, as Clausewitz pointedly noted, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy".
Win, lose, or draw, the precipitous action of the French government has gone a far piece toward reinforcing the notion of R2P as an overarching responsibility of civilized states. Arguably, R2P, as the Russians and Chinese have maintained, constitutes an unwarranted increase of UN authority. It is ironic, but France's exercise in sovereign decision making particularly as regards two former colonial possessions and particularly the Ivory Coast intervention, transforms R2P into just what its opponents claim it to be--colonialism under a different and nicer term.
The reality is that most of the world's governments and publics accept the nation-state as the basic unit of global political organization. This runs against the world view of the Western elites which hold the nation-state to be a relic of the past--and a very dangerous one at that. The Western elites have embraced the supra-national organization with a lust which boggles the imagination. The underlying proposition in the mind of the collective Western elite is that the planet is too small and common problems too large to allow nation-states the unfettered sovereignty which they have enjoyed for the past five hundred years. The size and scope of problems coupled with the lethality of contemporary technologies of war fighting and the power of ideological conviction demand that power reside with international organizations alone.
The historical record of the past half century is littered with examples of governments run amok, of mounds of bodies piled up at the command of governments or non-state actors both fueled by racial, religious, or ideological hatreds. The ability with which governments can and have killed their own people, generated refugees in the millions, inflicted fear along with physical casualties and destruction has been demonstrated with nausea producing regularity.
It is small wonder that the R2P doctrine was formulated and formally approved by an overwhelming majority of the UN membership. It is equally of no surprise that the precursors of R2P all the way back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were similarly passed by universal acclamation. In the waves of disgust and enthusiasm for having created a "better way" on paper, the assembled diplomats lost sight of what might occur when some country and some future time took the strictures seriously and demanded effective enforcement.
The inevitable result of such a demand would be the bringing into sharp conflict of the basic principle of sovereignty and the ideal of international duty. The always realistic men in the Kremlin and Forbidden City have always held a firm line against the international community intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Both have always relied upon their Security Council veto to protect against excesses of Western enthusiasm for intervention of this sort.
For reasons of short-term diplomatic interest both abstained on the Libyan no-fly/civilian protection resolution. Both are probably regretting having done so as by not going the "No!" route, they have allowed for a crack of precedent to be formed. How quickly the crack could be widened was seen by the UN peace keeping force in the Ivory Coast ordering four Ukrainian gunships into action against forces loyal to outgoing president Gbagbo. This attack constituted a significant change in UN peacekeeping operational practice.
The French have pushed a precedent which seems good at the present moment but is fraught with problems for the future. Chief among these are where will the line be drawn At what level of international nausea will the civilized states or one of them seek R2P authorization? What will happen if and when the Security Council does not give its blessings? Or can the UN be bypassed, with reliance upon one regional organization or another acting in its place? What happens if the UN says, "yes," but the regional entity decrees "no?"
There are other problems as well. Some have been outlined in Libya. Who is responsible for executing any specific R2P operation? What about the internal mechanisms of any state for approving such expeditions? This is particularly relevant with regard to the US while totally lacking relevance for the French whose president has royal level prerogative to employ armed force for reasons of state.
Nicholas Sarkozy has well and truly kicked the fire ant hill when it comes to looking ahead. Without any intention to do so, he has created a precedent with more problems than solutions, more difficulties for tomorrow than certainties. It may even prove that more civilians in the future will die at the hands of their governments than otherwise would have been the case as an unintended consequence of M. Sarkozy's motives and consequent action.
Who ever said that irony is not a major feature of history?
Sarko currently has French forces deployed in six actual or nearly actual shooting wars--Ivory Coast, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Somalia. As one French observer noted recently, in comparison George W. Bush was a blooming pacifist. While the French public has exhibited a fair degree of disenchantment with the Afghan operation, the other "overseas contingency operations" have not met with significant disapprobation.
More than a little ink--both physical and virtual--has been expended on the possible motives for the new French assertiveness. To many onlookers, the prime reason has been assigned to Sarkozy's political ambitions coupled with his low standing in the polls, strong opposition, and poor showing in recent municipal elections. While there is some measure of truth in this interpretation, it is doubtful it is the whole story.
