Looking Beyond Spring: An African Perspective on the Arab Revolt in World Order

By Siba Grovogui, Johns Hopkins University

There is a great deal of misunderstanding today about the African Union’s decision not to endorse the military intervention in Libya undertaken by France, Great Britain, and the United States in conjunction with several Arab States. Speculations abound as to whether the uniform decision coming out of Africa indicates that the African Union is out of step with the spirit of freedom sweeping across North Africa and the Arab World; or whether the absence of Africa in the battlefield of Libya merely suggests military ineptitude and political bankruptcy. Underlying the African objection to military intervention is a longstanding tension between international organizations that represent Africa, on one hand, and self-identified representatives of the West, on the other.  It is not accurate to say that the African Union has been indifferent to the conflict in Libya. The AU opted for mediation and negotiated a constitutional compact, with the aim of fostering a different kind of politics. The uniform refusal of the AU to endorse Western intervention has two main explanations. The first is the practice of consensus in decision-making which has a long history within Africa. The other is profound unease on the continent about the form and foundation of the intervention itself. In this regard, I suggest that there is continent-wide skepticism about Western leadership in the eras of global governance, the rule of (international) law, the status of international morality, and the future of global democracy.  This development is the result of continental experiences of the modes of enactment and execution of interventions in Africa. The African position arises therefore from doubt that the coalition of Western powers leading the military effort in Libya today can be trusted not to abuse legitimate anti-Gaddafi sentiments; not to instrumentalize international law and morality; and not to subvert UN procedures and the mechanisms of global governance in order to advance hegemonic agendas and parochial ‘strategic’ interests.

The uses and abuses of international law and morality in the African context are not new. Nor are disagreements between Africans and those who would intervene in Africa. In this sense, African opposition to Western intervention in Libya today echoes generations of African anti-colonialists who opposed Western interventions in Vietnam, Madagascar, Kenya, Algeria, and Rhodesia. But the current mood is not merely reflexive anti-imperialism. It is the result of sentiments developed over time through different phases of decolonization in Africa: from the 1950s uprisings in Kenya, or Mau Mau revolt, against British rule to the Algeria and Madagascar uprisings and war of independence against French rule; to the wave of 1960s so-called transfer of power; to the 1970s wars of independence in the former Portuguese colonies and against white minority rule in Rhodesia and South West Africa; and finally to the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. In short, the mood at the African Union is not merely reflexive anti-imperialism. It is indicative of long simmering concerns about the status and future of global governance and international morality.

The 1960s Congo Crisis and the three-decade long legal dispute over the status of South West Africa (now Namibia) best captured the extent of the disagreements between African states and ‘the West’, or more accurately, the group of self-appointed representatives of Western states. These political and legal battles fostered the belief among many Africans that Western interventions, whether military or political, were often contrary to principles of conflict resolution enunciated in the Atlantic Charter, the United Nations Charter, and other international conventions, including the 1955 Bandung Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement. In Africa today, it is feared that the 2011 uprising in North Africa and the Middle East may once again provide ‘the West’ (or a group of its self-appointed representatives) with an opportunity to mobilize the mechanisms and procedures of the United Nations in order to foment an unnecessary military intervention to punish an old foe (Gaddafi) rather than promote national reconciliation and political inclusion in Libya through mediation and diplomacy.

By way of explanation, I do not wish to speak for a uniformly defined ‘Africa’ or for all African actors and polities. Nor do I wish to conflate the authoritative decisions made by Western leaders with the sentiments and traditions of all constituencies in Europe and North America.  I only reflect on a widely held sentiment currently expressed in Africa that specific actions by Western powers regarding Libya paradoxically undermine the spirit and practice of participative global governance. They also subvert what should have been a moment of transformation of politics at the local, national, and global levels. In short, this is a story of how what I call the global democratic deficit,has widened precisely at the moment when the national democratic deficit has erupted into violent conflict. The paradox is that humanitarian concerns once again  serve as the pretext for widening the global democratic deficit and re-inscribing the terms of past imperial relations under new guises.

