Full Version: Somalia
This post, by Lesly on another thread, made me think:
I'm not certain if Lesly was being sarcastic in the above post...China is often berated for its Darfur associations, but personally I don't think they are necessarily on the wrong track. Long ago, "Bush the first" launched a military mission in Somalia. It was humanitarian in nature. Food aid was being confiscated and diverted by warlords and couldn't get through to the people who needed it, so we intervened. The end result was the subject of a major motion picture entitled 'Blackhawk down'. About a year after, Bush lost the election to Clinton and the whole affair turned into a fiasco (that most of us are probably familiar with) shortly afterwards. The Islamic Court System then took over all of Somalia and our military forces have been supporting Ethiopia (Somalia's neighbor) via Djibouti since. A lot has happened in Africa since 1992. Rwanda genocide happened. Kenya is currently experiencing a bloody insurgency based on a (likely fraudulent) election, the Congo has been experiencing civil war, Darfur is an ongoing problem.
Questions to be debated:
What was Bush (the first's) longterm plan for Somalia/reason sending our forces there in the first place?
Does the US ignore Africa at its peril? Should the US have stayed involved in Africa?
QUOTE(Lesly @ Feb 1 2008, 04:43 PM) 
China? No way. Their manufacturing practices aren't that great when it comes to efficiency, and while they're doing a phenomenal job with Africa, taking a long-term approach investing and treating the continent as a possible political ally they may lean on for Taiwan, they're not going to cut back on raw material imports for a few decades.
I'm not certain if Lesly was being sarcastic in the above post...China is often berated for its Darfur associations, but personally I don't think they are necessarily on the wrong track. Long ago, "Bush the first" launched a military mission in Somalia. It was humanitarian in nature. Food aid was being confiscated and diverted by warlords and couldn't get through to the people who needed it, so we intervened. The end result was the subject of a major motion picture entitled 'Blackhawk down'. About a year after, Bush lost the election to Clinton and the whole affair turned into a fiasco (that most of us are probably familiar with) shortly afterwards. The Islamic Court System then took over all of Somalia and our military forces have been supporting Ethiopia (Somalia's neighbor) via Djibouti since. A lot has happened in Africa since 1992. Rwanda genocide happened. Kenya is currently experiencing a bloody insurgency based on a (likely fraudulent) election, the Congo has been experiencing civil war, Darfur is an ongoing problem.
Questions to be debated:
What was Bush (the first's) longterm plan for Somalia/reason sending our forces there in the first place?
Does the US ignore Africa at its peril? Should the US have stayed involved in Africa?
Does the US ignore Africa at its peril? Should the US have stayed involved in Africa?
I don't think the US ignores Africa so much as it, along with former colonial states, thinks of, and therefore treats the continent as a burden. ("China outwits the EU in Africa") China's support for Darfur and other regimes is horrible. Then again we don't have any apparent hang-ups with Equatorial Guinea. With two or three exceptions unofficial U.S. policy is: It is unconscionable when foreign governments financially support and associate/trade with bad regimes but necessary when we do it.
From an amoral standpoint China treats Africa as an opportunity. That may help explain why
Outside in China, where cooperation in human resources and exchanges with high level officials, labor and culture are encouraged.
This isn't all good news for Africa. While I think it's in Africa's interest to have more than two powers (or three, if you count the E.U. and US separately) vying for its resources not everything is peaches and cream. Increased trading has hurt local industry because of cheap Chinese goods and at some point China will come a-calling which may lead to a confrontation with the U.S. It will be interesting and welcome to see, however, if African states discard Western economic advice, adopt an Asian approach to modernization, and come out better for it.
I don't think the US ignores Africa so much as it, along with former colonial states, thinks of, and therefore treats the continent as a burden. ("China outwits the EU in Africa") China's support for Darfur and other regimes is horrible. Then again we don't have any apparent hang-ups with Equatorial Guinea. With two or three exceptions unofficial U.S. policy is: It is unconscionable when foreign governments financially support and associate/trade with bad regimes but necessary when we do it.
From an amoral standpoint China treats Africa as an opportunity. That may help explain why
QUOTE(China's Africa Strategy)
Africa has not been a priority for US foreign policy, other than counterterrorism cooperation with states in North and East Africa. Meanwhile, in some democratic African nations, the war in Iraq, the use of the term "empire" in relation to elements of US foreign policy, and the American focus on transparency, sometimes seen as meddling, genuinely anger average citizens. The White House has held few bilateral meetings with the continent's most important players, and, according to a report on West Africa by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, it has cut back on American energy attaches to the continent, even as African oil becomes more important to the United States. At the same time, restrictive US policies on student visas have led many Africans studying abroad, historically a vanguard of pro-American sentiment, to look outside the United States for their education.
Outside in China, where cooperation in human resources and exchanges with high level officials, labor and culture are encouraged.
This isn't all good news for Africa. While I think it's in Africa's interest to have more than two powers (or three, if you count the E.U. and US separately) vying for its resources not everything is peaches and cream. Increased trading has hurt local industry because of cheap Chinese goods and at some point China will come a-calling which may lead to a confrontation with the U.S. It will be interesting and welcome to see, however, if African states discard Western economic advice, adopt an Asian approach to modernization, and come out better for it.
QUOTE(Lesly @ Feb 1 2008, 06:35 PM)
It will be interesting and welcome to see, however, if African states discard Western economic advice, adopt an Asian approach to modernization, and come out better for it.
Could you elaborate on this? What is an "Asian approach to modernization"?