Another input to the Sarko decision making process in recent weeks has been the embarrassment caused by France having botched policy during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Make no mistake about it, the French policy debacle was an embarrassment to Sarkozy, his party, and, most importantly, the French public. Simply sending an inept--or merely unfortunate--foreign minister to the scaffold was not enough to repair the damage to both reputation and influence.
Another input may well have been a strong desire on the part of Sarkozy to step out from the shadow cast by Germany and its chancellor in the Eurozone. Germany and France have not been good yokemates, to say the least, with respect to the economic challenges which have beset the EU the past several months. But, foreign policy gave France--and Sarkozy personally--the chance to shine, shine much brighter than the timid Germans with their fear of all things military and love of all things financial.
Not to be dismissed without consideration is the gentlemanly pushing and shoving between Sarkozy and David Cameron regarding leadership in the newly emerging military relationship. A robust policy backed by military force gave the French a leg up by demonstrating just which country had the real muscle now.
Nor is it possible to overlook the role played by the US. Or, somewhat more accurately, the failure of the US to act in its traditional Great Power role. Whether this deficiency was attributed to the cover story of American overextension and budgetary limitations or the weak kneed nature of the American president, the vacuum existed at the top. And, Sarkozy well understands that international politics like nature abhors a vacuum.
Then, of course, one might take Sarkozy at his word. France does have a set of norms, values, and customs by which right is parsed from wrong. Acting quickly and robustly to protect unarmed civilians from mortal harm at the hands of a regime which had announced its intentions to inflict bloody repression was in complete tandem with French norms and values. Bombing tanks in Libya or mortar positions in Ivory Coast were exercises meeting the highest tests of French morality regarding governmental conduct.
M. Sarkozy's motives were, as psychiatrists would put it, "overdetermined." They were the expectable mix of the cynical and the principled, the transient and the eternal, the personal and the disinterested. The issues which matter most are not those of motivation or intent but rather those of outcome and precedent.
Both Libya and the Ivory Coast constitute situations in which the outcome is not clear. Should, as seems quite likely at the present, the war in Libya bog down into a protracted stalemate with a de facto partition of the place, the cheers which met Sarko's actions initially are highly likely to turn into jeers of disillusionment. In the Ivory Coast should it prove out that the supporters of the internationally recognized incoming president, Ouattara, have been responsible for atrocities on a large scale (again as currently appears to have been the case) the applause within France will be replaced by shrugs of disengagement and sneers of disapproval.
In either case the presumption of failed overreach will go a long way to assuring that M. Sarkozy is a one term president. High-risk, high-payoff gambles are like that. And, as Clausewitz pointedly noted, "no plan survives first contact with the enemy".
Win, lose, or draw, the precipitous action of the French government has gone a far piece toward reinforcing the notion of R2P as an overarching responsibility of civilized states. Arguably, R2P, as the Russians and Chinese have maintained, constitutes an unwarranted increase of UN authority. It is ironic, but France's exercise in sovereign decision making particularly as regards two former colonial possessions and particularly the Ivory Coast intervention, transforms R2P into just what its opponents claim it to be--colonialism under a different and nicer term.
The reality is that most of the world's governments and publics accept the nation-state as the basic unit of global political organization. This runs against the world view of the Western elites which hold the nation-state to be a relic of the past--and a very dangerous one at that. The Western elites have embraced the supra-national organization with a lust which boggles the imagination. The underlying proposition in the mind of the collective Western elite is that the planet is too small and common problems too large to allow nation-states the unfettered sovereignty which they have enjoyed for the past five hundred years. The size and scope of problems coupled with the lethality of contemporary technologies of war fighting and the power of ideological conviction demand that power reside with international organizations alone.
The historical record of the past half century is littered with examples of governments run amok, of mounds of bodies piled up at the command of governments or non-state actors both fueled by racial, religious, or ideological hatreds. The ability with which governments can and have killed their own people, generated refugees in the millions, inflicted fear along with physical casualties and destruction has been demonstrated with nausea producing regularity.
It is small wonder that the R2P doctrine was formulated and formally approved by an overwhelming majority of the UN membership. It is equally of no surprise that the precursors of R2P all the way back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were similarly passed by universal acclamation. In the waves of disgust and enthusiasm for having created a "better way" on paper, the assembled diplomats lost sight of what might occur when some country and some future time took the strictures seriously and demanded effective enforcement.
