•In times of war, a word of wise council is to be sought above the chatter of anxious men.
This is a column in two parts. The first movement concerns Mali. The latter portion centers on the despondent economic news coming out of Europe and America.
Given some comments I received last week, there is a need to refine points raised in last week’s submission on Mali. Some comments received were quite instructive. Others revealed that many people view complex events too simplistically. Because the violent Islamists in Mali seek to impose a vile existence, these commentators reasoned that the French-led western intervention is an unalloyed positive. Some people even claimed the piece backed the Islamists. That they missed the crucial point of the piece is likely attributable to my imprecise and clumsy pen. Indulge me as I try to clarify the central theme of that piece in hope of helping people discern the motives of the great powers.
The violent extremists are not the children of Islam; they are spores of evil. However, just because the West now fights them in Mali does not render the intervention altruistic or mean the outcome will redound to the benefit of Mali or West Africa. The situation is tragic because it allows only a choice between bad and worse. In such straits, we opt for bad because it is less onerous; it does not present a happy occasion. That the jailer severs one man’s leg at the knee but maims yours only at the foot is not a proper cause for elation.
Many applied the adage “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” to the crisis. Because the radical Islamists are an incendiary scourge, the western guns opposing them must be friendly these people reason. Sadly, they take the hoary maxim out of context and thus take false comfort in it. The saying applies when the third party has no significant relationship with you and no vital interests contrary to yours. If that party has interests colliding with yours, better toss the maxim out the window. Otherwise, it will lead to certain folly through imprudent policy. During World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union wanted to consume Poland. They allied in the despicable endeavor of dismembering a sovereign nation for no legitimate reason save the love of brigandage on a grand scale. Afterward, Germany used seized Polish territory as its forward platform to invade the Soviet Union. This is not to imply that Western designs in the Sahel are as sinister as Hitler’s machinations. Western nations are calculating; they are not irrational madmen. No, this example is a cautionary one. The domain of the great powers is not a simple place. The shortest distance to a desired point is never a straight line. Shadows serve as the filament of light in this world of intrigue within intrigue. In this place, the enemy of your enemy may well be your enemy.
Such is the case in the Sahel. He who fiercely battles the Islamists does so for their selfish interests. Hopefully, the jihadists will be defeated; most likely they will fade into the ocean of sand to bide their time. The West will appear to have saved the day. But for whom? African leaders must think strategically. The people on the street are free to applaud the Europeans’ heroics. National leaders cannot afford the frivolity. They must formulate strategies minimizing the influence foreign militaries have in the region or risk lurching toward a new form of inferiority redolent of that old evil called neo-colonialism. Again, WWII provides the apt lesson. While Germany threatened, America and the Soviet Union allied against it. The minute Berlin fell prostrate, America and the Soviet Union descended into a Cold War.
It is natural to feel relief that France has grasped the cudgel in Mali. This relieved sensation should block us from questioning why this was not done in Libya. Had they deployed troops in Libya, Mali would not have erupted. Tactically, it would have been easier to contain the Islamists along the narrow strip of fertile Libyan coast than to chase them the length and breadth of Mali. Moreover, the current Libyan government would have been strengthened. Where did the West think the jihadists would go after Gaddafi’s departure? Did they think the fighters would seek to vacation on the French Riviera? Months ago, the jihadists established several camps in southern Libya. Yet nothing was done about these camps although their very presence indicated the extremists were plotting a southern strategy. It was almost as if the West dared the jihadists to do what jihadists do: make war.
Mali has become a beachhead for the western counterattack against Islamic insurgency in the Sahel. Coincidentally, the battleground of northern Mali reportedly has large quantities of uranium. The area lies adjacent to confirmed deposits in Niger. No wonder France has turned into a charging bull. Nuclear reactors supplies 75 percent of Gallic electricity. Having your soldiers deployed in the vital areas is a head start to getting your hands on the precious commodity. The fracas will also deter China; the West believes the meddlesome Chinese might sell their offspring to consummate a deal but they are not ready to fight for one.
America has announced it will operate a drone airplane base in Niger. American troops also have deployed in Mali as advisors. AFRICOM has finally arrived by stealth, under the guise of emergency help. Several years ago, African leaders steadfastly opposed AFRICOM’s deployment on the continent. They blanched at a vastly superior, imperial military having a permanent presence on the continent. Since then, AFRICOM has searched for the slightest aperture through which it could set boot on African soil. They found the crack when a stream of non-black African jihadists funneled into the Sahel. This raised such apprehension that African nations forgot their stance against AFRICOM. Now, western deployments are greeted with indiscriminate applause.
The deployments will arrest the fall of Mali. This is good. However, Africa must brace itself for the blowback. The Malian crisis will not be fully resolved under the present constellation of factors. The Tuaregs will likely remain embittered. Consequently, the northern tier of the Mali and Niger will become the Sahelian equivalent of the eastern region of the Congo. The government’s writ will have no currency in these badlands. However, exploration and mining will intensify, feeding French energy needs and the coffers of western firms. Meanwhile, western military deployments, under the guise of training, will sprout throughout the region. Previously barred entry through the front door, AFRICOM entered the house through the hole in the roof caused by the Libyan debacle. Most people will see this as a needed level of new security. History says otherwise. No long-term American deployment in a developing nation suffering an insurgency has ever relieved that nation of the insurgency. Usually, the deployments make a grander mess of things. This is the future that now beckons. There is no reason to applaud it. Now, on to economics.