I must say, too, it's kind of surprising to me how little interest there is in this topic.
Maybe I haven't given it enough time. When we had a thread about one basketball player who wouldn't hurt his career by signing a note berating China about Darfur, that thread was enormous. Well, here's a thread about what should be done in Africa. Why we were there/was it the right thing/what will happen next and what should we actually do rather than just writing a nasty-gram...Personally, when Bush sent our troops to Somalia, I was very surprised and thought it was a bad idea. I still tend to think that, but since then, after the Islamic Court System took over the place his actions make more sense fifteen years later. I had some personal theories at the time as to why we were doing it, but I'm curious what others think.
QUOTE(Mrs. Pigpen @ Feb 2 2008, 07:22 AM)
QUOTE(Lesly @ Feb 1 2008, 06:35 PM)
It will be interesting and welcome to see, however, if African states discard Western economic advice, adopt an Asian approach to modernization, and come out better for it.
Could you elaborate on this? What is an "Asian approach to modernization"?
I'll try.
Structured mercantilism from MITI is credited with bringing about the Japanese post-war miracle. Something similar occurred in China if you can imagine a silver lining around Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward.
Conservative communists didn't want anything to do with GLF, preferring Stalin's approach to industrialization relying on capital-intensive technologies. Liberal communists ready to improvise supported a policy that resembled economist E. F. Schumacher's "Small Is Beautiful" series.
QUOTE(Political Economy of the Great Leap Forward)
Just as E. F. Schumacher argued against using capital-intensive technology in the presence of labor abundance, Mao made the argument that the Chinese government should not be focusing its development efforts on industrial strategies dependent on advanced material technology, especially when it could only do so by extracting a sizable surplus from the countryside to finance the purchase and operation of such technology.
The Maoist (and Schumacherian) preference was for a more evenly distributed developmental strategy. In this strategy, the quality of production technology employed by the greatest number of direct producers took precedence over the pace at which large-scale, mass production technology ("big is beautiful") could be implemented. The Maoist (and Schumacherian) dynamic of technological accumulation, as practiced in the Great Leap Forward, focused on improving the productivity of all Chinese workers, whether in the rural or urban enterprises, by investing in human development and labor-intensive technology, even at the cost of slowing down the pace of investment in heavy industry. […]
E. F. Schumacher similarly advocated the adoption of appropriate technology in less industrialized nations as a strategy that was consistent with economic growth and development. Schumacher believed that capital intensive investments in such societies were often wasteful and did not advance the economic prospects of poor nations. For example, he argued that a labor intensive society should not be importing big tractors and combines that require expensive and sophisticated spare parts, consume large quantities of fuel, and are complicated to operate if the leaders of that society want genuine and sustainable agricultural development but should be adopting smaller, cheaper, less sophisticated machines and tools that could easily be used and repaired given existing natural resources and skills.
The Maoist (and Schumacherian) preference was for a more evenly distributed developmental strategy. In this strategy, the quality of production technology employed by the greatest number of direct producers took precedence over the pace at which large-scale, mass production technology ("big is beautiful") could be implemented. The Maoist (and Schumacherian) dynamic of technological accumulation, as practiced in the Great Leap Forward, focused on improving the productivity of all Chinese workers, whether in the rural or urban enterprises, by investing in human development and labor-intensive technology, even at the cost of slowing down the pace of investment in heavy industry. […]
E. F. Schumacher similarly advocated the adoption of appropriate technology in less industrialized nations as a strategy that was consistent with economic growth and development. Schumacher believed that capital intensive investments in such societies were often wasteful and did not advance the economic prospects of poor nations. For example, he argued that a labor intensive society should not be importing big tractors and combines that require expensive and sophisticated spare parts, consume large quantities of fuel, and are complicated to operate if the leaders of that society want genuine and sustainable agricultural development but should be adopting smaller, cheaper, less sophisticated machines and tools that could easily be used and repaired given existing natural resources and skills.
China's post-war Cultural Revolution was based on self-reliance. Self-reliance was the schism between communist Russia and China. China and other Asian countries didn't borrow from the IMF/WB; they developed their industries behind trade barriers, they didn't raise cash crops and they didn't put their hopes on rapid, mechanized industrialization lacking resources and know-how to manage it.
Africa was more underdeveloped before international bankers started providing loans than it is today, with progress being very unequal, but it did have a sustainable agriculture. Western economists' advice to Africa in the 60s and 70s was modernize your agribusiness so you can use your cash surplus to pay back loans and invest in other industries. That didn't pan out because economists only had one advice to offer developing states. The market was flooded and prices dropped. The plan was to sell surplus food at pre-modernized prices and countries were straddled with debt, unable to redistribute cash towards other industries.
Africa went from feeding itself to being a perpetual importer of food. Millions of people have migrated to cities in hopes of finding jobs. There were exceptions to Western economic advice like drought and the forceful relocation of white farmers who, like their native counterparts, knew the middlemen, the sellers and the villages that depended on their food.
Africa's problem has been and will continue to be clientilism, but it seems every emerging democracy has this transparency problem. In Brazil, another state trying to make the most of pseudo-protectionist policies without falling out of favor with the IMF, clientilism is a part of the political process and economic policies.
If China wants to do better than the West has in regards to political corruption and abuse of aid with African leaders I think the best they can hope for is ignoring the practice but supporting local parties, no matter the ideology (something we're uncomfortable doing), to sustain political competition and hopefully discourage debilitating corruption.
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