July
8, 2003, 8:45 a.m. The
Liberian Opportunity
Should we or shouldn’t we?
"Satan
step down! Baboon step down! We support George Bush!"
— Liberian protesters calling for the overthrow of Charles Taylor
iberia is a failed West African state in the grip of political violence,
which is not usually the kind of place the news media pay much attention
to. Yet, with President Bush at the start of a weeklong trip to Africa,
the story has traction. The president called for the ouster of Liberian
strongman Charles Taylor, who, with the rebels at the gates, has graciously
consented to go into exile in Nigeria and thereby avoid the spilling of
more blood, especially his own. Meanwhile the U.N., numerous states in
the region, and the Liberian people, are calling for U.S. military intervention.
The president has said he would consider it, and an assessment team has
landed to check out the situation. Given U.S. military commitments elsewhere
in the world, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, deploying more troops
in another part of the world might seem to be stretching our resources.
Furthermore, if the purpose is purely humanitarian, one could argue that
this is a misplaced priority. However, the most important reason to consider
intervening in Liberia is not humanitarian, but strategic.
Liberia is in the
center of what Naval War College Professor Thomas Barnett calls the "Non-Integrating
Gap," the area of the world stretching from the southwest Pacific
to parts of Latin America that has been most resistant to the effects
of globalization. This Gap is the source of most of the emerging threats
to United States, and is an important framing concept for future strategic
planning. Liberia is typical of states in the Gap. It was the first of
several West African states to fall victim to sectarian violence in the
post-Cold War period. Civil war broke out between Taylor and former leader
Samuel K. Doe in 1989, and Taylor won power by election in 1997 after
regional intervention. Taylor then thanked his neighbors by destabilizing
Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire. His human-rights record was abysmal.
His relations with Washington were adversarial. He rivaled Zimbabwe's
execrable Robert Mugabe for the title "Africa's Saddam."
Liberia has direct
and indirect links to the war on terrorism. Taylor was an active participant
in the illegal diamond trade in the region that has contributed not only
to violence in that part of the world (over control of the mines, particularly
in Sierra
Leone) but also helped finance the international terrorist networks,
including, if not especially, al Qaeda. Taylor, like many of the current
and former West African insurgents, was a protégé of Muammar
Khadafi, and trained in his terrorist camps before launching his bid for
power. So too did many operatives later tied to al Qaeda and other Islamic
terror groups. Not surprisingly, Libya was mentioned as a possible refuge
for the exiled Taylor, and Khadafi has denounced the idea of an American
deployment to Liberia. (Ironically, one of the first to call for U.S.
intervention was Taylor himself, when he realized that he was losing his
grip on the country and figured a "stability operation" would
work in his favor.) The terror networks have a strong presence throughout
the region, the monitoring of which is left mostly up to France. That
is hardly an acceptable part of our risk calculus.
The special relationship
with the United States — the Liberian street is claiming that the
U.S. is their big brother and shirking its responsibilities by not intervening
— is not necessarily a reason for intervening, but it is a facilitating
factor. The fact that the Liberian people want us to step in is a welcome
change from the usual forced-entry scenario. The main rebel group, Liberians
United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) has pledged to lay down
its arms if Taylor leaves, preferably to answer his pending U.N. war-crimes
indictment. There is sufficient regional manpower for a peacekeeping force
— eleven countries have pledged to send several thousand peacekeeping
forces under the Nigerian-led Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS). This is another reason that Liberians would like to see a U.S.
presence, given Nigeria's misuse of the ECOWAS peacekeeping force, ECOMOG,
which intervened in Liberia over a decade ago. They see the U.S. as an
honest broker. ECOWAS, for its part, also desires the United States to
take a leading role. And while it is true that the United States cannot
intervene in every humanitarian emergency, it does not logically follow
that the United States should not render assistance where it can and where
other interests are involved. Bringing stability and assisting in nation
building in Liberia may not by themselves be sufficient grounds for intervention,
but neither are they arguments against it.
A stable, democratic,
U.S.-leaning Liberia could serve as an important forward base to defend
U.S. interests and promote regional stability. Liberia would be the Western
counterpart of the expanding U.S. base in Djibouti, established to block
terrorist escape routes from the Middle East into East Africa. Liberia
is also located along the shipping lanes for energy resources coming from
Nigeria (already a major oil supplier to the U.S.), and potential untapped
future energy supplies from Sao Tome and Principe. A permanent presence
in a friendly West African country would thus serve two important long-term
strategic interests: facilitating the shift of U.S. imported oil away
from the Middle East and towards more defendable sources closer to home;
and redeploying troops from the Cold War frontiers of Central Europe and
Northeast Asia to areas where they can be more rapidly brought to bear
on future security threats.
Military intervention
would have to be complemented with a political-reform effort, and probably
some form of development aid. The nation-building effort would not be
as expensive as that in Iraq, but would have to be undertaken as a long-term
project. Of course there are risks involved in any such experiment —
success is never guaranteed. But the future security environment will
look radically different from that to which we have been accustomed, and
we should start to get used to it. Liberia should be viewed not as a charity
case but an opportunity.
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iberia is a failed West African state in the grip of political violence,
which is not usually the kind of place the news media pay much attention
to. Yet, with President Bush at the start of a weeklong trip to Africa,
the story has traction. The president called for the ouster of Liberian
strongman Charles Taylor, who, with the rebels at the gates, has graciously
consented to go into exile in Nigeria and thereby avoid the spilling of
more blood, especially his own. Meanwhile the U.N., numerous states in
the region, and the Liberian people, are calling for U.S. military intervention.
The president has said he would consider it, and an assessment team has
landed to check out the situation. Given U.S. military commitments elsewhere
in the world, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, deploying more troops
in another part of the world might seem to be stretching our resources.
Furthermore, if the purpose is purely humanitarian, one could argue that
this is a misplaced priority. However, the most important reason to consider
intervening in Liberia is not humanitarian, but strategic. 
