What is the task that mankind is now setting itself? Checking US hegemony and ushering in a multipolar world order. Here are material -- both subjective and objective -- conditions for the solution.
* China as a world economic power * Russia as a world military and energy power * Islam as the last internationalism from West Asia to the Horn of Africa and * 21st-century socialism -- the vision of socialism as democracy and republicanism -- in Venezuela and regional integration in Latin America.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/weekinreview/24gettleman.html> December 24, 2006 The World Across Africa, a Sense That U.S. Power Isn't So Super By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
MOGADISHU, Somalia
THE rally was supposed to be against Ethiopia, Somalia's neighbor and historic archenemy, which in the past few weeks had sent troops streaming across the border in an attempt to check the power of the increasingly powerful Islamists who rule Mogadishu.
But the cheers that shook the stadium (which had no roof, by the way, and was riddled with bullet holes) were about another country, far, far away.
"Down, down U.S.A.!" thousands of Somalis yelled, many of them waving cocked Kalashnikovs. "Slit the throats of the Americans!"
Not exactly soothing words, especially when the passport in your pocket has one of those golden eagles on it.
Somalia may be the place that best illustrates a trend sweeping across the African continent: After Sept. 11, 2001, the United States concluded that anarchy and misery aid terrorism, and so it tried to re-engage Africa. But anti-American sentiment on the continent has only grown, and become increasingly nasty. And the United States seems unable to do much about it.
A number of experts on Africa trace those developments to a sense not of American power, but of its decline — a perception that the United States is no longer the only power that counts, that it is too bogged down in the Middle East to be a real threat here, and so it can be ignored or defied with impunity.
American officials, for example, acknowledge that they are at a loss about what to do about the on-again, off-again Somali crisis, which cracked open last week when the two forces dueling for power blasted away at each other in their first major confrontation. In this case, there are a lot of reasons why many of the people don't like Americans, starting with the United States' botched efforts to play peacemaker in the early 1990s to its current support for Ethiopia, which is taking sides in Somalia's internal politics.
But the broader issue playing out here — the sense that the United States is not the kingmaker it once was — goes beyond Mogadishu. It is Africa-wide. And it is based on a changed reality: the emergence of other customers for Africa's resources and the tying down of American military forces in Iraq have combined to reduce American clout in sub-Saharan Africa, even as the United States pumps in more financial aid than ever — about $4 billion per year — and can still claim to be the one superpower left standing.
"The actual ability of the U.S. to influence circumstances on the ground in Africa has declined dramatically," said Michael Clough, a former director of the Africa program at the Council on Foreign Relations. "But the symbolic significance of the United States is still there. So we become the perfect target."
For proof, please see Sudan, Congo, Eritrea, northern Nigeria to a lesser extent, and even South Africa.
Chester A. Crocker, who was an assistant secretary of state for Africa under President Ronald Reagan, says the drop in American influence began when the cold war ended. He argues that despite all the complaints about fickle cold war Africa policy, which critics say propped up one corrupt dictator after another under the rationale of containing Communism, the United States was at least paying attention to Africa, and its efforts may have saved millions of lives.
It was the decade immediately after the cold war, Mr. Crocker said, when the United States disengaged from much of the continent, that Africa fell apart. Cataclysmic wars swept through Somalia, Rwanda, Algeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Congo. More Africans were slaughtered in the 1990s than in any other recent decade.
Now, as the United States resumes its interest in Africa, it faces a new, more pixilated landscape. "Africa is in play again," Mr. Crocker said. "It is a more competitive playing field which gives greater influence to African leaders as well as to potential competitors or 'balancers' of U.S. diplomatic leverage. It is not just China: it is Brazil, the Europeans, Malaysia, Korea, Russia, India."
"Inevitably," he concluded, "this dilutes somewhat U.S. ability to call the shots, define the agenda and mobilize coherent international action."
For example, there is Sudan, a country that the West, and the United States in particular, has desperately tried to isolate. First, it was because of Sudan's links to terrorists. Then came reports that the government was tied to genocide in Darfur. Sanctions have been imposed, almost embarrassing amounts of diplomatic pressure have been exerted and now military threats are being made. The result: even more anti-American hatred, which plays straight into the hand of the hard-line Khartoum regime.
Why are the results of American policy in Sudan so meager? Two reasons stand out above others: oil and Asia.
Sudan is flush with a booming supply of crude, and it has turned from West to East for trade partners: to China, India, Malaysia and the Arab world. That means American economic leverage doesn't work as it once did. Consider how little effect the sanctions have had on Sudan's economy — it's one of the fastest growing in the world, even as Darfur burns.
"We learned that we don't need the Americans anymore," said Lam Akol, Sudan's foreign minister. "We found other avenues."
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Crocker said, there were few other avenues. In those cold war days, he said, sustained, patient, high-level American involvement helped end wars from Angola to Mozambique and helped to bring South Africa's brutal apartheid system to its knees.
In the 1990s, with the Soviet Union gone, aid to Africa dipped; Americans were turning inward, and foreign policy focused far more on building trade relations with dynamic new partners, especially in Asia and Eastern Europe.
But then came 9-11.
"And suddenly poor, nasty, weak places mattered," said Steve Morrison, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In an effort to reduce the conditions in which terrorism is thought to thrive, American foreign aid to Africa surged, with much of the money going to health programs (especially AIDS prevention), and peacekeeping. Private Western efforts to alleviate suffering also increased. Just ask Bill Gates. Or Bill Clinton.
