Tuesday, 03 November 2009
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UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY ON MILITARY REGIMES
Unfortunately, military regimes are no better and usually worse than the civilian regimes they replace.
They are authoritarian, repressive and decidedly undemocratic.
They are not accountable to the public; they rule by edict and not the constitution, and they do not promote transparency.
They do less well at development but very well at expanding their own institution, the military.
They have a deleterious effect on the economy which is recognized by the IMF and the World Bank and they try to engage in even greater levels of what's known as predatory accumulation than civilian regimes.
African militaries are strongly exposed to international influences and relationships.
From before independence, they have made use of foreign training, foreign technology, donations and imports and foreign patrons and allies.
When U.S. policies are carried out through the U.S. military, African military counterparts become their most influential points of contact. They are the people around whom networks are constructed.
They are relied on for information about internal affairs, intelligence and assessments of the personalities and proclivities of a country's leaders. This means that the very people who lead the least democratic institutions are in the strongest position to guide the thinking of the U.S. military officials who make profound decisions that can have long-term effects on African populations. The history of U.S. support for military rules and military action is sorely blemished. During the Cold War, significant financial aid and military support went to corrupt and repressive regimes. From 1950 to 1989, $1.5 billion in weapons alone went from the U.S. to Africa.
Among the top clients were the usual DRC, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan.
The important point is that this kind of support has not stopped. The U.S. since the of the Cold War continues to back military regimes and military action and to be very generous when it is in U.S. interests, as in defined in narrow and short-term ways. Often, that support can be self-defeating when it is not consistent with the democratic ideals and practices that are central to U.S. foreign-policy rhetoric.
Let me give you some examples. The first is Equatorial Guinea. At the same time experts warned the U.S. government not to repeat Cold War mistakes by propping up dictators, the U.S. authorized a private company of former Pentagon officers to work with President Nguema to strengthen Equatorial Guinea's coast guard and its ability to protect offshore operations. Nguema came to power through a military coup. In 1996, the U.S. closed its embassy in protest against his appalling human-rights violations, yet relations with Equatorial Guinea were reestablished at the urging of oil companies, and the embassy was reopened in 2003. The new embassy was housed in a small villa owned by President Nguema's uncle, a known torturer and murderer of political dissidents, to whom it paid $17,500 a month rent. U.S. military sping Equatorial Guinea has not been curtailed. Rather, recent amounts have been over $100 million, at least by virtue of the CIA Factbook.
The second example is Mali. It was announced last week that the U.S. will provide a large, $4.5 million increase in support to Mali that Reuters reported will help the military fight nomadic Tuareg rebels and al-Qaida operatives that are active in the northern desert.
Tuareg militants -- and Ambassador Lyman brought this up -- and al- Qaida operatives -- sorry. The Tuareg militants began rebelling as far back as 1916. The current rebels -- off and on. The current rebels are former soldiers led by a former Tuareg Malian army officer, and this is a dissonant group of a dissonant faction from the Malian military, and incidentally, the Tuareg were the majority group in the Malian military earlier on, and this was in keeping with colonial policy, where small minorities were used in the armies because it was much easier to use them than to use the in-groups and large majorities.
The U.S.-trained militaries in Mali and Niger have committed human-rights abuses against Tuareg rebels, and that's well- established. What is more significant about this case is that the Tuareg are based around recently discovered oil deposits and around, in Niger, the world's largest uranium deposits -- or second-largest uranium deposits, at least by recent count. The uranium mines have helped to undermine the local economy, impoverish local people, and they've left radiation pollution that is providing grave health problems. What is not established and is in fact questioned by some close observers is whether or not the Tuareg actually have ties to the several known al-Qaida operatives in the Sahara, or alternatively, whether the Malians and Nigerian are using the specter of al-Qaida to gain U.S. support for their long-standing efforts to bring the Tuareg finally under state control. This is where there is a fine line that we have to worry about in making these kinds of allocations to these governments. We should recall that the Algerian governmental authorities have set an example in this regard, deliberately staging riots in the south, attributing them to al-Qaida operatives -- they do exist there -- and thereby securing enormous U.S. military support.
A third example began in September 2006, in Somalia, and since Somalia has been the topic of today's conversation considerably, I won't go into it, because we all know it. The point is that the U.S. was behind some of the attacks by the Ethiopians on the Somalis, and what was considered a move against the war on terror also served to curtail some nascent state-building activities that was occurring in Somalia. And it's highly probable that the Islamicist opposition to U.S. interest is now much greater than it would have been, had this Somalia intervention, military intervention, not occurred.
So both Somalia and Mali illustrate a real danger, and that is of controlling internal dissidents with real threats of global terror. As we know, al-Qaida operatives function everywhere. They effectively penetrate dissident groups to search for support and recruits. It is incumbent upon us to learn to assess real from negligible danger and to respond appropriately, in ways that do not inflict large-scale suffering on innocent people.
Unfortunately, African authorities are capable of using the threat of global terror as weapons to suppress their enemies, as with Ethiopia's actions against Somalia, or rebellious internal groups, as with the Tuareg, by attracting outside support in the name of international security. Let me return now to the African military.
The good news is that there has been a big decline in the number of military coups, the most recent exception of course being Guinea, and there has been a rise in collective African efforts to penalize military coup-makers through regional organizations, such as ECOWAS which actually is the locus, now, of an effort to bring settlement to the Guinea crisis.
The bad news is that African militaries have not ceased from involvements with their governments. The threat of military intervention, such as another coup, hangs heavily over the heads of civilian governments, and therefore it is used by the military to exercise political power. To return to my earlier point about the rising presence of oligarchic rule, many civilian governments must have top-level military support, if only in the background, to exist.
In return for that support, African -- sorry, officials must share the spoils in the forms of payoffs, privileged access to contracts and licenses, and jobs, including in some cases appointments to officers in government positions. Zimbabwe is the most extreme example of a civilian regime managed behind the scenes by a military. The military in Nigeria is a much less obvious partner. More insidious is the power of outside actors to strengthen African militaries.
Aside from providing used weapons, training, joint exercises, intelligence, outside powers work assiduously to become patrons and create military clienteles in the hope that there will be effective networks and unwavering support if and when joint military action is undertaken or outside economic interests are at stake. (continues)
CENTER FOR ADVANCED DEFENSE STUDIES (CADS) MEETING via Federal News Service 11-02-09
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