I.  Common and Uncommon Grounds

‘Africa’ gave sense and meaning to national freedom, self-determination, and international legality during anti-colonialism and later the postwar struggle for decolonization. The success of that struggle occurred in phases over the course of four decades. Predictably, the imaginary of freedom drew on a wide range of ideas including derivatives of Western ideologies extending from liberalism to Marxism; political practices flowing from international and transnational support; ethical principles including political pluralism and international coexistence, and the like. The resulting postulates entered into the political habits, discourses, and symbolic repertoires of generations of African elites. Already in 1960, African entities endorsed Khrushchev’s UN General Assembly resolution 1415, establishing self-determination as an essential principle of international relations. Further, African states provided much of the logistics and support to freedom movements from Algeria to South Africa via the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Guinea Bissau and Mozambique. The courses of decolonization for Namibia (formerly South West Africa) and the end of Apartheid in South Africa can also be attributed mostly to African states.

The ongoing Arab revolution is therefore not removed from the thrust of established African concerns and aspirations throughout the modern era. In a way, the African struggle for freedom was inspired and shaped by longer historical trends, beginning with the slave revolts of the New Worlds; the revolutions of the US, France, and Haiti; 19^th-century peasants’ and workers’ revolts in the Western world; the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution; 20^th century women’s liberation movements; the early Arab revolts from 1916-19 to 1936-39 to the 1980s and 1990s; the struggle for decolonization and the anticipation of self-determination before and after World War II; the Suez Crisis and the rise of Third World nationalism; the 1980s anti-communist revolution leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall; and the ongoing Arab Spring.

Each of these events challenged juridico-political regimes, and their moral and economic bases, for their corrupting influence on politics. Therefore it is not surprising today that the Arab Spring demonstrators have focused on political corruption and economic malaise.

Revolutions, however, contain counter-moments. Today, from the standpoint of the protesters, the desired ends of the upheaval are not in doubt.  Yet, while Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali quickly folded their tents and left the stage, they were replaced by officials whose allegiances remain unclear. The worse case scenarios unfolded in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria – in that order – where governments turned old security schemes into deadly machines against protesters.

But the ongoing strength of the protests shows that the anticipation of freedom is not an exclusive defining feature of the West.[1] In North Africa today, the words khalas and Kefayah have emerged as  terms indicating both dissatisfaction with extant autocratic governments and anticipation of a new democratic order in their place. Subsequent processes have focused on the departure of presiding heads of state and their ruling parties. In our highly mediatized world, the dramas of disavowal and removal of individual rulers and the subsequent disbanding of their instruments of power have captivated the globe  in a manner not witnessed since the 1989 downfall of communist regimes in the Soviet Bloc. As in 1989, there is near-universal relief that these autocratic, authoritarian, and dictatorial forms of government are on their way to extinction and that the leaders of these regimes are ceding power. There is also near-universal empathy and spiritual communion with the young activists whose defiance and technological talents are displayed in this great adventure.

Three trends have marred this initial enthusiasm. The first, evident in Tunisia and Egypt, is that the transfer of power has not resulted in the transformation of politics consistent with the desire expressed in the streets of Tahrir Square and elsewhere for popular democratic sovereignty. Such a turn would require the transformation of the structures of society, politics, and the economy, and the subsequent introduction of new institutions of governance consistent with democracy and social justice – not necessarily the sort of punitive justice about to be meted out against former rulers and a few of their cronies. The second distressing trend is the refusal of the leaders of Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, and Syria to heed the call for change and therefore to leave public office. The result of this refusal to cede power has led to bloodshed – and in the case of Libya might lead to civil war. The third trend – the one that most concerns me — is the apparent instrumentalization of the Arab Spring by outside powers.

I focus here on the external ideological battle already underway to control the central message and historical import of the Arab Spring. This parallel battle is taking place not only on the public squares where young people are challenging old regimes, but also in chanceries, newsrooms, and academic institutions in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. It is in these spaces that the perceptions of the Arab Spring are fashioned for the purposes of policy regarding the modes of intervention, the use and targets of violence, and the degree and extent of force to be deployed. However, the actors in this larger drama do not have equal capacities, interests, or values, although they may all proclaim to advance the same ideals of freedom, justice, and peace. The outcome of these contests for power will affect the future of international law and forms of sovereignty, democratic governance, and justice to a greater degree than anything to be expected from the streets of North Africa and the Middle East alone.

