CNN: Can Democracy Thrive in Africa?

[Dayuhan]

Long time ago. Interesting history you should read up on it at some time.

I also live in the midst of interesting (if generally forgotten) colonial history, but I can’t imagine prefacing a comment with “out here in the colonies…” It’s the past, long gone and unlamented.

Yes since the end of the Cold War US interference in Africa has reduced. This has left a void for China to fill and now we see an increase of Al-Qaeda activity. Maybe not such a clever move after all?

A void? How so? Aren’t there a billion or so Africans there? Or is it engraved on stone somewhere that there must always be an outsider to intervene?

In any event, as I said above, Chinese and Indian investment in Africa is not a threat to US interests and does not require a US response. It’s also worth noting that neither China nor India has moved toward military intervention, and it’s hard to see how US intervention would have affected their investments.

It’s also hard to see AQ activity as a consequence of reduced US intervention… in most cases US intervention provides AQ with a propaganda bonus and tends to help them more than it hurts them. Why do you think AQ was so eager to provoke the US into making a military move in Afghanistan?

Watch what's happening in Yemen and Somalia. Won't be long now.

That’s anything but certain. Another 9/11 scale attack is of course possible, but it’s as likely to be planned in Europe or the US as in Yemen or Somalia.
Even if such an attack were to take place, though, I doubt that we’d see the sort of action that we’ve seen in Iraq and Afganistan. We haven’t forgotten those lessons yet… give it a few more years. We wouldn’t be doing regime change in Yemen in any event, as the regime is already nominally friendly to us and hostile to AQ, and we can’t do regime change in Somalia because there’s no regime to change, and (I hope) nobody in the US is foolish enough to try and create one.

If you toss out a regime who says you have to build a new one?

You don’t, though Americans always seem compelled to try. It serves as a justification for having intervened in the first place, and appeals to the missionary instincts that have gotten us into trouble so often in the past. Of course if one intervenes and does nothing after there is always the risk that the conditions that led to the intervention in the first place will be recreated, or that something worse will emerge… but that needs to be assessed on a case to case basis.

Nobody is asking for US military intervention is Africa. It is the interference by proxy that has been the problem. Now if it was not in the US interest why do you think they interfered?

Perception of interest was very different during the Cold War, leading to a great deal of intervention - by proxy and otherwise - that was in retrospect neither necessary nor productive. One hopes some lessons were learned.

There is of course AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) which is appropriately based in Stuttgart, Germany. The reason for their existence? It appears that by 2015 25% of US oil imports will be from Africa. I suspect we shall see more of the US around in the future.

The US imports large amounts of oil from Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela… do you see them swarming with US troops? The notion that success in commerce depends on the projection of military force is a vestige of centuries past, and needs to be discarded.

You need to read more widely to understand that there is growing pressure from within Africa itself to democratise. That the US is seen to be in league with that club of thugs that make up the AU (African Union) means that Africans are happy to receive stuff out of Hollywood but are correctly cautious about comes gift wrapped from the State Department.

I’m well aware that the pressure exists, but moving from pressure to democracy takes a while, and moving from democracy to functioning, sustainable democracy can take even longer. In the meantime, the US has to deal with what exists, as do other countries. We can neither reorder the governments of other countries to suit or preference nor pretend that countries not suiting that preference do not exist.

Support of democracy and democratic institutions in Africa is a low cost option for the US.

It’s an excellent option in cases where democracy and democratic institutions exist. Where they do not exist, it’s a bit more difficult. The line between promoting democracy and meddling in other people’s internal politics is vague.

Humanitarian intervention with good intentions is always welcome like in Somalia before some hot-dogging cowboys went and screwed it up. So much so that when the real big crisis occurred Clinton sat on his hands and let a million people get butchered in Rwanda. It is just that the US displays such bad judgement so often. What the hell goes on in the State Department?

The State Dept doesn’t make those calls; comes from higher up and politics are always a factor, as they tend to be in a democracy. Whether or not any given judgment is bad or good depends largely on what is presumed to be the goal… and for better or worse, American politicians tend to place American interests and their own political calculations above the greater good of Africa.

People who complain about American inaction need to understand that – again for better or worse – the days of “that’s horrible, why don’t the Americans do something about it” are gone, and both the impetus and the resources for humanitarian intervention have to be multilateral. We are neither global cop nor global social worker. We can’t afford to be.