Why Non-Intervention fails Failed-States

One of the most divisive issues in ongoing political discourse today, across most of the world, is the matter of foreign intervention.

The question is posed, whether it’s proper for one state to intervene or involve itself in the ‘internal’ affairs of another?

Is it possible, by any amount of offensive or defensive argument, to justify foreign intervention?

Is the political sovereignty and territorial integrity of states so hallowed and rigid that it can under no condition be suspended, or at least questioned?

Of course, we must also be cognizant that intervention, while chiefly military – goes beyond merely stationing troops on the ground, and encompasses humanitarian aid, development funding, donor-domestic partnerships etc, etc.

So that when we talk about intervention, we are talking about war-time intervention as much as peace-time intervention – because the wars a country fights are not only waged with guns and bombs, but also against failed institutions, disease and abject poverty – of which the latter foes often prove less tractable.

Perhaps the most eloquent expositor of non-intervention, as far as the Ugandan (and perhaps African) conversation over the issue is concerned, is the journalist and socio-political commentator - Andrew Mwenda.

This is subsumed under Mr. Mwenda’s broader critique of and opposition to foreign aid in general.

Mr. Mwenda, who is also the brain behind the leading regional current affairs Magazine, The Independent, and seems to inspire as much apprehension  in his detractors, as admiration in his followers – principally argues that failed states ‘‘must be left to burn!’’

In other words – Mr. Mwenda and his followers consider foreign intervention a matter of salting a wound, because foreign interests are chiefly opportunistic, and never have sustainable solutions as an objective when they get involved in the civil quarrels of a given country.

In many of his arguments – Mr. Mwenda has pointed to the neo-imperialist motives of America and her Western allies when they intervene in nations on the pretext of restoring peace or securing civil liberties, only to take advantage of the conflict and siphon off the victims’ natural resources, or install puppet regimes that are often unpopular and totalitarian.

Examples such as Iraq and Afghanistan where foreign-installed governments have fallen soon after withdraw of foreign troops, Libya after Gaddafi where the Americans continue to arm militias against the incumbent government all go a long way in stoking the fires of cynicism with which able critics like Mr. Mwenda view the problem.

But of course we mustn’t limit this to a West Vs Africa or West Vs Third World problem; since even African and Asian countries intervene in each other’s affairs often - Uganda in Somalia, Uganda in Sudan, Ethiopia in Somalia, Saudi Arabia in Yemen etc, etc.

His solution is therefore quite simply to allow domestic national forces to fight it out; until the stronger ‘War Lord’ vanquishes the weaker, and either eliminates his opponents (Charles Taylor style), or incorporates them in his government (Paul Kagame and Yakubu Gowon style).

While at first glance, Mr. Mwenda’s views seem to be dystopian and anarchic - I find them essentially Pan African - because he underpins them quite reasonably with the importance of focusing on long-term remedies to civil strife, which can only be brought about by an organic internal equilibrium, when rival factions in a state fight themselves to mutual exhaustion or when one of the parties secures victory.

 This is as much as Mr. Mwenda argues, on the matter. And while I have made every attempt to read any greater nuances into his argument, I must concede that I have failed. Or is it perhaps that there aren’t any?

 I hope I’m not the only one noticing that Mr. Mwenda’s view notoriously sounds like Machiavelli’s dictum of all being well that ends ‘‘well’’ - the end justifying the means.

I’ll now invite you to examine some of the more subliminal arguments in the foreign intervention debate.

First – what constitutes intervention?

This is quite difficult to define, because the world-order today, through globalization, is almost premised purely on intervention of some sort – economic, political and cultural.

Actually – I wish to submit that international trade is a form of mutual foreign intervention. The fact that our governments purchase Russian-made MIGs and Chinese RPGs and British-made grenades, and can use them against us when we ‘displease’ them – underscores this.

No single country lives in isolation. 
Even North Korea – perhaps the world’s most secretive regime – has had to accept American food-aid in exchange for a subsidence of its nuclear program.

Rwanda itself, which Mr. Mwenda says is stable because no intervention caused an imbalance during their 1994 civil war, had to rely on Uganda’s support for the RPF forces to emerge victorious.

Even Museveni’s NRA had to acquire some support from Libya in their bush-struggle in the form of armaments; and the UNLA had Korean soldiers fighting for it against the rebels; though I must admit, to a limited scale.

The only reason the Angolans and Mozambicans were successful against the Portuguese during the independence struggles in the 1970s - is because Cuba actually sent troops to fight alongside the African revolutionaries.

It’s doubtful if South Africa’s apartheid government would ever have bowed down if a combination of international sanctions and isolation (a form of intervention), had not forced it.

It actually can be argued that if the United States hadn’t ‘intervened’ on the side of the South African racist regime for so long through economic partnership – it would’ve fallen much earlier than 1990. This was a case of misguided intervention.