There are outside participants in the drama of the Arab Spring whose long involvements in the region raises interesting questions about their current roles. Indeed, one of the most striking parallels in the struggles for freedom in the Middle East is the degree to which Western powers have been involved in the region throughout the modern era. Throughout this long involvement, these powers alternated between peace and hostility with different political entities of the region, selectively supporting some leaders and opposing others.  The degree to which the West was willing to use violence to suppress dissent or support causes was founded upon a blend of political pragmatism, theological animus (veering from open to subtle forms of Islamophobia), and commercial and security interests. For instance, before formal Western trusteeship and colonialism, European powers and American colonies entered into formal and informal agreements with North African political entities.. The Barbary Treaties, which the US signed with political entities on the Coast of Barbary, now North Africa, are illustrative in this regard.  Yet, as  Western powers became more and more dominant, they were no longer satisfied by the terms of treaties already favorable to them. and frequently recanted promises made.  One of many examples was the confrontation over the Gulf of Sidra between the Reagan Administration and the regime of Muhammar Kaddafi (or Gaddafi).

The second feature of the relationship between the West and North Africa flows directly from theological animus, still on display today in regard to Turkey’s admission to the European Union. This animus is leftover from the Crusades whose outcomes still remain etched in the memories of vast constituencies in Europe and the West. To these constituencies, including Christian fundamentalists, the 1492 defeat of Moors in Spain continues to be narrated as the beginning of the coming restoration of the former Christian dominion.  Later, during the Arab revolt of 1916-1918,against Ottoman rule, a coalition of Western states instrumentalized international morality through the mandate system to advance parochial commercial and security interests in the region. The mandate system both affirmed ongoing intra-Western accords (including but not limited to Sykes-Picot) and established the context for additional ones.  This animus accounts for the negative connotations imputed to things Arab, which now stand for non-normative behavior. This animus is of course the stuff of Orientalism.

The West as International Community

The reference to the past is intended to highlight the dimensions of the modern spatialization of politics under Western strategic thinking. This is to say that Western interventions have varied in space according to time (or the temporally permissible morality), relations of power, and the object of intervention: trade, raw material, and/or other strategic goals. In these regards, the first worrying sign was the fact that the West once again positioned itself as the essential core of the international community just as it had done during the ascension of Europe (later The West) to global hegemony. While it has undergone transitions and moments of reinvention, the underlying imaginary of international community and its will have been built around artificially fixed identities and politically potent interests. Accordingly, the identity of the West, and therefore the international community, flows from a theology of predestination, formally enunciated as the Monroe doctrine in the US or the Mission Civilizatrice in France. The primary requirement for enacting this identity and theology was that other regions of the world had to surrender their sovereignty to the West under treaties and practices of capitulation, protectorates, mandates, and formal colonial rule. The accompanying institutions proceeded from favorable military and economic relations with others. They were followed by the constitution of local networks whose endorsement of the colonial project gave it legitimacy as consent. In this manner, consent and legitimacy coexisted with subordination and asymmetric power. Today, networks of states and civil organizations have given legitimacy to the reality of the power of the West to legislate, execute, and adjudicate the will of an international community all at once. Indeed, it seems even some intellectuals and journalists today implicitly designate the West as ‘International Community’ and oppose it to ‘Africa.’ Although it often seems like a simple linguistic slippage, this conflation of the West with the International ascribes universal properties and therefore higher moral qualities and faculties to the West and, by contradistinction, the opposite to Africans. All that proceeds from this contrast is fair then, no matter the transgression or violence.

Further, the presumed exclusive universality of Western faculties, science, technology, and culture often masks an accompanying reality. This is the necessary violence that occurs when the West positions itself as necessary provider of value and adjudicator of all relevant interests. This is accomplished of course through a combination of military, economic, and cultural power but the relevant technologies and symbols reside in the seemingly neutral language of diplomacy and mediation. Even so, the modes of significations and their regimes of moral solicitation often betray the centrality of the technologies of power and the violence of the language of politics behind them.

