Johannesburg Business Day (in English), pg. 8

(Article by Simon Barber in Washington: “U.S. Intervention in Somalia Bears the Whiff of Colonialism”)

For the benefit of those not yet fully comfortable with the emerging realities of the New World Order, the UN Security Council’s unanimous resolution authorizing the deployment of U.S. forces in Somalia begins with a disclaimer. The Somali crisis, it states, is:

“…unique…requiring an immediate and exceptional response”.

Without this fig leaf, African and other developing nations might have, at best, abstained, fearing the precedence. But that is all it is: a fig leaf — which the succeeding paragraph promptly shreds by laying out the reasons for the intervention, and with them the rationale for others like it. The council has determined that:

“The magnitude of the human tragedy caused by the conflict in Somalia…constitutes a threat to international peace and security”.

This is the language of the UN Charter’s chapter seven, which empowers the international community, acting through the Security Council, to take extreme measures ranging from mandatory sanctions to outright military action to preserve the peaceful enjoyment of sovereignty by member states. Hitherto, chapter seven has been brandished against identifiable human agents engaged in activities — transborder aggression, apartheid — that could legitimately be argued to pose a risk of regional or general war.

Never before has the council voted to use its ultimate powers unless invited by a party with a direct interest in the matter or unless the sanctity of the existing geopolitical map was at stake. Even the dispatch of armed forces to protect the Kurds and Shi’ites in Iraq against Saddam Husayn following the Gulf war could be justified under these criteria. Saddam’s aggression against his own population was not just a humanitarian problem; it threatened the stability of the entire region, one that the rest of the world depends on for much of its energy supply.

By contrast, the starvation, brigandry and collapse of order in Somalia are not an international security concern. There have not even been massive cross-border migrations in search of food that might endanger surrounding states. As President George Bush put it, “there is no government in Somalia”, much less one with designs on its neighbours. What there is is a zone of misery and lawlessness whose human toll, flashed daily around the world by television, has been deemed an affront to modern civilization. In the words of the UN resolution, “the situation is intolerable”.

Affronting civilization is not a phrase found in chapter seven, so the Security Council has had to stretch the meaning of the words contained in the charter to mount the present expedition. There should be no doubt, nonetheless, what the expedition is about. It is an exercise in multilateral missionary colonialism to save a population from savagery and give it a respectable government.

Naturally — because this is a difficult notion to swallow, one that does not accord with fashionable modes of thought — many of the responsible parties are attempting to prettify the truth. The resolution’s insistence that Somalia is “unique” is only one aspect of the disguise.

In announcing the deployment of 28,000 U.S. troops, Bush said:

“To the people of Somalia I promise this: we do not plan to dictate political outcomes. We respect your sovereignty and independence.”

This is persiflage, as is the official American line that the force will merely nip in, secure harbors, roads and airports deliver emergency relief where it is most needed and then hand over to the UN’s blue helmets.

Bush may be loath to admit that he is committing U.S. forces (and his successor Bill Clinton) to an open-ended operation when he himself has only a few weeks left in office but UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, whom the Security Council has granted overall responsibility for running the show, is less constrained. He has made it completely clear that he expects the Americans to pacify the country before they leave. “The mistake we made in the past,” he said after the historic council vote,

“…was to try to promote peace while the factions were still armed and fighting. We will not repeat that mistake. Disarmament is essential and it will take time.”

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Colin Powell, is on the same page. In his briefing after Bush’s announcement, he said the Americans were going in as “the cavalry” to pacify the restless natives and their warlords by “dominating” the country, if necessary — so that the UN could then get on with the task not only of providing food and medical relief but of establishing a viable political and civil administration.

If Somalia’s elites do not co-operate, their country may well be turned into a protectorate, effectively returning it to the status it held before independence in 1960. The resolution leaves the option open, stating that the council is:

“…determined to restore peace, stability and law and order with a view to facilitating the process of a political settlement under the auspices of the UN”.

For nearly half a century, the UN has echoed with windy pronouncements about self-determination and non-interference. As long as governments kept their unpleasantnesses within their own borders and had the requisite champions among the major powers, most were free to do pretty much as they liked to their own people. No longer. As Boutros-Ghali remarked in his June 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace,

“…the time for absolute and exclusive sovereignty has passed”.

Of course, for many Third World countries, especially in Africa, sovereignty was always a bit of a fiction. Many of the states that emerged from the winds of change were held together by generous quantities of external aid, military, economic and ideological, the transfer of which to a large degree dictated national policies. The self-governing ability of not a few states was a polite myth kept alive for the purposes of their being pawns in the superpower chess match.

The end of the Cold War and the discrediting of undemocratic centralized government has removed the external support and legitimization that kept many countries together. As an article in the current edition of Foreign Policy puts it:

“From Haiti in the western hemisphere to the remnants of Yugoslavia, from Somalia, Sudan and Liberia in Africa to Cambodia, a disturbing new phenomenon is emerging: the failed nation state.”

In a tightly interconnected world, the consequences of such failures cannot remain local. Even where they do not have a direct trans-national impact — by unleashing floods of refugees or triggering broader conflict — they are instantly served up around the globe in the form of horrifying television pictures, causing more fortunate electorates to demand action despite the fact that their own immediate interests are not affected; action up to and, after Thursday’s (3 December) UN vote, including de facto recolonization.

Two points are worth considering in this regard. First, the candidates for intervention will probably be chosen primarily by the U.S., the only nation with the ability to project the required military power. Second, they will tend to be “primitive” countries whose rescuing does not appear to risk more than a few American lives. Somalia, Liberia, Haiti — yes. Yugoslavia — unless the Somali exercise inspires a tremendous fit of hubris — no.