Second – is intervention intrinsically evil?

Perhaps it should not really be a question of if the international community intervenes – but on whose side they actually intervene.

For example - American intervention in Iraq for many years strengthened and entrenched Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship – but similarly, it is only American counter-intervention that successfully brought Saddam down. The Iraqi’s could never have done it by themselves.

You cannot build a house with steel structures and expect to bring it down using a wooden hammer.

I’d like to argue that intervention as a concept is morally neutral – and is contingent upon the intentions of the intervening parties; rather than inherently evil and selfish, as Mr. Mwenda likes to argue.

Misguided intervention creates dictatorships, but corollary, most of the time, only well-intentioned intervention can remove them.

And luckily, Mwenda too has admitted to the integrated nature of the world – saying that what Africa needs is international solidarity, not intervention.

But of course, and at the risk of appealing to a slippery slope, we all notice how difficult it is to draw the line between solidarity and intervention.

Isn’t intervention a form, if not the most profound form, of solidarity?

 If my neighbor is beating his wife and I break the door down to save the poor woman, am I not being solidaristic? 
Or would I be poking my nose where it doesn’t belong?

Would I rather stand outside and try to ‘reason’ with the battering husband about the demerits of beating one’s wife, whilst the beating goes on?

Is Mwenda arguing for purely verbal solidarity, as opposed to solidarity backed by action?

Should neighboring states only stand in the United Nations Assembly and denounce genocide with words, without threatening, and if push comes to shove, instituting preventive military action?

Should the United States have simply expressed its verbal ‘sympathy’ with the Libyan democratic cause whilst colonel Gaddafi implemented his unequivocal promise to  exterminate the unarmed protesters who were marching on Tripoli?

Again – I am not a proponent of Western neo-imperialism, and I’m aware that foreign interests take advantage of our wars to keep us exploited.

But if anything, it is foreign interests that fund our wars and keep us divided to begin with – so perhaps we should ask ourselves why we buy guns from them or let them train our armies in the first place.

Third – who actually benefits from intervention, and who loses?

In all wars – the biggest losers are civilians caught up in the crossfire; who are often contemptuously dismissed as collateral damage. These are the folks who intervention is, or at least should be, aimed at saving.

War Lords who lose the war, and the elite class who back them, can always ran off to exile and lick their wounds – but  the ordinary people have nowhere to run to when  the canons begin to boom.

Intervention therefore shouldn’t be callously reduced to abstract, impersonal concepts like ‘‘national sovereignty’’ or ‘‘self determination’’ – it’s about innocent men and women who just want to lead safe lives and want nothing to do with the power struggles of the egotistical fools who claim to be their ‘leaders’!

Should ordinary South Sudanese have been allowed to endlessly suffer the brunt of Riek Machar’s and Silva Kiir’s power games?

Perhaps the UPDF went into South-Sudan to ‘steal oil’  - but if even a hundred South Sudanese innocents were saved from brutal, needless death by their presence, then I say - let all the oil in the world be stolen!

Oil and gold and diamonds were here long before the human race appeared on the planet (some 200, 000 years past) – and will be here long after we’ve gone extinct (estimably some 2 million years to come).

 At the end of the day – human life must be an end in itself, not just a means to any economic or political end.

When it comes to personal courage – of course I can only speak for myself, and say I won’t be the first on the front line when the Ugandan army begins to shoot indiscriminately into an unarmed protesters' crowd, as they did in September 2009.

But I can’t help wondering if Mr. Mwenda would do so, despite previous claims, that he would gladly drive to a firing squad at the Constitutional Square if he were summoned by Museveni’s henchmen.

But it helps matters to downscale some of these issues for further analysis;

Let’s assay Mr. Mwenda’s notion of reaching a ‘domestic equilibrium’;

In the example of the wife-battering neighbor I mentioned above, even if the fight lasted a hundred years, should we reasonably expect the soft, feminine woman to fight-back and successfully defend herself against her husband, when the husband happens to be a professional boxer?

Even if the husband were just an ordinary man, he would have a natural physical advantage over the wife, because natural laws give men an edge over women in physical combat.

It would be a different case if the husband were a cripple, and he attempted to beat his wife – because then the odds would somewhat be matched, or even in favor of the wife. 

This would be an ideal condition for ‘domestic equilibrium’.

But then, conditions are scarcely ever ideal – in society, we have fewer crippled husbands than whole husbands; so chances are that the woman is going to earn herself a thorough beating.

This is exactly what happens in most cases of national civil wars, or domestic uprisings.

We often have two combatants – the state with all the might of the army and police behind it on the one hand, and unarmed civilians with nothing but ‘‘moral will’’ and international sympathy on their side.