The realities described above need no translation in Africa. There, it is understood that the figurations and configurations of diplomatic significations as well as their legitimacy hinge on an acceptance of the interests of the West by others. This is to say the contours of every encounter and dispute must necessarily be determined by the terms, significations, and values assigned to them by the West. It was therefore predictable that a Western coalition would insert itself in the Arab Spring as its necessary conscience and adjudicator of interests, values, and norms. On its face, it is possible to assign a neutral value to this interference. However, the three leading members of the coalition against the Gaddafi regime have a long history of entanglement with Libya. These include Libyan involvement in the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, the explosion of the French-owned UTA flight 772 over the Saharan desert, also attributed to Gaddafi, and the Reagan Administration’s bombing of Libya  to claim the right of  access in  the Gulf of Sidra.

This history of entanglement should be obvious, but it needs to be restated, especially when  “neutral” observers cite the relations between the Gaddafi regime and several African states as reason for doubting African neutrality.  Thus, the NATO coalition and its supporters in the media stress the neutrality of the West in order to shore up the legitimacy of their operations, while pointing to the multiple ways in which African states are compromised. This means that in the ideological justifications of Western intervention there is also a unidirectional apportionment of blame. The condition of possibility of this dualism is a reality of power that is apparent to even human rights organizations and humanitarian networks that are dependent symbolically and materially on Western power, money, and technology. Significantly, the erasure of potential Western conflict of interest is necessary to domestic support, particularly from liberal and cosmopolitan constituencies that have historically been sensitive to human suffering everywhere.

Again, the reference to the past is not intended a priori to impugn Western motives. It serves as caution to those who would align reason and rationality on the side of the West and passion and affect on the side of Africans in order to validate one position against another. African leaders are no less credible as mediators because of past ties or associations of some member states of the African Union with the regime of Gaddafi. Nor did Western intervention become ‘indispensable’ because morally blemished Africans remained inactive. As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, for instance, South Africa endorsed Resolution 1973, charting a course  for resolving the conflict. That resolution also stated that the actions of the Libyan government had been condemned by the League of Arab States, the African Union, and the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.  A large number of African states, therefore, protested Gaddafi’s use of force, and the majority did not object to the establishment of the no-fly zone or the idea of an immediate cease-fire.

It has since become evident that Africans on the whole have been skeptical of not only the scale and nature of Western intervention but also to the justifications offered by the coalition. The first justification was that the situation in Libya at the time of intervention presented a unique threat to the civilian populations. Specifically, media commentators argued that Gaddafi could not be trusted to deploy tanks around cities and towns without totally obliterating them.  Yet, only a few years ago, the Western media treated their African listeners to news of Gaddafi’s pragmatism for giving up the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Was Gaddafi capable of restraint or not?  A corollary implication was that Gaddafi’s regime was less trustworthy than those of Yemen and Bahrain (and later, Syria). But it is clear that state violence in Yemen and Bahrain more directly transgress international humanitarian conventions that prohibit targeting people because of their ethnicity (rival tribes in Yemen) or religion (Shi’i Muslims in Bahrain).

The other justification for intervention was that Gaddafi attacked unarmed civilians.  In the initial moments of the revolt, a peaceful demonstration was indeed met by certifiably criminal state power. However, the revolt in Libya did not remain nonviolent to anywhere near the same degree as events elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East. In Libya, unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, the so-called democratic movement quickly transformed itself into an armed insurgency. One notable difference was the nearly universal encouragement that the armed rebellion received from the West. Indeed, this insurgency was encouraged by the very Western powers that encouraged democratic movements elsewhere to remain non-violent and not to demand too much, too soon.

