So, we’re going to send troops to Liberia. Since the United States ran it as a quasi-colony, I suppose we have some special obligation. But after reading Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe by Martin Meredith the idea of American troops in Africa only depresses me.
Robert Mugabe was taught by Jesuits and has racked up six degrees (not just honorary degrees, real honest to god courses of study). Though his current wife is venal and greedy, Mugabe is relatively abstemious for a “big-man” who is more concerned with power than material acquisition. It is clear that Mugabe is a sly man who would sacrifice his nation on the alter of the worship of his own power & glory.
While Mugabe is relatively educated and Westernized many of the thugs of West Africa are racist dreams come to life, uneducated militaristic brutes that engage in modern day barbarities out of myth and actualize the most offensive stereotypes of black folk [1]. We will go into Africa with the same false promises of democracy & liberty that we prattled on about in Iraq-but the situation in Africa is even less promising. Iraq has a well-educated populace and 5,000 years of urban civilization under its belt. In contrast, most of Africa was jerry-rigged by European nations and formed fully-formed from the head of the colonial Zeus.
The racist Rhodesian government of Ian Smith was unpleasant and had a tinge of Latin-American style authoritarianism even in relation to whites, but it seems clear in hindsight that from a utilitarian perspective Rhodesia was a safer place to live than modern day Zimbabwe [2]. But at least for much of Mugabe’s reign the majority of the populace had one-man-one-vote [3]. They have democracy now, though they ended up backing a totalitarian leader. Now the blacks are getting their land back, though they are starving because the cronies of Mugabe that are getting the farms don’t know what to do with them. Justice without a full stomach.
There are no easy answers, only hard questions. I hope Bush knows what he’s getting into….
See my comments below – to make a long story short, it is a MISTAKE for the US to get involved, because no matter how we spin it we will either kill people (and be seen as racists/etc.) or we will not kill people (and be seen as ineffectual UN-crats). In any case, we will have to eventually withdraw. When we do, the people will likely just go back to killing each other. And if you doubt just how war-torn Africa is – see this map from Global Security.org. Almost every country in sub-Saharan Africa is either at war or borders a country at war. Note that this does not even include the insane crime rates in South Africa. Murder, for instance, is variously reported to be committed at between 7 and 10 times the US rate. One guess as to the common characteristics of the perpetrators – and no, there is no prize if you get it right…
The whole Africa situation is to some extent reminiscent of the decades-long paroxysms of war that used to afflict Europe. Nowadays the Euros think they’ve “outgrown” war by really listening to each others’ feelings. I happen to think that this is foolish, because the main reason that war is “unthinkable” on the continent is because Uncle Sam is standing over the potential combatants with a massive billy club. The secondary reason, IMO, is the presence of four nuclear states with interests in Continental Europe. But hey, that’s just me…
Update 2 from Godless:
Rather than simply saying “Africa is in trouble”, it’s worth commenting on which countries in Africa are doing well, and whether their situations are stable and reproducible. I am already on record as saying that I’ve grudgingly come to the conclusion that the problems of sub-Saharan Africa are mainly genetic. This is because unlike other war-torn regions of the world (e.g. Vietnam, Iran, etc.), as far as I know there are very few mathematically competent expatriates coming out of Africa. With neither ancient civilizations, nor current success, nor many competent expatriates, I don’t see much in the way of empirical evidence that enough mathematically able individuals exist to build and maintain technological societies. That said, I am very interested in this claim by John McWhorter that:
Yet many groups have triumphed over similar (or worse) obstacles—including millions of Caribbean and African immigrants in America, from Colin Powell to the thousands of Caribbean children succeeding in precisely the crumbling schools where black American kids fail.
Can anyone provide a citation with the statistical profiles of these groups? I googled for quite a while, to no avail. I’m interested in the absolute numbers, the countries of origin, and whether the numbers are incompatible with a Griffe-style back-of-the-envelope calculation.