The inevitable result of such a demand would be the bringing into sharp conflict of the basic principle of sovereignty and the ideal of international duty. The always realistic men in the Kremlin and Forbidden City have always held a firm line against the international community intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign state. Both have always relied upon their Security Council veto to protect against excesses of Western enthusiasm for intervention of this sort.
For reasons of short-term diplomatic interest both abstained on the Libyan no-fly/civilian protection resolution. Both are probably regretting having done so as by not going the "No!" route, they have allowed for a crack of precedent to be formed. How quickly the crack could be widened was seen by the UN peace keeping force in the Ivory Coast ordering four Ukrainian gunships into action against forces loyal to outgoing president Gbagbo. This attack constituted a significant change in UN peacekeeping operational practice.
The French have pushed a precedent which seems good at the present moment but is fraught with problems for the future. Chief among these are where will the line be drawn At what level of international nausea will the civilized states or one of them seek R2P authorization? What will happen if and when the Security Council does not give its blessings? Or can the UN be bypassed, with reliance upon one regional organization or another acting in its place? What happens if the UN says, "yes," but the regional entity decrees "no?"
There are other problems as well. Some have been outlined in Libya. Who is responsible for executing any specific R2P operation? What about the internal mechanisms of any state for approving such expeditions? This is particularly relevant with regard to the US while totally lacking relevance for the French whose president has royal level prerogative to employ armed force for reasons of state.
Nicholas Sarkozy has well and truly kicked the fire ant hill when it comes to looking ahead. Without any intention to do so, he has created a precedent with more problems than solutions, more difficulties for tomorrow than certainties. It may even prove that more civilians in the future will die at the hands of their governments than otherwise would have been the case as an unintended consequence of M. Sarkozy's motives and consequent action.
Who ever said that irony is not a major feature of history?
Saturday, March 26, 2011
The Irony Of R2P And The Ivory Coast
You all remember Rwanda, don't you? It did make the news back about the time Whitewater was the lead story. The butchery in Rwanda, the killing of Hutus by Tutsis and Tutsis by Hutus put enough bodies in local streams to cause impromptu dams and flooding. The imagery was shockingly brutal enough--even in the pre-YouTube days of network censorship--to cause waves of revulsion throughout the US, Europe, and elsewhere.
There were mouthfuls of "deplore" and "unacceptable." There were repeated calls for "restraint" and "moderation." World leader after world leader denounced the ongoing slaughter. But, no state did anything to impose a moratorium on mass murder. The "international community" assembled on the banks of the Hudson was long on words and very, very short on deeds.
It was only a decade or so later that the "international community" and its great organization, the UN, did something other than talk. Boosted by "concern" and even "alarm" over religiously motivated industrial strength killing in Bosnia, the member states of the UN finally did something in response to Rwanda. The 192 members unanimously approved an "outcome document" which enshrined the Responsibility to Protect (R2P.)
The diplomats assembled in the General Assembly executed the will of their respective governments and declared that when a government failed to protect its citizens from genocide or war crimes or crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing, then the "international community" had the responsibility to extend protection to those in danger and need. It was a feel-good move. Some of the governments, particularly the legatees of the long Western movement by fits and starts to lessen the damage of war and enhance the rights of citizens against arbitrary government, might actually have intended that R2P would have real effect in the real world of real evil deeds.
Other states, no doubt, had no intent of ever honoring any obligation under the R2P formulation. None would oppose it openly as such would be even more politically incorrect and liable to bring international disapproval than being against clean air and drinkable water. International disapprobation brings with it a loss of influence and no state wishes that for itself. So every country marched along with a light heart and a merry tune on its lips into a brave, bright future of greater safety for all.
Even the many governments which were authoritarian on a good day and brutally suppressive most of the time joined up. Libya linked arms with Norway, Syria with Sweden, Iran with Denmark; Russia wrapped its arms around Canada while China did the same with the US. It was such a sweet moment! There was Zimbabwe; there was Sudan; there was the Ivory Coast. All singing the R2P jive.
The R2P outcome document was long, almost infinitely long, on high minded and lofty sentiments. It was short to the point of nonexistence on those pesky details such as what would trigger R2P or who would make the trigger decision or who would actually do the dirty work of protecting some group somewhere against some dire threat. There were no mechanisms, no procedures, no substance which would serve to speedily and uniformly transform the fine sounding words of R2P to the dirty realities of imposing its requirements on a recalcitrant (or nonexistent) government.