II.  Democratic and Non-Democratic Cultures

The West may be in many regards a beacon of democracy, but one is compelled to note that the West has not encouraged the growth of democratic cultures outside the domestic provinces of states. In fact, generations of policymakers in the West have regarded the call for global democracy as an implicit attack on Western interests. Paradoxically, postcolonial entities have pushed for democratization and transparency in international organizations, despite active resistance by Western powers. It is ironic that, however constitutionally democratic at home, Western states have shown a proclivity to subvert democratic processes and the rule of law in other regions of the world. It also the case that Western states, after creating the UN at the end of World War II, have consistently sought to suppress formal democracy in global international organization and international law.  The paradox is that in some instances so-called illiberal regimes have been the advocates of global democracy, pluralism, and tolerance – and even of reform of global institutions to meet these goals.

Today’s democratic deficit in global politics may be located on two levels, one national and the other international. The domestic democratic deficit is what has prompted street uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. The process of rectifying this domestic deficit in Libya is also undermined by the convergent actions of the Western coalition and the Transitional National Council, or TNC (the emerging authority in rebel-held areas). Not only is the Western coalition engaged in an active war against Gaddafi on behalf of the rebels, but the coalition has also fomented and condoned intransigence on the part of the rebels against a negotiated settlement. One idea, repeated reflexively by diplomats and reporters, is that negotiation under any circumstance means surrender to Gaddafi. Consequently, the TNC has thus far rebuffed all offers by the African Union to find a political settlement to the Libyan crisis. And offers to find a settlement have, unfortunately, been interpreted as efforts to preserve the Gaddafi regime.

The attitude of the West and the TNC toward negotiated settlement contradicts decades-long US and European injunctions  to African observers.  The Congolese, for example, may recall that prior to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the US and its European allies had insisted that the elected Prime Minister negotiate with the secessionist Moise Tshombe in contravention of all applicable norms of self-determination and national sovereignty. Mozambicans and Angolans, too, might recall that, while financing the murderous armed bands of UNITA and FRELIMO, the US insisted that the legitimate governments of these countries accommodate these insurgent militia groups. Above all, nationalists in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya before them would definitely recall official lectures from Western chanceries on the need to forgive, reconcile, and negotiate new political compacts as a means to lasting peace. Western cynics might argue today these actions were all constitutive of geopolitics at the time and the US and its Western allies were merely protecting the interests of local allies.

On the other hand, who can deny the utility and legitimacy of the reflexes to forgive, reconcile, and negotiate new political compacts – and perhaps develop new kinds of politics at the end of the revolution. Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, is one African negotiator currently being lampooned in Western media as ineffectual because Western allies in the so-called resistance will not budge from their pre-conditions to negotiate.  Ironically, he is one of the historic heirs to generations of South Africans to whom the West sent liberal constitutionalists for guidance in the art and wisdom of toleration, the rule of law, and the necessary need to cultivate cultures of forgiveness and coexistence. Paradoxically, disciplinary practices and ideological condescension toward Africans (even among some Africans!) are such that few can comprehend the assault on the senses and faculties that emanate from Western injunctions today.

The global democratic deficit resides in the structures and processes of international organizations as well as the institutions and traditions of self-interested entities bent on preserving their own power. To confront this power, as Gaddafi found out when he challenged Ronald Reagan, is to meet a fate not unlike Gaddafi’s answers to those who rebelled against him. Like the domestic democratic deficit, the global democratic deficit is both behavioral and structural / institutional. The connection between the non-democratic behavior of global hegemonic powers and the possibility of democratic politics at the domestic level is often direct. Take for instance the role of the West in the political culture currently brewing in the Libyan opposition. Since endorsing the TNC as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people, the Western coalition backing it has remained silent as the organization grows intolerant by the day not only toward Gaddafi, his family, and allies but also toward Sub-Saharan African migrants accused of sympathy with the regime. And, as stated previously, the TNC has not only excluded negotiation with Gaddafi or his allies; it has snubbed all efforts by the African Union to mediate a political settlement. To either the West or the TNC, there could be only solution: total and unconditional surrender of political opponents.