A few other very non-PC points…there are some who believe that the wars and diseases that plagued Europe selected for higher planning/intelligence in the population. I’m skeptical as to whether this is the case. Note, however, that questions like this can in principle be answered by population genetic methods, e.g. by ascertaining whether putative IQ related genes suddenly became more prevalent around the time that black-plague resistance conferring alleles became common . Along the same lines, many have speculated on the natural selection effects of AIDS in Africa. It’s very non-PC to say so, but AIDS exerts tremendous selection pressure for genetic tendencies that favor planning, self-restraint, and delayed gratification. Of course, this silver lining would come at the cost of the very dark cloud of millions of dead innocents, and is in no respect an argument against providing assistance to those with AIDS.
Ok. So now for positive things in Africa. I’m not very well educated in African history, and all my stuff is coming off the net (with links), so I welcome any corrections. Ogunsiron has nominated Cameroon:
Because of its oil resources and favorable agricultural conditions, Cameroon has one of the best-endowed primary commodity economies in sub-Saharan Africa. Still, it faces many of the serious problems facing other underdeveloped countries, such as a top-heavy civil service and a generally unfavorable climate for business enterprise.
and Gabon:
Gabon enjoys a per capita income four times that of most nations of sub-Saharan Africa. This has supported a sharp decline in extreme poverty; yet because of high income inequality a large proportion of the population remains poor. Gabon depended on timber and manganese until oil was discovered offshore in the early 1970s. The oil sector now accounts for 50% of GDP. Gabon continues to face fluctuating prices for its oil, timber, and manganese exports. Despite the abundance of natural wealth, the economy is hobbled by poor fiscal management.
Also worthy of mention is Botswana, which is perhaps the most successful all-black country in the world (stable + good diamond industry) , but IMO it’s headed for a cliff because of its 40% AIDS rates:
Botswana has maintained one of the world’s highest growth rates since independence in 1966. Through fiscal discipline and sound management, Botswana has transformed itself from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income country with a per capita GDP of $7,800 in 2001. Two major investment services rank Botswana as the best credit risk in Africa. Diamond mining has fueled much of expansion and currently accounts for more than one-third of GDP and for four-fifths of export earnings. Tourism, subsistence farming, and cattle raising are other key sectors. On the downside, the government must deal with high rates of unemployment and poverty. Unemployment officially is 21%, but unofficial estimates place it closer to 40%. HIV/AIDS infection rates are the highest in the world and threaten Botswana’s impressive economic gains.
The common characteristic of these countries is that they have impressive natural resources and relatively stable governments. Like the Middle East, these resources are largely mined and extracted by foreign firms, which probably have some interest in keeping the region stable. However, all three countries are suffering from punishing AIDS epidemics:
In Botswana, a shocking 35.8% of adults are now infected with HIV, while in South Africa, 19.9% are infected, up from 12.9% just two years ago. The adult HIV prevalence rate in Botswana has more than tripled since 1992, when it was an estimated 10%.In Botswana, life expectancy at birth is now estimated to be 44 years instead of 69 without AIDS. In Zimbabwe, life expectancy is 43 instead of 65.
By the year 2010, crude death rates in Cameroon will have more than doubled as a result of HIV/AIDS. An estimated 340,000 people in Ghana are currently living with HIV.
When the UN is saying things like AIDS will kill half of African youth, IMO the stability of these countries is in doubt. Just to make things clear – it would, of course, be heartening if there was an African country that bucked the trend of AIDS, war, and commodity/loan dependence and developed a technological market economy…but I don’t believe that will happen before the advent of genetic engineering. I’d love to be proven wrong.
[1] Child soldiers, mass amputations, ritual cannabilism, etc.
[2] One could protest that blacks were treated as second-class citizens by the regime. This is true, but Ian Smith killed far fewer blacks than Mugabe has. The Matabele people have certainly suffered more ethnic prejudice from the Shona elite under Mugabe than they experienced under the whites-ZANU-PF unleashed North Korean trained terror squads on Matabele villages who burned families alive in front of relatives and made mothers eat their own infants after it was boiled. Even the Shona people have suffered deprivation and the rising specter of an AIDS epidemic while the regime fights foreign wars and concentrates on the “white menace.”
[3] Most elections in Zimbabwe have been characterized by intimidation and irregularities, but nonetheless, at least the blacks could vote.
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