The New York Review of Books: Sierra Leone, 2000: A Case History in Successful Interventionism

A paradox of this claim is that the scope and success of the intervention depended less on deliberate policy and careful planning in Downing Street or Whitehall than on a daring degree of improvisation by the commanding officer on the ground. “Operation Palliser,” which began in May 2000, was led by General Sir David Richards, then a brigadier, later appointed chief of the British general staff and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Without official sanction from London, Richards protected the capital Freetown from rebel attacks and prevented it from falling. In so doing, he made a remarkable unilateral decision to go beyond his mandate in order to save a civilian population from the overwhelming likelihood of an all-out slaughter. The military historian David Ucko, writing in the Journal of Strategic Studies in 2015, calls Richards’s action “A rare success story, but… a poorly understood and little studied case.” [...]

The carnage they inflicted was unspeakable. In these raids on villages, according to interviews I did later, pieced together with testimonies from human rights investigators, soldiers forced parents to choose which of their children would be taken as fighters and which would be killed on the spot. Teenagers in gangsta-style baggy pants raped and plundered, taking girls as young as nine as their “bush wives.” Rebel soldiers asked adult villagers whether they wanted “long sleeves” or “short sleeves,” then hacked off their limbs with machetes. [...]

From their headquarters at Lungi Airport, Richards’s force quickly retook the road that the RUF had earlier cut, and then established a good intelligence network. A few days later, using tips from locals, British soldiers with support from a government commander who went by the name Spider succeeded in capturing Sankoh. It was a significant win—not only boosting the morale of government forces and securing popular support for Richards’s presence, but also opening the way for negotiations to secure the release of the Jordanian UN soldiers being held hostage (all eleven of them were later freed).[...]

Having watched the horrors of Bosnia and Rwanda in the early 1990s—and the failures of intervention—Blair himself became an advocate for humanitarian intervention on principled grounds. In 1999, during the seventy-eight-day NATO-led military operation in Kosovo—a short, sharp war that drove Bosnian Serbs out of Albanian Kosovar territory—he delivered a speech at the Chicago Economic Club. In this “Doctrine of the International Community,” he spoke of the need to balance national interests with “moral purpose” in foreign affairs.

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The New York Review of Books: Imperial Exceptionalism

It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire. Since the era of Theodore Roosevelt, politicians, journalists, and even some historians have deployed euphemisms—“expansionism,” “the large policy,” “internationalism,” “global leadership”—to disguise America’s imperial ambitions. According to the exceptionalist creed embraced by both political parties and most of the press, imperialism was a European venture that involved seizing territories, extracting their resources, and dominating their (invariably dark-skinned) populations. Americans, we have been told, do things differently: they bestow self-determination on backward peoples who yearn for it. The refusal to acknowledge that Americans have pursued their own version of empire—with the same self-deceiving hubris as Europeans—makes it hard to see that the US empire might (like the others) have a limited lifespan. All empires eventually end, but maybe an exceptional force for global good could last forever—or so its champions seem to believe. [...]

Most textbooks date the beginning of America’s overseas expansion to 1898, when it acquired sovereignty over Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the conclusion of its war with Spain. Yet as Bulmer-Thomas shows, the US empire went offshore much earlier. During the 1810s and 1820s, Americans carved out the state of Liberia in West Africa, allegedly as a refuge for free American blacks; the country in fact functioned as an American colony and later as a protectorate of the Firestone Rubber Company. The US established an imperial presence in East Asia as early as 1844, when the Treaty of Wanghia gave it the same privileged access to Chinese ports as the British Empire, and went on to acquire dozens of “guano islands” in the Pacific, where abundant bird droppings provided a rich source of fertilizer.[...]

