Wednesday, 07.09.08

Why Mugabe Matters

ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images

As Zimbabwe's crisis deepens, neighboring states consider their options.

What is the difference between a state and a gang? There are times when the difference seems to be one of scale, not of kind. Consider Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Just as Saudi Arabia is essentially owned by its ruling family, Zimbabwe has become, after years of Mugabe's depredations, little more than the personal property of Mugabe and the small clique of military men who lead his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. Craig Timberg's brilliant reporting in The Washington Post reveals that Mugabe was well aware of the fact that he lost Zimbabwe's last presidential election to Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. And yet Mugabe's cronies were not prepared to relinquish power. Rather, they devised a plan to fight as ferociously against the democratic opposition as they might against an invading army. Most strikingly, the assembled leaders never panicked about international opprobrium, with good reason: short of a massive invasion or a coup, it is very hard to see how Mugabe will ever be dislodged.

Which leads us to the unthinkable. Economist Paul Collier, hardly a friend of authoritarian regimes, has called upon the European Union to suspend recognition of the most egregious dictatorships in the hopes of encouraging military coups. A number of British politicians, including Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, have gone so far as to suggest an armed humanitarian intervention. It is hard to imagine that the American or British public will take anything other than a dim view of this proposal given the extraordinarily high cost of our intervention in Iraq.

Yet the idea of an invasion has the not inconsiderable advantage of being serious. Mugabe scoffs at sanctions. With South Africa by his side, he has little to fear from rhetorical fusillades. Despite the efforts of South Africa's labor unions to put the squeeze on Mugabe's regime, President Thabo Mbeki has been extremely reluctant to take any serious action against his former comrade, a fellow veteran in the struggle for majority rule. This is despite the fact that South Africa has seen vicious pogroms against immigrants and refugees, many of whom are Zimbabweans fleeing the poverty manufactured by Mugabe, and the brutality of his secret police. Mbeki has squandered South Africa's tremendous moral authority on behalf of Africa's vilest surviving dictator.

Some years ago, Columbia University political philosopher Thomas Pogge advanced an intriguing and decidedly controversial argument about the legitimacy of states. On the international scene, we assign resource rights and borrowing privileges to states. But in a state like Zimbabwe, the state truly is a gang. So the sale of resources and access to international credit markets accrues benefits to oppressive and unrepresentative rulers who can then use their new wealth to further entrench themselves. Democratic successor states are, conversely, burdened by debts rung up by criminals on the make. The beneficiaries of this deeply immoral arrangement are Western consumers and gangsters masquerading as statesmen. The victims are, inevitably, the people of Zimbabwe and Burma and North Korea. At least one reason the fate of Zimbabwe matters is that we in the West are in some sense responsible. By recognizing Mugabe as a head of state and not as a glorified mafia don, we've all but handed him the gun and the lash he uses to maintain his grip on power.

— Reihan Salam

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

By using this Service you agree not to post material that is obscene, harassing, defamatory, or otherwise objectionable. Although The Current does not monitor comments posted to this site (and has no obligation to), it reserves the right to delete, edit, or move any material that it deems to be in violation of this rule.