Africans are accustomed to a certain instrumentalization of reform by Western powers. One recalls, for instance, the policy of Constructive Engagement with Apartheid South Africa. This official US policy was built on the assumption that effective political settlement in South Africa resided in the capacity of mediators (honest brokers?) like the US to engage all parties – even, in this case, a regime that was ideologically and politically bent on the total subordination of its local black population and the destruction of neighboring states. Africans are also accustomed to another certainty in Western interventions: that groups critical of the West, from the former Marxist regimes of Angola and Mozambique to the African National Congress of South Africa, are pressured by Western powers to accommodate Western-friendly states, corporations, and political organizations as a requirement for lasting peace.  But in contrast, Western-friendly entities need not accommodate unsympathetic opposing figures or entities. In other words, friends of the West need not bother with democratic niceties as the price for peace. Enemies or adversaries do or they are eliminated from the scene.

In the case of Libya one may even wonder why the TNC would want to negotiate, compromise, or reconcile with allies of Gaddafi when the largest armies in the world are committed to eliminating these obstacles to their path to power. President Ahmadou Toumani Touré of Mali, an engaged democrat whose own behavior in power contrasts dramatically with that of Gaddafi, gave an indication of his own sentiment about the situation in an interview granted to Radio France Internationale. Asked by the reporter why he would not join the West (again dubbed during the interview as the International Community), Touré gave the following answer, which I paraphrase: ‘We are asked to promote democracy in Libya against a man who holds power at the barrel of the gun and you want me to unseat him at the barrel of the gun and seat another group in his place. If Gaddafi’s unwillingness to negotiate and compromise is the problem today why is the other side relying on forced removal?’[2] Indeed, the current intransigence of the West and the TNC reveal a culture of intolerance that unsettles Africans of all political persuasions – and not just dictators who are destined to the dustbin of history.

The idea that one can be excluded from the political compact simply because of one’s location or association within an undemocratic regime is a nightmarish scenario to generations of activists who have fought for human rights, constitutionalism, and democratic inclusion as well as humanitarians who have tended to the social calamities caused by endless civil wars.  To those who are undeterred by the idea that Africans may actually formulate coherent views of international morality, including an aversion to war, consider these facts. In 2003, even after dispatching Colin Powell to Africa to seek support for the war in Iraq, the US failed to enlist a single African leader in its efforts.  This refusal came on the heels of great sympathy for the US following the 1998 US Embassy Bombings in East Africa and the attacks perpetrated against the US on 9/11/2001. Further, for nearly four years, the US failed to find a single state among fifty-three on the continent to host AFRICOM (the US military’s Africa Command) even though all African states endorsed the aims of US anti-terrorism programs. As of today, none of the countries enlisted in the US-initiated Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership, all of them poor and dependent on US aid, has endorsed military intervention in Libya.

III.  Echoes of the Time Before ‘Tahrir Square’

Regardless of ideology and political preference of African elites and populations, their understandings of postcoloniality (used here positively as an expected postcolonial future) include democracy and justice both at home and in the international order. The related struggle, encapsulated in the idiom of self-determination, has a long ancestry, as evidenced by African positions during the crisis of decolonization in what was then the Republic of Congo Leopoldville in 1960s. Then, as now, a number of UN Security Council resolutions (143; 145; 146; and 157) had authorized peacekeeping activities in the former Belgian colony.  The initial resolution spoke of stabilizing a chaotic political situation on behalf of the people of Congo. It soon appeared to the governments of Egypt, Ghana, and Guinea that the bland and neutral language of UN resolutions masked other motivations: to protect client elites and to institute a particular social and economic order deemed necessary by those small elites and external powers. On the ground, Western powers quickly moved from the initial aim of the mission (ensuring stability and self-determination) to support of the leadership of an unelected clientele. In reaction, Egypt, Ghana, and Guinea ordered their troops to disobey UN orders and to support the elected prime minister and head of government, Patrice Lumumba. The African states denounced Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the UN, and the Eisenhower Administration, for subverting UN procedures and mandates in an open attempt to subordinate the postcolonial desire for self-determination to Cold War contentions.[3]

It is hard to remember any year since the end of formal colonial rule in Africa when open conflict between the majority of its states and the West over some dimensions of global governance did not occur. This struggle for respect for procedures, transparency and open access has been punctuated by memories of trusteeship in South West (or Namibia); decolonization in Algeria and later the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Guinea Bissau, and Mozambique; the status of white minority rule in Southern Africa; and Apartheid.[4] The accompanying antagonisms continued through the US and British withdrawals from UNESCO, as well as major UN debates at the UN General Assembly over disarmament, Palestine, Israel, the Law of the Sea, and other matters of trade and intellectual property.