The state, by design, has a monopoly over violence – and is therefore figuratively a ‘‘pro-boxer’’ who commands the security apparatus, compared to unarmed civilians who have no military training whatsoever, and fight with stones and sticks at best.

Of course, ‘‘moral will’’ cannot do anything for civilian protesters against the ammunition of the state, except make them ‘consenting’ martyrs – it’s usually the international community which can prevent the civilians’ extermination by a sadistic state, as nearly happened in Libya.

In Libya’s case – Gaddafi was a ‘pro-boxer’ who had threatened to beat his wife to death, and the ‘neighbor’ had every right to break that door down.

In the case of Egypt, the state became a crippled ‘husband’ – because the army refused to do what it ought to do, that is, to follow the President’s directives of ‘silencing those protesters’.

Otherwise, the protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square wouldn’t have lasted as long as they did if Hosni Mubarak’s army hadn’t deserted him at the last minute – and international intervention would have become needful to prevent a repeat of China’s Tianamen Square incident.

Since ends justify the means – should we conclude that the democratic cause of China’s Tianamen victims wasn’t as worthwhile as their Egyptian counterparts, given that their country’s army didn’t side with them, unlike in Egypt’s case?

Bringing the conversation back to our own backyard;

We Ugandans have often been accused of cowardice – most loudly by none other than Mr. Mwenda himself – who says we lack the spine to take on, or rather take down, Yoweri Museveni’s dictatorship in the streets.

It is often comically said that as soon as a single bullet is fired in Kampala, the average Ugandan walking on the streets, who may not even know why the bullet was fired, will instinctively utter the cowardly proclamation – ‘‘ It wasn’t me! Whatever it is – it wasn’t me! See – I hold an NRM party card!’’

For long, I too used to be bitter with myself and fellow Ugandans, for not being ‘men’ enough to call for change - thinking romantically of the day I’d march hand-in-hand with fellow citizens on state-house, singing hymns and chants of victory, and send Museveni and his cronies scampering to exile as we ‘‘took our country’’ back in style.

Of course that was a dream!

Governments and ‘Liberators’ are not lizards to scuttle through cracks at the sight of a million unarmed ‘‘rats and cockroaches’’ – to borrow Comrade Gaddafi’s words – and they will gladly unleash fire and brimstone on any and everything that threatens their power and privilege.

It would be a different matter if Ugandans could trust the army to remain ‘neutral’ in the event of a march on State-House; and indeed millions would take part in said march - but we all know that this cannot happen – Uganda’s army leadership is too personalized, and too loyal to the President to just let peaceful protesters march unmolested.

Perhaps this is where the concept of militias comes in; if the army won’t let protesters march peacefully against a ‘civilian’ president – then the army must be fought together with its ‘military’ president.

And in order to fight an army, people need guns. 

They may either attack Kabamba barracks and steal some twenty-seven rifles, which is only possible when an army is as weak as Obote’s was in 1980; or they may rely on some foreign power sympathetic to their (democratic and humanitarian) cause to arm them, which amounts to intervention.

Let’s not kid ourselves – the concept of military intervention is really about survival.
If protesters march on their government and the security apparatus remain neutral, no one intervenes – as we saw in Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia.

If they march on their government and it vows to annihilate them with the army’s help however – as we saw in Syria, Ivory Coast and Libya - then they often turn to whoever is prepared to offer guns or peacekeepers to defend them – America, Russia, the UN, Chinese etc, etc.

So – comrade Mwenda, let's agree that no one really fancies having American marines prancing about the streets and flying around in noisy choppers, while their companies loot the country’s resources – but if this is the alternative to extermination, then maybe Africans should live to fight another day.

In a very revealing online exchange, an interlocutor on Mr. Mwenda's twitter account averred: ''Mwenda would like the fighting in Burundi to proceed without intervention, until eventually, there is no one left to fight ...''

To which Mr. Mwenda, with typical dismissal, replied - ''Be serious, have you heard of a conflict in the world's history in which no one was left to fight?''

While a lot may be said concerning the nihilistic undertones of that rejoinder, what strikes me is the (moral) logic of one discounting the possibility of a scenario, because it has no historical precedence.

In short, even if one assumed that his query couldn't be positively answered, Mr. Mwenda wouldn't mind using the Burundian civil-war as a social laboratory in which to investigate whether or not it is indeed possible for ''no one to be left behind to fight.'' (Sigh!) 

Intervention, in and of itself, may be rife with the risk of economic pillaging and stage-managed, protracted warfare – but in the event that unarmed civilians clamoring for change cannot get their governments to step down peacefully – then the international community must become a welcome military ally.

For a single ounce of living human flesh is much worthier than a million gallons of fossilized organic matter; manifested in the earth as crude oil; and a pint of pulsing blood more precious than a heap of all the world's gold reserves.

Long live (calculated) cowardice!