Saturday, June 28, 2008
Why I'll never be an academic foreign policy expert
Still in Frankfurt airport, seven hours later. I did manage, however, to find the only known public power outlet in the place, so I am sitting on the floor in Concourse E waiting for my plane, which is suppose to depart in two hours, which will be seven hours behind schedule.
If you are in Concourse E in Frankfurt airport, please drop by. I'm across from Gates E2-5 and extremely bored.
Anyway, this morning's International Herald Tribune contains an op-ed piece from Robert I. Rotberg about the vexing problem of Robert Mugabe, "Who will rid us of this tyrant?" Rotberg, who is "president of the World Peace Foundation and directs Harvard's Kennedy School program on Intrastate Conflict," decries Mugabe's reign of terror, runs through all the usual obstacles to doing anything -- including that the neighboring African countries are not interested in direct intervention -- and proposes rolling out the usual sanctions:
Second, since South Africa shows no appetite for an intervention and Zimbabwe's neighbors - Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia - are unlikely to act militarily without South African agreement, an Africa stained by Zimbabwe's tyranny should demand inviting outside Africans to patrol the country and oversee a free and fair real election; compulsory mediation by former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who pacified Kenya earlier this year; denounce despotism in Zimbabwe; and a ban on all Zimbabwean aircraft from flying through neighboring airspace, thus effectively keeping Mugabe and his henchmen bottled up inside their decaying country.
So let me get this straight: South Africa, Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique and Zambia "are unlikely to act militarily," but "Africa ... should demand inviting outside Africans to patrol the country and oversee a free and fair real election"? Huh? Rotberg establishes that Zimbabwe's neighbors are not actually going to do anything, and then proposes that something undefined -- "Africa," whatever that means in this context -- can expect Mugabe to accede to its "demand"? Maybe I'm just unfamiliar with the mystical power of the thing called "Africa," but I would be unable to write something that internally cocked up without blushing. Apparently an appointment to Harvard confers anti-embarrassment humility.
Then there is this confusing bit at the end:
Zimbabwe is in shambles. The United States and Britain would doubtless like to act unilaterally, but dare not. Only Africans and the UN have unquestioned moral authority.
The United States and Britain would "doubtless like to act unilaterally"? It is hard to tell whether Rotberg is ingenuously imputing a greater desire to invade Zimbabwe for humanitarian purposes than I believe could possibly exist in the White House or 10 Downing Street, or disingenuously snarking about Anglo-American unliateralism. Either way, both countries are pretty busy elsewhere. If they "dare not," it is because the the occupation of a central African hellhole is one of the few things less appealing than fighting jihadis in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Then there is the absurd idea that "only Africans and the UN have unquestioned moral authority". Since both "Africans" and the UN have a long track record of incompetence and brutality in peacekeeping missions in Africa, that their "moral authority" remains "unquestioned" reveals something extraordinary about Rotberg's morality (if he is wrong) and Africa's (if he is right), for one thing is absolutely certain: an Anglo-American intervention, were it to happen, would be vastly more humane than anything that might be cooked up by Zimbabwe's regional neighbors or the clowns on the East River.
So now you know why I am obviously completely incompetent to be an academic foreign policy expert.
11 Comments:
By 
Purple Avenger, at
Sat Jun 28, 10:52:00 AM:
About $50M in greenbacks, maybe less, to the right people could render Mugabe to room temperature.
I'm just saying...
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Sat Jun 28, 10:59:00 AM:
A Monty Python Routine:
Alan: Well, last week we showed you how to be a gynaecologist, and this week on "How to do it", we're gonna learn how to play the flute, how to split the atom, how to construct box-girder bridges...
Jackie: Super!
Alan: ...and how to irrigate the Sahara and make vast new areas cultivatable, but first here's Jackie to tell you how to rid the world of all known diseases.
Jackie: Hello Alan!
Alan: Hello Jackie!
Jackie: Well first of all, become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something and then, when the medical world really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right, so that there'll never be diseases anymore.
Alan: Thanks Jackie, that was great!
GC: Fantastic!
Alan: Now, how to play the flute. Well, you blow in one end and move your fingers up and down the outside.
GC: Great Alan! Well, next week we'll be showing you how black and white people can live together in peace and harmony and Alan will be over in Moscow showing you how to reconcile the Russians and the Chinese. Till then, cheerio!
Alan: Bye!
Jackie: Bye bye!
GC: Bye!
By 
, at
Sat Jun 28, 12:19:00 PM:
There is only one person in the world with the cajones to serve justice and his term will soon expire. However he has been effectively castrated by the worldviewers, those without any cajones. Or brains for that matter.
