Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Libya and African leaders

Dear Ken.

My frustration was more against an effete AU, yours seems to be against what you consider to be lack of appreciation of the good intentions of NATO or the US in the Libyan crisis.

Much of the discussion around the issue of NATO intervention in Libya, especially those pointing out the humanitarian impulse that drew them in, tends to ignore or downplay the issue of self interest that you consider to be no brainer here. But to me, this is why what you see as a naive high school chart by Mr. Flemming is right on target. Human right does not exclude other anti-human rights interests and motives and could provide some of the best excuses and justifications for other less salutary impact that Libya may yet face. We know this at least from the history of the abolition of the slave trade. Mr. Fleming's chart also calls raises the point of why imperialist countries selectively engage in humanitarian intervention. It raises the question of why not Syria or when Syria, why not Rwanda, why not the Sudan, why soooo late or flaccid as with Somalia. It is not wrong for AU to be concerned about imperialism and recolonisation nor for a section of pan-Africanist intellectuals to decry foreign imperialist intervention. Recolonisation is a possibility they had better taken it seriously. Of course, it is not right for AU to use the specter of recolonization to excuse local oppression nor for pan-Africnist intellectuals to justify Gadhaffi's non enlightened eternal despotism. Its not either or. No. its both.

To me, the beauty of Mr Flemming's chart is its simplicity. its no more than a heuristic tool, no doubt, and is not meant to depict all social and philosophical elements that contribute to shaping US or NATO foreign policy. It portrays an overall pattern that is generally accurate as you too seem to acknowledge. You are right to note that the chart can apply to others, and that is why I used NATO to broaden the scope of applicability. However, there are others and there are others.

But I don't see how you can infer, as I think you did here, that all international relations past present and future are all the same and no different from one another. Should that be the case, what hope do you have for a better more just world and what is the basis for "selective" condemnation of the natural unfolding of a particular exhibition of what every better advantaged nation does against its less advantaged one?

At the end of the day though it is power, raw power, economic first and derivately, military, (as these  enable the forging of cohesive identity and effective organization to project that identity) that I believe can secure for each nation or group of nations what is in its best interest. An effective pan regional or pan-Africanist unity can pool resources (economic  military & moral) of weaker African countries together and make them into a force that is not easily pushed around. However, an AU  or group of splintered squabbling African countries led by corruption blinded rulers  and who have to import the water they drink will always be disrespected, however much progressive elements in the imperialist countries try hard to soften the force of the cudgel.

It is dishonest to deny that humanitarian or human rights input featured in the conception of the NATO intervention in Libya. but I consider it no less dishonest to overlook selfish and other negative factors mixing up with, or at least, kicking in during the course of the intervention. You cant choose to stress one and neglect the other.

You ask what choice the Libyans have except to accept NATO deliverance from Gadhaffi. I am not sure I understand your question. You certainly don't want to say that there is no prospect of unseating any dictator in Africa without foreign intervention, do you? I believe that a more visionary leadership by AU could have taken control or joint control of easing Gadhaffi out of his autocratic throne. No single one of the Gulf states that contributed to Gadhaffi ouster, in my opinion, is better run than Libya, yet NATO worked with them.  If NATO has worked with African countries to unseat Gadhaffi, it would have strengthened the precedent of Liberia and Sierra Leone and would have given some dignity to Africans, and might have helped to bridge some of the divide between black and Arab Africa.

I support the Libyan peoples democratic wishes. You also cant blame the Rebels for choosing to go with the side that will replace them for the Gadhaffi family and hopefully introduce an impersonal market driven political inter relations. But I support a lot of howling by the weak now against the legal and marketized looting of Libya that may follow. Altruism seems always to give birth to children that don't look a lot like their mother.  As much as one acknowledges the good, it is even more important that one does not allow it to blind one to the possibility that brood of vipers could hatch from the big white egg.  Its not only idealism, its real politik we must deal with.

------------------------

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

----- Original Message -----
From: kenneth harrow <harrow@msu.edu>
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, 01 Sep 2011 23:06:59 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Libya and African leaders


    dear femi

    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:
    

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:         University of Texas at Austin.

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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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