All except the most starry-eyed and vapid minded of folks knew that the realities of international politics assured that R2P would have the impact of an ant's fart on a hurricane. True, but with an important, indeed critical caveat, unless one or more major powers determined that national or strategic interest demanded the application of R2P in a particular venue--and worked with determination and purpose to gain sufficient support from states having coinciding national or strategic interests.
This is why the bombs have been falling in Libya and not Yemen or Bahrain. Consistency is nice but not either necessary nor sufficient in the formulation and execution of foreign policy.
For reasons endemic to the domestic political cultures of both France and the UK, Libya loomed large. Facilitating the task of gaining sufficient consensus internationally was Colonel Gaddafi's record of global mischief making and domestic suppression.
The US could have sat out this particular dance. The Americans had no direct dog in the fight even if there existed a longer term threat of a resurgent Gaddafi reverting to his pre-2003 type should he prevail domestically. But, the Obama administration had taken lumps almost beyond count for its lack of a firm stance during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions. And, it should never be forgotten there were three potent members of the senior level personnel who had either been badly traumatized by Rwanda (Powers and Rice) or were abundantly proud of the American led intervention in Bosnia (Clinton).
Now comes the irony.
Of all the countries around the world currently undergoing internal political convulsions, there is one in which the impact of governmental sins of both omission and, more importantly, commission merit the immediate invocation of R2P. That country is not Bahrain, despite the contentions of those who abhor inconsistency. Nor is it Yemen even though that country has seen a respectable body count. It is not even Syria, authoritarian as that country might be. It is not even Libya even though the fighting is in full swing under the kindly eyes of US and other country's pilots.
The country is the Ivory Coast.
By all the metrics and standards customarily employed to measure such things, the Ivory Coast is in the throes of internal war in which one of the contestants is the internationally condemned incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, and the other is the internationally recognized winner of the presidential election, Alassane Outtara. Each claimant to the throne is backed by armed supporters, but Gbagbo has the army as well as less formal militias in his corner.
The weeks and months since the election have seen an escalation in violence which has taken a very obvious ramp up in the past few days. There are, according to the UN, which has the typically ineffectual "peace keeping" force in country, currently as many as one million internally displaced persons, most of whom are fleeing the murder squads in Abidjan.
Fears of an increased body count have grown since Gbagbo now has one--that's right, one--attack helicopter at his disposal as well as some brand new multiple rocket launchers. These fears have not resulted in any significant action by the UN or the "international community" or even the African Union. There have been no economic sanctions imposed on Gbagbo or his intimates. Nor have there been any travel bans. None of the instant moves employed against Gaddafi in the earliest days of the popular uprising.
The UN Human Rights Counsel has taken time out from condemning Israel so that it might send a commission of inquiry to the Ivory Coast. Apparently this bastion of concern over the wellbeing of all people everywhere cannot rely on media reports and must ascertain for itself as to whether or not there have been human rights abuses committed by Gbagbo and his forces. In the same resolution, the Watchdog of Humanity called upon the state radio in Ivory Coast to "refrain" from inciting violence.
Wow! That must have them shaking in their boots all around the presidential palace. The boys had best be careful with their knee knocking, they might drop one of those dread rockets and hurt themselves.
The US has taken a firm, even hard, line on the Ivory Coast Question. In a video message to the folks down there Ivory Coast way, President Obama has termed the election "fair and free" and has said that he recognizes Outtara as the real deal president. He called for Gbagbo to hand over the keys to the presidential latrine.
Well, if that doesn't get Gbagbo's attention what good would sanctions or travel bans or no-fly zones do? Right now it is impossible to say how many people have died since the 28 November 10 election. But, given the impressive number who were killed in the crossfire during the last round of internal war as well as the more conservative reports out of Africa, the number must equal at the least the eight thousand or so killed in Libya prior to the establishment of the no-fly and no-go zones.
Considering that Susan Rice was reportedly shaken to her very core when she went to Rwanda shortly after the machetes stopped swinging and Samantha Powers has made her bones as an academic by studying genocide, it is of some interest that the US is seemingly indifferent to the looming massacres in the Ivory Coast. Even if Ms Rice and Ms Powers are loath to see white American wings over a Black African country, they should be plumping for the symbolic sanctions and travel bans. Admittedly, the Ivory Coast is a prime source of high quality chocolate and Americans are fond of eating this particular comestible, but even our collective sweet tooth should not be allowed to prevent action intended to halt killings.
