the chart strikes me as vaguely high school naive. what does it say, in one word? that nations, all nations, act in what they consider to be their national self interest. not very pretty, but ultimately a lesson that karl schmidt stated 70 years ago: nations have friends and enemies; within nations there is a social contract.
our job, as i see it, is to oppose a world order dominated by nations. for that reason, it might be argued that empires, like the austrian-hungarian empire, that rose above nations provided a better model, except for the fact that within such 19th c empires there was still a pecking order of privilege.
we now have the EU. is that better than what preceded it? i believe so. an african union might also, ultimately, enable us to rise above national interest for a larger collective, and even, i would hope, insure better such rights as freedom of the press that is stifled, still, in many african countries, while others still have a relatively vibrant press that prints oppositional points of view.
what bothers me about the chart is the naive view that 1.the u.s. is somehow different from other nations, and 2.there is a specially bad relation to human rights unveiled here in u.s. foreign policies.
nations use the power they have to impose their self-interest when they can. ghaddafi tried to do this once militarily with the ouazou strip and failed; the list is infinite of one nation taking from another when it can. iraq-kuweit; china-tibet; japan-korea and china; the u.s-mexico, canada; nigeria-cameroon. israel-palestine (and bits of syria, for a while egypt....). want to go back to the past, to the anglo-egyptian condominium over the sudan? where can you find this pattern absent? nowhere.
where can you point to me a people or nation that has not? what has stopped this from descending into total war? i think nothing. at the age of 68, having been born during world war two, and seen an endless series of wars since, i can't really think of any place on earth that doesn't follow this chart. it is naive to impute national self-interest only to the super-power of the day.
when you advance the possibility that a new libya might prefer to place itself under the western hegemon, what is the alternative? you are right to state that were china there, the results would have been different; sudan proves this. all that means is that libyans actually live in the world, like everyone else, and has to position itself with relation to one hegemon or another. where is there a country whose foreign policies are not driven by this reality? it isn't a surprise, is it? what else would you expect?
i would ask you not to belabor this obvious reality, but suggest a better path for us to support. i believe we have an obligation, as vaguely constituting an intellectual class a la gramsci, to work for a better world order. our arguments on the list ultimately might make up a tiny tiny fraction of that intellectual work that does promote progressive change.
ken
On 9/1/11 7:01 PM, Femi Kolapo wrote:
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebeerbarrel/4729916544/
There is consistency to the US (NATO) foreign policy. There is no indication what year the chart above was made though I first came to know about it long before the outbreak of revolt in North Africa, but it does not factor in China or any other power outside of the axis of the West as a possible polar restraint to NATO.
I expect that if China was already in Libya and has invested as much there as it did in the Sudan, either Gadhaffi would still be the Libyan president or he and NTC would have been forced into some negotiated political solution.
History shows us that a people/group who wants liberation from local oppression would cast about for any help, even if they knew that they may be exchanging one dictator for another. This is not altogether negative from their perspective, since the fact of the struggle and fight against the first dictator offers a heady and liberating experience and the hope that they do have some control over their future. At least there is a change and that gives hope that any future dictator can also be removed. The Libyan rebels & the TNC have demonstrated agency, cashing in on the 'humanitarian" self-interest of NATO to throw off the Gadhaffi yoke. I know in Nigeria, during the Abacha years, people who claimed they would prefer a US invasion or covert action to unseat the military tyrant. How the new Libyan government (after one has clearly emerged) negotiates the power politics of international assistance and avoid the thralldom of the other dictator is open to discussion. The fact still remains though that a truly national government in Libya will not be entirely bereft of significant options that could checkmate rampant legal and market-sanctioned looting of their resources. In fact, Iraq and Afghanistan provides a lesson about many yet likely factors that can work against both NATO and the TNC. But such factors may also mean more hell for the generality of the Libyans.
For all our hoo and haas, though, the rebels might actually prefer having their country fall under the 'liberal' influence of the WEst to their remaining under the 'pan Africanist' thralldom of the Gadhaffi dynasty. It is unfortunate, but it is true that I have come across educated sentiments in Nigeria that seem to support giving governments of African countries back to European colonizers because our leaders are considered worse and the conditions of the people more deplorable than during the colonial period. This is in part a demonstration of the fatalistic attitude bred by a feeling of helplessness, but also, I think, by a clear lack of aptitude, especially among us African intellectuals, to effectively translate our intellection into concrete action to facilitate the organizing and mobilizing across the too many divides that plague African countries. Its axiomatic that local national politics, especially in drifting rudderless but strategically important countries of Africa, has and will always be carried out within parameters that go beyond the local, the national, and for us, beyond Africa. We might hate imperialism, and I do hate it, and we should deplore nostalgia for colonialism, but the fact remains that except you offer an oppressed people seeking deliverance your assuring indication that your plans would help them out, you could not bind them to a pan-Africanist ethics against imperialist meddling that they see as maintaining the oppressor over them. The right is theirs to seek and receive external assistance to terminate their oppression the best way they see fit. What the AU could have done from the start was offer a credible and forceful competing option. The lesson for us anti-imperialist pan-Africanists and for effete AU is to actively promote representative governments that unite broad spectrum of the peoples in countries of Africa; forbid genocidal police or military threats / actions by African tyrants; and in the meantime, to provide for a convincing framework deriving from sound principles for solving the problem of sit tight and corrupt leadership that continues to bedevil Africa. This will foreclose segments of desperate and down trodden people in the future from not only taking up arms against the state, but also from appealing for the humanitarian assistance of imperialists.