There are parallels between those contestations and today’s disagreement between the African Union and the West over Libya.  Granted, Gaddafi is not Lumumba or Mandela. This is not the point. The point is whether Western powers are at this moment in history constitutively disposed toward global democracy and, subsequently, whether they can be trusted to adhere to the formal procedures and norms of international organizations; to comply with their own self-ascribed mandate as stipulated by their own resolutions; and to be accountable to others for their own transgressions. To the extent that my memory serves me well, I do not recall any Western actions in Africa that have been subjected to the established rules of democratic consultation, political transparency, or even accountability. Nor, it seems, can any of the African leaders today, who did not want to endorse another open-ended mandate either against a state whose behavior they cannot control or from a Western military organization that has not generally been accustomed to external examination.

Nothing from the ground war and the politics of intervention in Libya today ensures that the unfolding of events will produce different outcome than they did in the Congo and elsewhere in Africa. Once again, intervention began with admirable pretenses based on an otherwise unimpeachable resolution. To wit, the mandates of this spring’s UN Resolution 1973 are: 1) the ‘immediate establishment of a cease-fire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians’; 2) ‘the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people,’ aided by a Special Envoy to Libya and the Peace and Security Council of the African Union; 3) compliance by ‘Libyan authorities comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, human rights and refugee law’; 4)  the protection of ‘civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory,’; and 5) the recognition of the primary responsibility of ‘the League of Arab States  in matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security in the region.’ These measures were to be complimented with the enforcement of a no-fly zone and an arms embargo.

These resolutions have several important features from the standpoint of the African Union. The most important is that the AU’s attempt to intervene in favor of a peaceful resolution so infuriated Western powers that they excluded it altogether from the subsequent processes of the resolution of the conflict. To be sure, the UN resolution recognizes that the actions of the Libyan government had been condemned by the League of Arab States, the African Union, and the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. But its authors trampled upon international conventions by determining that all concerns be directed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States in recognition of the ‘the important role of the League of Arab States in matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security in the region.’ In other words, the Western coalition had the power to decree the law and prescribe its interpretation, but also could negate the efforts of those working for a ceasefire and peaceful resolution. From the perspective of the Western coalition, the sin of African states was one of gullibility – they believed that the first three mandates of the resolution actually mattered. Africans, in other words, could not understand that the task at hand was to remove Gaddafi and that resolutions merely make references to mediation to appease equally gullible domestic constituencies and the media. What is even more telling is that the Western coalition, all of them former colonial powers, decided unilaterally and as a matter of sovereign right that Libya was an Arab, not an African, state and, hence, the African Union had no authority over the North African region. These actions were not merely contemptuous of Africa and Africans. (Africans are used to that.) From an institutional perspective, the scale and speed with which the West dispensed with decades-old UN procedures of integrating regional organizations into dispute resolutions was extraordinary.

Conclusion

I know few people who would argue that the situation in Libya was tenable or that it should have been allowed to persist. I also know few individuals who would pretend that an operation such as the one currently undertaken by the West could be carried out without mistakes or blemish. Yet, these are not arguments against global democracy and the reasonableness that is required to interpret international law, particularly UN Resolutions.  My concern stems from the fact that, in politics as in law, it is axiomatic that states are unequal in their endowments and capacities. The dissenting opinion of Judge Kotaro Tanaka of Japan in the South West Africa case of the International Court of Justice might be helpful here. In contemplating the fate of international customary law in the postcolonial world, Judge Tanaka took inspiration from the New Haven School when he opined that “different treatment is permitted only when it can be justified by the criterion of justice.” According to him, “one may replace justice by the concept of reasonableness generally referred to by the Anglo-American school of law,’ but he insisted that the criterion for reasonableness does not logically lead to arbitrariness.[5] In short, even a doctrine of reasonableness, which is required of entities that may disagree, does not do away with the question of the (lack of) legal basis for differential treatment of African states in global politics.