Western governments are not so busy in the Sahel that they don’t have time to choke their own economies. Europe and America stumble along the road of austerity like zombies in a trance. These countries relish a close relationship with economic disaster. Spain’s unemployment rate has reached a historic high. Greece falls so deeply into depression that many of its citizens no longer can afford heating oil to see them through the winter. They resort to burning tires, and furniture as well as chopping down trees for firewood. The nation that was the world’s first democracy has been demoted to the Third World. Europe’s third largest economy, Italy contracted by 2.3 percent last year; this year’s shrinkage is predicted to be worse. The Netherlands joined the recession parade late last year. The German economy, Europe’s largest, slowed during the last half of 2012. The UK faces an unprecedented triple-dip recession, experiencing its third sustained downturn in less than four years. America’s economy also shrank by a small margin during 2012’s final quarter.
These nations share a common economic trait. They all persisted with fiscal austerity despite preponderant empirical evidence against this approach. They are like the madcap adventurer who places his finger under the descending guillotine blade. Upon seeing the severed finger, he reasons he will be safe if he puts his head under the blade because the thickness of his neck will protect against his head’s amputation.
The pain caused by austerity is beyond a sad joke. It is sadism practiced by governments now servant to those who inhabit the strongholds of finance and power. These people and their servants derive malevolent glee at watching the poor scamper about like small insects trying to escape before the descending boot crushes them into the turf. If only they were forsaken, the poor could make it. However, austerity has added burden to their burden. There is no escape or recovery. There is only dismal endurance. Light has perished from their lives. The complex theories of mainstream economics have escorted the people into a modern Dark Ages that need not have been. It is tragic and mean because it is all so unnecessary.
Yet, the princes of high money insist on austerity because it benefits them if no one else. Governments continue slashing their budgets, particularly funding for the poor and underclass. Millions of people have been set adrift. England now suffers the most dumbfounding example of stubborn adherence to discredited policy since Chamberlain walked backwards into WW II by appeasing Hitler in hope that the hyena of Berlin would tire and be sated if fed a generous snack of small, defenseless nations to devour.
Not shackled by membership in the Eurozone, England has its own sovereign currency. Thus, it can run fiscal deficits without fearing insolvency. Instead, what PM Cameron and his Tory brethren most fear is an insolvency that will never come. Thus, they force feed austerity to their countrymen as a warden feeds gruel to his inmates. Repeatedly, Cameron has promised that austerity would grow the economy. Each time he has repeated it, the claim has failed him. Now the country borders on a rare triple-dip recession. Yet he cannot concede the error. He keeps promising prosperity is around the corner. It may be around the corner but sadly not the corner toward which he leads the nation. When Cameron stands on the international stage to berate Nigeria or any other nation for economic wastage he stands as a self-righteous thrower of stones living in a glass hut. The pain he inflicts on his economy is of the same magnitude as that for which he denigrates Nigeria. His misdeeds are also done for the corrupt purpose of bettering the moneyed elite. Consequently, the man has no more right castigating Nigeria than a drunk has fulminating against a drug addict for engaging in substance abuse.
The shrinkage of the American economy is directly attributable to a reduction in government spending. Still, both Democrats and Republicans waltz toward a deal whereby they will brusquely cut the federal budget by several hundred billion dollars. This will plunge the nation into a recession that will bear President Obama’s name.
Despite the books and theories written by the prominent economists paid and made by Big Money, nothing substitutes for the truth. The more governments impose austerity in a time of economic weakness, the more their economies falter. Being a clerk to Money Power, the IMF traverses the world seeking out vulnerable economies it can stifle, contract, and deflate. This travelling show often tours Africa selling its enervating wares. Africa consumes the defective products with good humor; but the good humor does little to mask our bad poverty. Austerity should be jettisoned before too many people are force to consume the flesh of their own diminution. Unless African nations break the intellectual shackles to forge independent-mind policies that grow their economies for the benefit of the people, they will consign their populations to an existence hounded by a poverty so relentless and omnipresent that it shall become synonymous with life itself.
In this vein, news that West Africa pursues a monetary union is discomfiting. The contemplated regional union is eerily similar to the Eurozone architecture. The flawed structure of the European monetary union intensified the economic downturn of that area. A monetary union strips nations of their currency sovereignty. A nation with a sovereign fiat currency can run government deficits that spur growth without fear of becoming insolvent. Once a nation agrees use a currency over which it is not sovereign, the nation becomes slave to the currency. The country can no longer run deficits to spur the economy because it is no longer the producer of its own currency. The nation is reduced to the status of any common shop or household. It can go bankrupt and thus is prone to austerity as protection against such an outcome. This is a steep price to pay for the ephemeral, uncertain benefits of a common currency. West Africa should rethink this move lest it repeat the mistake Europe made. The costs for West Africa will be steeper because its economies are frailer than their Western European counterparts.
The critique of austerity and financialist policies is a recurrent theme of this column. I do this not to bore but to warn you of what is to come unless we begin to think for ourselves. These policies are inhumane at best. They also don’t work. The policies do the opposite of what their advocates espouse. This outcome goes beyond GDP statistics and government accounting ledgers. The contest of progressive, pro-growth policies versus conservative austerity policies goes beyond ideology. It will dictate whether African governments will be sufficiently equipped to educate our children, build the roads and bridges that open to a more placid future, and care for the elderly and infirmed. It will determine whether the general economy is sufficiently healthy to produce jobs giving the average man the chance at a decent wage and dignified life. It speaks to whether Africa can free itself from the past or remain prisoner of it. In the end, we must decide whether we live for ourselves and author our own fate or serve as the stationery upon which someone else writes their own story.