Statehood was never considered during the debate over the Philippines: the only question was whether to establish a naval base at Manila and give the islands back to the Spanish or to annex the entire archipelago. The imperialists won the argument, and after the insurgents were finally suppressed the Philippines became a colony, from which investors in sugar, hemp, tobacco, and coconut oil could gain privileged access to US markets and Filipinos could emigrate to America in search of jobs. By the 1930s, congressional opposition to cheap exports as well as to cheap (and nonwhite) labor created support for Philippine independence, which was finally achieved in 1946. But it came with so many restrictions on trade and so much preferential treatment for American investors—not to mention continued maintenance of US military bases—that “it would be more accurate to describe the Philippines as becoming a US protectorate,” Bulmer-Thomas writes. “Thus, the end of colonialism in the Philippines did not mean the end of US imperial control.”[...]

The Point Four Program, drawn from Harry Truman’s inaugural address in 1949, linked the World Bank to the struggle with the Soviet Union for influence in the developing world, where the bank would make loans, with many political conditions attached, to governments and state-owned enterprises (later privately owned ones as well). The requirement that Congress approve these loans ensured that they would reflect what the US government considered its national interest. The United Nations, too, began as an American-dominated institution, though as its membership grew it became progressively harder for the US to control. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and bilateral treaties worldwide also served American policy under the guise of “collective security” against the Soviet threat. [...]

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon provided a new enemy, international terrorism, that was even more shadowy and elusive than international communism had been. Widespread panic among Americans and their allies was taken (especially in the US) to justify a permanent state of emergency, with damaging consequences for civil liberties and public debate at home, as well as for the many thousands of civilians who would become “collateral damage” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Quartz: As Robert Mugabe finds a new home, here’s where other African dictators went to retire

In Saudi Arabia, Amin received a monthly stipend and the respect of still being called “Mr President.” Until his death in 2003, Amin was often spotted wandering through grocery stores, going to the health club, and praying at his local mosque. It was a life far removed from one the world’s most brutal dictatorships, during which about 300,000 were killed under Amin’s regime.

Saudi Arabia continues to offer a comfortable retirement to Africa’s strongmen. Ousted Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Jeddah after the 2011 revolution that ended his 23-year rule. Ben Ali’s retirement has not been as tranquil as he may have imagined, with Tunisia’s new government continuously calling for his extradition.

Until now, Mugabe himself has provided a safe haven for fallen autocrats. In 1991, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the capital Addis Ababa and into safety in Zimbabwe. His departure brought an end to his Marxist-leaning government, which for 14 years was bedeviled by war, famine, failed economic policies, and a mass crackdown on enemies known as the Red Terror. [...]

Until now, Mugabe himself has provided a safe haven for fallen autocrats. In 1991, Ethiopia’s Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the capital Addis Ababa and into safety in Zimbabwe. His departure brought an end to his Marxist-leaning government, which for 14 years was bedeviled by war, famine, failed economic policies, and a mass crackdown on enemies known as the Red Terror.

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Al Jazeera: What are Israel's goals in West Africa?

Traditionally, Israeli leaders have not been well-received in Africa. North African states have Muslim majorities, close ties with the Middle East, and are supportive of the Palestinian cause.

Sub-Saharan African states fell out with Israel in the wake of the 1973 October War, referred to by Israelis as the Yom Kippur War.

But since 2016, Netanyahu has pursued a campaign of rapprochement with African nations, in the hopes of strengthening ties and winning African support for Israel.  [...]

Israel has seized on the appearance of "jihadi groups" in West Africa over the past few years as a golden opportunity.

The threat has provided a convenient opening to brand Palestinian resistance movements as "terrorists", and to paint them in a similar light to violent West African movements.

In doing so, Tel Aviv has taken advantage of the fact that Africa's political elite, swayed by Western media advancing an Israeli agenda, may not possess a deep knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict. [...]

West Africa is also seen as a hub for the Lebanese community accused of financing Hezbollah, whose foreign funding has been a long-standing point of concern for Israel. Israeli intelligence and economic influencers have focused on the countries most prone to this Lebanese influence, such as Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire, establishing a number of investment institutions and encouraging Israeli businessmen to invest. [...]

Africa's level of acceptance of Israel will depend on the size of its economic investments, the money it will be able to pump into regional infrastructure projects, and whether Netanyahu will fulfill his promise to spend $1bn in the region to improve green energy projects over the next four years.

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