It is difficult today to pretend that the Western coalition has acted reasonably in Libya. Having sidelined Africans and blamed Gaddafi for all obstacles preventing conflict resolution, France, Britain, and the US can proceed to install the TNC as the new Libyan government. They are counting on the widespread sympathy for the Arab Spring to be absolved later of all sins of commission and omission. I doubt, however, that all will be forgotten. Since the UN Libyan resolutions were approved, NATO strikes have exceeded the initial mandate which was aimed at blocking Gaddafi’s aggression again civilians. But NATO has not only converted this mission into one conjoined with the rebellion to unseat Gaddafi, its bombs have also targeted some of the nation’s infrastructure. The Western coalition has also openly embraced the idea of assassinating the Libyan leader as policy. For its part, France had delivered weapons to the so-called resistance, despite the putative weapons embargo stipulated by the UN. Finally, the Western coalition has encouraged states to recognize the TNC as legitimate representative of the Libyan people although the tribal and clan make-up of Libya suggest that Gaddafi has partisans who may not be represented by the TNC. Meanwhile, while NATO bombs loyalist forces and their positions, the TNC advances militarily. For this reason, the TNC has expressed open contempt for the idea of a cease fire followed by negotiation. Together NATO and the TNC are engaged in a strategy for total military victory.

These actions are not merely troublesome. They are indicative of a world order that appeals to reasonableness to give legitimacy to authoritarianism, discrimination, and partiality in the interpretation of the law and the application of international morality. If the Western coalition succeeds in subverting the spirit of the North African and Arab Spring, which in my understanding includes a return of power to the people and the restoration of the dignity of the collective, nothing would prevent it and its local allies from dispensing with other requirements of public life: democracy, the rule of law, and the ethos of pluralism. In addition, who would control the institutional processes that are supposed to help states heal from civil conflict?  Who knows whether there would trials of those who ruled Libya for forty years and if so, whether those who just recently defected to the rebellion would be included and on what side? Whose military actions will be prosecuted as war crimes or crimes against humanity? Which lives lost will be deemed innocent and therefore worthy of memorializing? Which interests will be worthy of attention and protection?  Only time will tell. The most important question bearing on global governance and international peace, however, is what lesson does the West wish to send to Africans by subverting the authority of the UN and sidelining Africa from a major historical event located in North Africa, and territorially contiguous and historically connected to the sub-Saharan countries of Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad? In other words, how is the NATO coalition in Libya remaking the world and why? Again, time will tell.

In the meantime Africans will remain camped in a metaphorical global Tahrir Square. It is from there, in the public spaces allowed for legislating on behalf of the collective will, that they have succeeded best. In 1960, for instance, the Afro-Asian coalition that emerged from Bandung was sufficiently alarmed by events in Algeria, Vietnam, and the Portuguese colonies of Africa to endorse UN Resolution 1415, acknowledging the right of colonial populations to self-determination. This was the beginning of a quiet revolution at the UN. It was followed by the decisions of Ghana, Guinea, and Egypt (under the rubric then of the United Arab Republic) to dispense with Security Council resolutions in Congo. The most important of these revolutions was the appeal by African states to others to denounce the 1966 ruling by the International Court of Justice favoring colonial arrangements in South West Africa.  In response, the UN General Assembly voted massively against the positions of both the Security Council and the International Court of Justice, while  revoking the South African mandate over South West Africa, instituting in its place a ‘mandate’ under the UN Council for Namibia.  Similar instances of delegitimization exist today in African perceptions of the legality of decisions by the International Criminal Court. The seeming arbitrariness and politicization of the recent indictments of a number of African leaders has once again led the African Union to collectively decide to ignore the ICC’s decisions. The AU’s solution for Libya, together with the emergent African attitude toward the ICC, suggest a continuation of an often-ignored public battle from the continent to restore a modicum of equality, justice and reasonableness to international interventions.