By , at
Sat Jun 28, 01:00:00 PM:
By "Africa" he may mean the AU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Union
Something to chew on.
By , at
Sat Jun 28, 04:28:00 PM:
"Moral Authority" is a phrase that has been cooked up to rationalize or justify that which is either pragmatically necessary or brings about a preferred end state.
Regardless of what people think about OIF as "optional", it was pragmatically necessary to remove Saddam Hussein and the Baathist Party, for several solid reasons.
However, Mugabe is another kettle of fish. For the sake of the people suffering under his tyranny, a liberation would be welcome. But that would also be true of North Korea, Burma, and not a few other countries that are cruelly and despotically ruled.
What to do? How do we get some of that "Moral Authority"?
Since Zimbabwe is land-locked, with no countries "friendly" to the US and very limited US strategic interest in that part of the world these days, I'd say that the interest and likelihood of any "US Intervention" is just about zero. The US has had very limited success in getting the African Union to supply troops in Darfur, even when the US supplied all the heavy lifting and logistical support. The answer is that many people will wring their hands over this, just as Tibet, Darfur, Burma, etc. But nothing will be done.
As PA hinted, a few million dollars paid to mercenaries would probably solve the problem (for the better), but those people have no "Moral Authority" whatsoever. in the eyes of people like Mr. Rotberger.
By Purple Avenger, at
Sat Jun 28, 06:52:00 PM:
and very limited US strategic interest in that part of the world these days
Haven't studied what sort of mineral resources are in Zimbabwe too much have you?
The place is a significant world supplier of quite a few strategic metals (i.e. without them your industrial base grinds to a halt)
By , at
Sat Jun 28, 07:31:00 PM:
Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is perhaps the crown jewel of the modern anti-colonial movement which saw the final dissolution of the British Empire.
For Africa, the UN, the old gang of the Communist world and liberals everywhere to admit that the country is suffering more than growing pains would be to admit that the Brits knew some something about administering the place.. and we couldn't have that.
By and large, Zimbabwe fits an ideal that many of it's neighbours and friends would like to aspire to. What's not to like about a place run entirely for the benefit of one's family, tribe and friends?
JC
By Escort81, at
Sat Jun 28, 08:59:00 PM:
I hate to interject race into this discusssion, and it isn't the way I would choose to frame the analysis, but it is likely the source of the "moral authority" Rotberg cites, for better or worse. That is, almost no U.S. President or U.K. PM wants video rolls of white Marines battling black African soldiers.
But what if you had a Kenyan/Kansan POTUS? Doesn't he have the Absolute Moral Authority (with apologies to MoDo) to intervene with military force on a humanitarian mission anywhere in the world? Wouldn't that solve Rotberg's dilemma (not that this is a reason to vote for Obama)?
I guess the Kennedy School is full of analysts like Rotberg. I have a feeling that JFK -- who people forget was at least as much of a Cold Warrior as Nixon -- would projectile vomit if he knew that the school named for him at his alma mater was stocked with such philosophy.
By , at
Sat Jun 28, 09:22:00 PM:
How about we invest $5 million in weapons and ammunition, and just drop it in flyovers? Let the people take care of business for us.
We have bigger fish to fry than to waste our energies on clowns like Mugabe, when the "UN" has so much moral authority without the great satan butting in. Hell, innocents might be killed, and then we'd need to prosecute our military guys. We might even elect not to grease some pieces of crap in country, and then have a bunch of hanky twisters whining about Gitmo, or its equivalent. We just cannot have that.
By , at
Sat Jun 28, 09:59:00 PM:
PA, I agree that there is certainly a lot of mineral wealth, etc in Zimbabwe that would be valuable to any industrialized country (the US, Russia, Germany, India, Japan, China....China!?). And Mugabes' thugs are present in the Congo and other places racking down loot to finance his thuggery.
But really, what do we do? Zimbabwe has no coastline that would allow the US Navy and a Marine Expeditionary force ashore. Airdrop the 101st Airborne? How do we support them, logistically?
For the sake of the poor people suffering there, we would all like to make a difference, but how? That's what I meant by limited strategic interest. Yes, Zimbabwe should and could be a successful trading nation, but looters like Mugabe have the upper hand, and are likely to retain that, short of someone with "Moral Authority" and several highly trained brigades of light infantry to deploy goes in to stop them.
-David
By , at
Sun Jun 29, 09:13:00 AM:
I thought we were supposed to question authority, and now this comes down. What the heck?