By the appearance of indifference to African deaths at the hands of Africans, the US and Europe run the real risk of being accused once more of racism. This happened, you might recall, during the Nineties with the contrast between Rwanda and Bosnia. The French alone have taken some sort of lead at least in the UNHRC. Perhaps Sarkozy is sensitive to sentiments arising in Africa.
The Geek has written this post not because he favors an intervention in the Ivory Coast. He does not. Rather the purpose of this exercise has been to demonstrate not simply the intellectual bankruptcy of the Obama administrations approach to foreign affairs but, more importantly, the failure, an inevitable and built in failure of the R2P and similar lofty minded moves by the "international community."
When night falls, like it or not, foreign policy is directed, even dictated, by a combination of domestic political imperatives and national interest, not abstract principle. The only form of hypocrisy which matters is that of pretending otherwise.
There were mouthfuls of "deplore" and "unacceptable." There were repeated calls for "restraint" and "moderation." World leader after world leader denounced the ongoing slaughter. But, no state did anything to impose a moratorium on mass murder. The "international community" assembled on the banks of the Hudson was long on words and very, very short on deeds.
It was only a decade or so later that the "international community" and its great organization, the UN, did something other than talk. Boosted by "concern" and even "alarm" over religiously motivated industrial strength killing in Bosnia, the member states of the UN finally did something in response to Rwanda. The 192 members unanimously approved an "outcome document" which enshrined the Responsibility to Protect (R2P.)
The diplomats assembled in the General Assembly executed the will of their respective governments and declared that when a government failed to protect its citizens from genocide or war crimes or crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing, then the "international community" had the responsibility to extend protection to those in danger and need. It was a feel-good move. Some of the governments, particularly the legatees of the long Western movement by fits and starts to lessen the damage of war and enhance the rights of citizens against arbitrary government, might actually have intended that R2P would have real effect in the real world of real evil deeds.
Other states, no doubt, had no intent of ever honoring any obligation under the R2P formulation. None would oppose it openly as such would be even more politically incorrect and liable to bring international disapproval than being against clean air and drinkable water. International disapprobation brings with it a loss of influence and no state wishes that for itself. So every country marched along with a light heart and a merry tune on its lips into a brave, bright future of greater safety for all.
Even the many governments which were authoritarian on a good day and brutally suppressive most of the time joined up. Libya linked arms with Norway, Syria with Sweden, Iran with Denmark; Russia wrapped its arms around Canada while China did the same with the US. It was such a sweet moment! There was Zimbabwe; there was Sudan; there was the Ivory Coast. All singing the R2P jive.
The R2P outcome document was long, almost infinitely long, on high minded and lofty sentiments. It was short to the point of nonexistence on those pesky details such as what would trigger R2P or who would make the trigger decision or who would actually do the dirty work of protecting some group somewhere against some dire threat. There were no mechanisms, no procedures, no substance which would serve to speedily and uniformly transform the fine sounding words of R2P to the dirty realities of imposing its requirements on a recalcitrant (or nonexistent) government.
All except the most starry-eyed and vapid minded of folks knew that the realities of international politics assured that R2P would have the impact of an ant's fart on a hurricane. True, but with an important, indeed critical caveat, unless one or more major powers determined that national or strategic interest demanded the application of R2P in a particular venue--and worked with determination and purpose to gain sufficient support from states having coinciding national or strategic interests.
This is why the bombs have been falling in Libya and not Yemen or Bahrain. Consistency is nice but not either necessary nor sufficient in the formulation and execution of foreign policy.
For reasons endemic to the domestic political cultures of both France and the UK, Libya loomed large. Facilitating the task of gaining sufficient consensus internationally was Colonel Gaddafi's record of global mischief making and domestic suppression.
The US could have sat out this particular dance. The Americans had no direct dog in the fight even if there existed a longer term threat of a resurgent Gaddafi reverting to his pre-2003 type should he prevail domestically. But, the Obama administration had taken lumps almost beyond count for its lack of a firm stance during the "Jasmine" and "Lotus" revolutions. And, it should never be forgotten there were three potent members of the senior level personnel who had either been badly traumatized by Rwanda (Powers and Rice) or were abundantly proud of the American led intervention in Bosnia (Clinton).
