Robert Mugabe is making a mockery of liberal interventionism. He has becomeGod's gift to cartoonists, politicians and commentators. He is depictedwielding clubs dripping in blood. He stands triumphant over a pile ofskulls. He is Bokassa out of Idi Amin out of Charles Taylor. He is that oldfamiliar, the African heart of darkness, monstrous, buffoonish, grotesqueand evil.
There is a sense in which Mugabe's hysterical anti-western analysisof his predicament is correct. His Zimbabwe is a creature of Britishimperialism and post-imperialism. The last governor, Lord Soames, regardedhim as an affectionate regimental mascot, a "splendid chap," as he told mein an interview shortly before handing power to him in 1980.
Britain duly tolerated the suppression of Mugabe's enemy, JoshuaNkomo, and Zimbabwe's conversion into a one-party state. It turned a blindeye to the 1983 Ndebele massacre by Mugabe's Shona Fifth Brigade under itswarlord, Perence Shiri, some say his present master. Margaret Thatcher'sWhitehall gave Harare lavish aid and barmy advice, helping turn a viableeconomy into a basket case of pseudo-socialist kleptomania.
Now Zimbabwe is declared outrageous. Though Mugabe is hardly theworst dictator in the world, he is regarded as "our" dictator and thereforeour business. The public asks "what is to be done about him?" Sated onhaving "done something", presumably glorious, about Bosnia, Sierra Leone,Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, public opinion is hard-wired to such aquestion. So what is to be done?
The answer is splutter. Abuse is heaped on Mugabe's head in aministerial cascade of brutals, blood-thirsties, illegitimates andrevoltings. I have lost count how often the Foreign Office has excoriatedhim with that lofty, impotent put-down, "unacceptable". As for sanctions,we must listen to the ludicrous incantation of VIP travel restrictions,Harrods accounts, French hotels, London kindergartens and reclaimedknighthoods - the ceaseless chatter of sanctions chic.
Such sanctions are the weapons of cowards and hypocrites. Theynever work in any meaningful sense and are on a par with not eating SouthAfrican oranges or not buying Brazilian coffee. By mildly inconveniencingthe powerful and starving the poor, they supposedly make us feel good. Incountries such as Cuba and Iraq they have condemned whole generations tomisery and early death.
The much-abused history of commercial sanctions shows that anyprotracted squeeze leads only to internal economic adjustment. Control overmoney and goods shifts from merchants to rulers, driving the former toexile and increasing the wealth of the latter. As sanctions made SaddamHussein and his family rich, so they have made Mugabe and his cronies rich.
The only sanction that works is one that works overnight. It isconceivable that if South Africa and Zimbabwe's other neighbours were ableto cut supplies of petrol and electricity they might precipitate some sortof coup in Harare. But by whom? Anyone seizing power at present would beanyone with petrol, and that is the army, which has power already.
Neither South Africa nor neighbouring states of the African Unionhas shown the slightest inclination to force regime change on Harare,however much they may condemn Mugabe. African rulers regard theinterventionist precedent as unappealing. Nor is there any British stomachfor an airborne assault, from wherever it might be launched (DiegoGarcia?). It is inconceivable that planes would be allowed refuelling orover-flying rights in southern Africa. Such is the collapse of Britain'smoral authority after Iraq.
Toppling Mugabe would require a force strong enough at least todecapitate his army and, presumably, install the opposition leader, MorganTsvangirai, in power. What kind of power would that be, achieved withforeign guns? It would probably be a prelude only to civil war, which mustbe the last thing Zimbabwe needs just now.
The truth is that Britain and the west have grown tired of thissort of thing. They could not summon up the muscle even to land aid inBurma's Irrawaddy delta, hardly the most drastic of interventions. TheLabour bombast of Baghdad and Kabul is now reduced to nuanced caution. Thecrusader cry, "You can't just leave the poor Albanians (or Shias orPashtuns) to their fate," has degenerated into a diplomatic monotone ofdemarches and resolutions.
There is no realistic alternative but to sit out the Zimbabweantragedy, impotent on the sidelines. If Africa wants to help its own, itwill. If not, so be it. We cannot starve Mugabe into submission, since thatis his own strategy towards his people. We take comfort by endlesslydeclaring his country "close to collapse" but that is idiot economics.Subsistence and remittance economies do not collapse.
We can portray Mugabe in the press as a blood-thirsty gorilla andimpose so-called smart sanctions, in order that we can feel a littlebetter, but our fine feelings are hardly central to Africa's predicament.
So-called liberal interventionism is a will 'o the wisp, a vapid,feel-good refashioning of foreign policy in response to a headline event,motivated by self-interest or passing mood. We should send food to thestarving of Zimbabwe because that is something we can do, however muchMugabe distorts the supply. But as for dreaming of toppling him, those daysare over. Britain has done enough damage to Zimbabwe over the years.Prudence tells us please to shut up.