Africa News Service (Durham)
Reed Kramer
1 July 1995
(Page 6 of 6)
Nevertheless, the West African initiative represents the first time that a regional body had intervened to stop a conflict in its own region, and there is little disagreement that military and political actions of ECOWAS have saved many lives, at considerable cost to the member states. With Nigeria in the lead, participating nations have spent well in excess of $500 million in Liberia, according to estimates by both U.S. and Nigerian government officials. The operation is one of the largest in the world and the only major peacekeeping effort not run by the United Nations.
Before the world body established a Liberian observer mission in late 1993, the only significant outside assistance for the West African effort was about $30 million from the United States. After a lengthy interagency debate early last year, the Clinton administration approved another $30 million to underwrite deployment of troops from outside the region. Critics of U.S. policy argue that even after the administration decision to limit direct American involvement, Washington could have done much more, both materially and diplomatically, to bolster the West African effort and make it more successful.
No one can judge with hindsight whether the loss of an estimated 150,000 lives and the regional devastation spawned by the Liberian crisis could have been prevented without extended U.S. military engagement, but It is difficult to find a Liberian who doubts that firm U.S. leadership would have made a decisive difference. Many U.S. officials, too, now share Cohen's assessment that more could have been achieved without creating a quagmire.
What is certain is that failure to stop the fighting during 1990, before the entire country was demolished, erected barriers to a solution that still have not been overcome. The result was to condemn Liberia and much of the region to continuing suffering and to divert scarce international assistance from economic development to sustaining refugees.
The same tentativeness that characterized Liberia decision-making has been exhibited in a number of other crises in Africa and beyond. In Somalia, another Cold War orphan, military action came so late that, as when all the King's men were confronted with a shattered Humpty-Dumpty, it proved impossible to put all the pieces back together.
What could be interpreted as a tacit admission that a new approach is needed is contained in a re-examination of policy towards Africa, National Security Review 30, carried out by the Bush administration in the final months before Clinton took office. "There is little to be lost and much to be gained through an activist policy," the study concludes. "Our enormous relief efforts could be lessened by actions designed to eliminate the causes -- political, environmental, and economic -- of the crises to which we must respond. A diplomacy aimed at prevention and resolution of conflict is the sine qua non of an effective pursuit of all U.S. goals in the region."
Crisis prevention has been the watchword of Clinton policy as well. "In the face of all the tensions that are now gripping the continent," the president told the White House Conference on Africa last year, "we need a new Africa policy based on the idea that we should help the nations of Africa identify and solve problems before they erupt." However, this administration, like its predecessor, has seldom found the political will to forcefully confront Africa's crises -- even when they bear American fingerprints.
"Liberia: A Casualty of the Cold War's End," was published in CSIS Africa Notes (July 1995). Copies can be ordered for $4.00 per copy from the African Studies Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1800 K Street, Washington, D.C. 20006 USA. Tel: (202) 775-3219.
Reed Kramer is managing editor of Africa News Service.
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