I know the arguments against U.S. involvement in other people’s wars. I’ve made the arguments. We cannot be the world’s policeman. Committing American troops in places that involve no national interest of ours is foolish and dangerous. We shouldn’t go in unless there is a clear path out. Bosnia was Europe’s business. Iraq was too little about our real interests and too much about wiping out Saddam Hussein. Afghanistan, Chechnya, Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Burundi — all too remote from our vital interests. But Liberia…
The words are mine. I wrote them seven years ago, when the Clinton administration was weighing the possibility of intervening in that pitiful country, even then wracked by violence of the most dismaying sort, much of it at the hands of boy soldiers in the employ of one or another of four major factions, paying themselves by looting.
Should we have intervened at the time? My answer in 1996 was: Maybe. Certainly, I thought, we ought to offer significant material assistance to the unprecedented coalition of Liberia’s West African neighbors who were struggling to reduce the bloodshed there.
Should we intervene now? I’m even less certain today, though it appears we may be about to cooperate in a West Africa-led peacekeeping operation.
The most compelling argument for American intervention — for me, at least — is more sentimental than pragmatic or humanitarian. Liberia is, in a way, a child of America. It was founded in the 1820s when a ship carrying freed American slaves docked near what is now the capital of Monrovia. The U.S. government (along with the American Colonization Society) was in at the establishment of what came to be known as Africa’s oldest black republic, and Liberia and America have had a special relationship ever since.
That history, it is important to note, imposes no duty on the United States. We have no special moral responsibility for Liberia. Still, it would be delightful (and profoundly helpful to America’s interest in spreading its values abroad) if we could help to establish Liberia as an American-style democracy with an American-style economy.
Since that isn’t going to happen, the real question is whether — and how — we should participate in a pacification operation.
If participation means money, training and material, the answer is an easy yes. If it means U.S. troops as enforcers of an imposed peace, I’d say: careful.
The history of such interventions is not encouraging. We are good at delivering emergency assistance, and we can help bona fide governments resist insurrection or invasion.
Where we’re not much good — where arguably no one is any good — is in substituting for missing or ineffectual governments.
So we stop the killing, or at least interrupt it. But then to whom do we deliver the pacified populace? President Charles Taylor apparently has agreed to quit the country — and good riddance. But who else is there? And absent any creditable government, what is there to keep the peace once we’ve helped to make it?
It’s like bringing in the National Guard to quell a gang war in a town that has no police force worthy of the name. What do you do when the Guard is gone? How do you resist the pressure to keep the troops in place indefinitely?
I realize I haven’t talked of the humanitarian reasons for intervention — ending the bloodshed, increasing the personal security of ordinary citizens, getting rid of tyrants. But there is no end of places in need of such relief.
So how do we decide what to do about Liberia?
The University of Virginia’s Philip Zelikow once offered a checklist for deciding where the United States should intervene.
Do the governments in the affected region care about the problem as much as we do, and are they willing to back up that caring with real commitment?
Does the good we are likely to achieve outweigh the harm we’re likely to do in the place where we intervene?
Does the good we do in that place outweigh the harm we may do to our nation’s interests elsewhere around the world?
Is the problem something we can help to fix (and not merely bomb)?
It’s still a pretty good checklist.
William Raspberry can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or willrasp@washpost.com.
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