> Ok, so does anyone understand the pressure for U.S. intervention in
> Liberia?
I'm still not sure we're actually going do much. I think our idea is for Ecowas to intervene and for us to give a little help and take most of the credit.
These leads to a diplomacy based explanation. Bush is mainly talking platitudes in Africa. The whole trip was basically conceived as a big photo op so that people can say we're not neglecting the place. But it will be hard for him to get that close to Zimbabwe without saying he's for Mugabe's ouster. Otherwise it would give the impression that he's backing down. But speaking up was something State thought was likely to cause unpleasantness, because two of the countries he's visiting, Nigeria and South Africa, are the main players in negotiations between Mugabe and the opposition, and both of them are for exactly the opposite policy. They want a transitional coalition government including both government and opposition (like they had in South Africa, as Mbeki points out). And they are convinced that they already have a promise from Mugabe to step down within the year on this basis.
So, this explanation goes, the thing in Liberia was a feint. State was on the lookout for something to mitigate foreseeable unpleasantness, and they latched onto this when it came up.
On this interpretation, the whole maneuver offshore bit was never meant to last much longer than his trip. Our position is that we will only go in if Taylor steps down, which solves half the problem before we get there. And my suspicions are that we really only ever intended to stand behind Ecowas, which we support as a counterweight to France in the area, much in the same way as we support "new Europe."
But I think the innitial cause, trivial as it might seem, had to do with the Mugabe speech, which goes to the heart of our shtick about governance. Hovering offshore of Liberia was meant to show that we're serious, that we're not unyielding on Mugabe because he's defiant and we want to make an example of him, but rather because we care about suffering people and we're initiating a new era. Which is all yak, of course.
But then, as so often happens, it took on a life of its on. The issue was not only hopped onto by the international community, including our one and only ally trying to point out something good about us, but also a surprisingly wide and vocal spectrum of groups, ranging from right wing missionaries to the whole liberal interventionist Kosovo squad who were hugely relieved to find an intervention they could whole heartedly support again. It looks to them like a pure cause precisely because there's no material point to it. That is a recommendation in their eyes. These are the kind of people who think the administration may have "erred" a bit in Iraq, but all it needs is their stern moral guidance to put them on the "right track." The see Liberia as an opening to shame the adminstration into doing the right thing.
So now the administration is trying to keep to its script of saying it has serious intentions while not actually having any, but finding it harder than it was supposed to be.
That's more banal than venal. But it's suprising how many foreign policy decisions get made this way.
Michael