Now comes the irony.
Of all the countries around the world currently undergoing internal political convulsions, there is one in which the impact of governmental sins of both omission and, more importantly, commission merit the immediate invocation of R2P. That country is not Bahrain, despite the contentions of those who abhor inconsistency. Nor is it Yemen even though that country has seen a respectable body count. It is not even Syria, authoritarian as that country might be. It is not even Libya even though the fighting is in full swing under the kindly eyes of US and other country's pilots.
The country is the Ivory Coast.
By all the metrics and standards customarily employed to measure such things, the Ivory Coast is in the throes of internal war in which one of the contestants is the internationally condemned incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo, and the other is the internationally recognized winner of the presidential election, Alassane Outtara. Each claimant to the throne is backed by armed supporters, but Gbagbo has the army as well as less formal militias in his corner.
The weeks and months since the election have seen an escalation in violence which has taken a very obvious ramp up in the past few days. There are, according to the UN, which has the typically ineffectual "peace keeping" force in country, currently as many as one million internally displaced persons, most of whom are fleeing the murder squads in Abidjan.
Fears of an increased body count have grown since Gbagbo now has one--that's right, one--attack helicopter at his disposal as well as some brand new multiple rocket launchers. These fears have not resulted in any significant action by the UN or the "international community" or even the African Union. There have been no economic sanctions imposed on Gbagbo or his intimates. Nor have there been any travel bans. None of the instant moves employed against Gaddafi in the earliest days of the popular uprising.
The UN Human Rights Counsel has taken time out from condemning Israel so that it might send a commission of inquiry to the Ivory Coast. Apparently this bastion of concern over the wellbeing of all people everywhere cannot rely on media reports and must ascertain for itself as to whether or not there have been human rights abuses committed by Gbagbo and his forces. In the same resolution, the Watchdog of Humanity called upon the state radio in Ivory Coast to "refrain" from inciting violence.
Wow! That must have them shaking in their boots all around the presidential palace. The boys had best be careful with their knee knocking, they might drop one of those dread rockets and hurt themselves.
The US has taken a firm, even hard, line on the Ivory Coast Question. In a video message to the folks down there Ivory Coast way, President Obama has termed the election "fair and free" and has said that he recognizes Outtara as the real deal president. He called for Gbagbo to hand over the keys to the presidential latrine.
Well, if that doesn't get Gbagbo's attention what good would sanctions or travel bans or no-fly zones do? Right now it is impossible to say how many people have died since the 28 November 10 election. But, given the impressive number who were killed in the crossfire during the last round of internal war as well as the more conservative reports out of Africa, the number must equal at the least the eight thousand or so killed in Libya prior to the establishment of the no-fly and no-go zones.
Considering that Susan Rice was reportedly shaken to her very core when she went to Rwanda shortly after the machetes stopped swinging and Samantha Powers has made her bones as an academic by studying genocide, it is of some interest that the US is seemingly indifferent to the looming massacres in the Ivory Coast. Even if Ms Rice and Ms Powers are loath to see white American wings over a Black African country, they should be plumping for the symbolic sanctions and travel bans. Admittedly, the Ivory Coast is a prime source of high quality chocolate and Americans are fond of eating this particular comestible, but even our collective sweet tooth should not be allowed to prevent action intended to halt killings.
By the appearance of indifference to African deaths at the hands of Africans, the US and Europe run the real risk of being accused once more of racism. This happened, you might recall, during the Nineties with the contrast between Rwanda and Bosnia. The French alone have taken some sort of lead at least in the UNHRC. Perhaps Sarkozy is sensitive to sentiments arising in Africa.
The Geek has written this post not because he favors an intervention in the Ivory Coast. He does not. Rather the purpose of this exercise has been to demonstrate not simply the intellectual bankruptcy of the Obama administrations approach to foreign affairs but, more importantly, the failure, an inevitable and built in failure of the R2P and similar lofty minded moves by the "international community."
When night falls, like it or not, foreign policy is directed, even dictated, by a combination of domestic political imperatives and national interest, not abstract principle. The only form of hypocrisy which matters is that of pretending otherwise.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
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...
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...
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