The sum of the global situation is that we still have an imperialist world order. However, since political scientists tell us that all governmental orders always seek to rule with the consent of the ruled- with some legitimacy,there is always room for the dominated over to maneuver; and where there are competing poles within the ruling order, the room could enlarge into a field. It is befuddling to have the AU end up totally humiliated as it has been and to not be able to do even as little as ferry out trapped non-Libyan Africans out of the inferno.
In the current order of things, the goal should be to have a AU or significant groupings of African countries, with strong enough economic bases and representative enough governments that can begin to MANIPULATE foreign interests, contest the ethical positions of the imperialist powers through effective information distribution and to deftly mediate the powerful foreign influences of imperialist and psuedo imperialist effectively. A visionary AU leadership can do Africa proud. Altimately though, without organizing the society to be independent producers at least of the food they eat and without popular representation that allows for some rock solid national unity, even the most visionary of African leaders in situations similar to what we just had might end up with tails between his legs.
------------------------
F. J. Kolapo,
(Associate Professor of African History)
History Department * University of Guelph * Guelph * Ontario * Canada* N1G 2W1
Phone:519/824.4120 ex.53212 Fax: 519.766.9516
From: "Yona Maro" <oldmoshi@gmail.com>
To: "wanabidii" <wanabidii@googlegroups.com>, "youngprofessionals_ke" <youngprofessionals_ke@googlegroups.com>, "USAAfricaDialogue" <USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>, progressive-kenyans@googlegroups.com, smart-living@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Thursday, September 1, 2011 3:24:14 AM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Libya and African leaders
The Libyan aspect of the Arab Spring, a series of pro-democracy and freedom protests that have ended decades-old, entrenched regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, with Syria and Yemen still on the boil, has turned into a diplomatic mess for African leaders.
Unlike in the Arab and most countries of the Muslim world where there has generally been a tacit encouragement of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), African leaders are in two parts: those behind the NTC, which is on the verge of a decisive victory over the 42 year-old Muamar Gaddafi regime, and those who back the latter.
Of particular interest were the various reasons adduced for positions taken. Nigeria has thrown its weight behind the NTC because; according to its officials, power has shifted into the hands of the NTC which it sees as the current representatives of the Libyan people.
This, interestingly, is the basic position of Western countries, which despatched the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) warships to aid the rebels through air strikes to end the Gaddafi reign. For a country that has declared that Nigeria is now the centrepiece of her foreign policy (rather than the old emphasis on Africa as the centrepiece) officials said little about how this position best advances Nigeria's interests.
And yet, it serves Nigeria's best interests to side with the victorious NTC for the simple reason that a chaotic Libya under a long-drawn contestation between Gaddafi and his enemies will only create a vacuum that will enable Islamic terrorists to plant their cells. They will eventually target Nigeria and other countries in the Sahelian region.
The need for Libya to come under a firm governmental authority to prevent a repetition of the Somalia and Iraq experiences is a viable national interest justification by Nigeria.
The question is: why did the officials fail to project it well? Why give the impression they were simply toeing Western lines as they did in Cote D'Ivoire?
On the other hand, South Africa's Jacob Zuma boldly declared that his country would withhold recognition to the newcomers since the war is yet to be won and lost.
The real truth is that Zuma and most of the South African countries (such as Zimbabwe ) are keenly aware of the contributions of Gaddafi to the anti-apartheid struggle.
In fact, Zimbabwe expelled the ambassador of Libya and his embassy staff for defecting to the NTC side in line with many other Libyan missions around the world. Some of these African presidents are direct beneficiaries of Gaddafi's personal generosities, as the dictator was known to routinely hand out millions of dollars to some of them in support of their campaigns or other personal needs.
Just the other day, former two-time Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo, berated NATO for its role in the evacuation of Gaddafi from power. This was coming over six months after the start of the war campaign, which would probably have yielded little result for the rebels without the NATO military assistance.
Both the Southern African and Obasanjo positions amounted to medicine after death because there was little that Gaddafi stood to benefit from them. If they had mustered this support at the very outset and prevailed on Gaddafi to open his doors to large-scale political reforms rather than commence the killing of protesters, this would probably have helped their friend.
The truth is that the NTC has defeated Gaddafi in battle and has taken over power in Libya. It is now the de facto political authority. Any further effort to elongate the strife in that country by offering effete diplomatic support to a defeated dictator will be a disservice to the Libyan people.
It will also help in exporting terrorism into the conflict and threaten the entire region, which is already under attack by the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in the south-west and Boko Haram to the south in Nigeria.
All that countries which love Gaddafi and his family can do now is to offer them protective refuge and encourage the new leaders not to go on witch-hunting his supporters back home in Libya. Hands should be on deck to encourage national reconciliation and rehabilitation under a democratic, peaceful atmosphere.
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-- kenneth w. harrow professor of english michigan state university department of english east lansing, mi 48824-1036 ph. 517 803 8839 harrow@msu.edu
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