TODAY, in Congo, the United States spends more than $200 million supporting a United Nations peacekeeping mission that has barely kept that unruly, violent, continent-sized country intact.
But Ted Dagne, a specialist in African affairs for the Congressional Research Service, said that such concern about security in Africa "has not led to expansion of relations in other areas and did not increase American influence in Africa."
One reason, he argued, was that American policy these days does not necessarily mean sustained, patient, high-level attention. Instead, it emphasizes the role that Africans themselves can play (supported by American money and advice, of course). More and more, Africans are mediating their own conflicts, from the border disputes between Ethiopia and Eritrea to the civil wars in Burundi and Sudan.
Another reason is Iraq. The ceaselessness of Baghdad's bloodshed has greatly undermined the United States' credibility, fanned anti-American feelings in Muslim regions like the Horn of Africa, and drained resources that might otherwise have been available to address other problems.
"There is significant blowback coming from our catastrophic decisions in Iraq that is affecting our ability to do anything about Sudan or Somalia," Mr. Morrison said.
Even so, many Africa experts say there are countries — Kenya is one — where the American message still matters. There, the United States is generally credited, along with other Western countries, with exerting crucial diplomatic leverage that helped Kenya make the peaceful transition in 2002 from a one-party state to a genuine multiparty democracy.
"America still has a lot of influence," said S. O. Mageto, a former Kenyan ambassador to Washington. "But not like it used to."
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/world/africa/24cnd-somalia.html> December 24, 2006 Ethiopian Warplanes Attack Somalia By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA, Dec. 24 — Ethiopian warplanes attacked Somalia today, destroying a recruiting center for Islamist fighters and solidifying fears that a dreaded regional war has now begun.
According to witnesses, the warplanes bombarded several towns while Ethiopian tanks pushed aggressively into territory that had been controlled by Somalia's Islamist forces. That ignited fighting up and down the Somali coast, with Ethiopian troops locked in an escalating battle against Somalia's powerful Islamist movement.
"The Ethiopians are blowing things up all over the place," said Mohammed Hussein Galgal, an Islamist commander in Beledweyne, near the Ethiopian border. "Civilians have been killed, people are fleeing. But don't worry, we won't be defeated."
Ethiopian officials said today that they had run out of patience with the Islamist leaders, who have declared war on Ethiopia and vowed to turn Somalia into a recruiting ground for anti-Ethiopian fighters.
"What did you expect us to do?" said Zemedkun Tekle, a spokesman for Ethiopia's information ministry. "Wait for them to attack our cities?" Mr. Zemedkun said his country had initiated "counter-attack measures in the interests of protecting our sovereignty and stability."
Somalia has two rival governments — the weak, internationally recognized transitional government, marooned in the inland city of Baidoa, and the Islamist forces, a popular grassroots movement that controls much of the country, including the battle-scared seaside capital, Mogadishu.
Since the Islamists came to power in June, Ethiopia has been increasingly involved in internal Somali politics, trying to protect the transitional government from advances by the Islamist forces.
Heavy fighting erupted last week between the two sides, and witnesses said the teenage soldiers of the Islamists were no match for the more professional (and adult) forces of Ethiopia and the transitional government.
Ethiopia has the most powerful military in the region, trained by American advisors and funded by American aid. American officials have acknowledged that they tacitly supported Ethiopia's decision to send troops to Somalia because they felt it was the best way to check the growing power of the Islamists, whom American officials have accused of sheltering Al Qaeda terrorists. Until today, Ethiopian officials denied they had combat forces in Somalia, saying instead that their presence was limited to a few hundred military advisors.
That changed today when witnesses in several towns in Somalia reported seeing Ethiopian fighter planes shoot across the sky.
Residents of Beledweyne, which is controlled by the Islamists, said Ethiopian bombers blew up an Islamist recruitment center, killing several civilians, and dropped bombs on Islamists troops hiding in the hills.
Though western diplomats had been urging Ethiopia to use restraint, Ethiopia's attacks today did not come as a surprise. The question now seems to be if Ethiopia will go into Mogadishu and try to finish off the Islamist military, which many fear could spur a long and ugly insurgency, or simply deal them enough of a blow to force them back to the negotiating table with the transitional government. Ethiopia's prime minister recently told American officials that he could wipe out the Islamists " in one to two weeks."
What complicates the issue is the presence of other foreign troops inside Somalia and the rising potential for Somalia's neighbors to be dragged in. United Nations officials estimate that there are several thousand soldiers from Eritrea, Ethiopia's arch-enemy, fighting for the Islamists, along with a growing number of Muslim mercenaries from Yemen, Egypt, Syria and Libya who want to turn Somalia into the third front of jihad, after Iraq and Afghanistan. On Friday, residents of Mogadishu said they saw boatloads of armed men landing on the city's beaches.
Somalia and Ethiopia have had bad blood between them for years. Ethiopia has a long and storied Christian identity, while Somalia is almost purely Muslim. The two countries fought a costly war in 1977 and 1978, when Somali forces tried to reclaim a border area only to be routed by Ethiopian troops. Since then, Ethiopia has, on several occasions, teamed up with various clans in Somalia's interclan wars. Those wars led to the collapse of the central government in 1991, followed by 15 years of anarchy.
Cf.
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, "U.S. Military Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2001-2003": <http://www.prairienet.org/acas/military/miloverview.html>.
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, "U.S. Military Programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2005-2007": <http://www.prairienet.org/acas/military/military06.html>.
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>