Connecting Africa is about much more than water

ARTICLE: Water find 'may end Darfur war', BBC, 18 July 2007

The Darfur story is an old one, as I noted in either PNM or BFA: the cowboy and the farmer can't be friends. It gets dressed up as a "clash' here because it's Arab Muslim cowboys and largely black African farmers. Desertification in the north pushes Arabs southward, and so now the hope is that more water resources in the south will calm the violence.

It is definitely a start and good news for refugees, but let's remember, the cowboy and farmer weren't friends in the American West for reasons beyond water (relatively plentiful then). It's mostly about controlling the land. More water makes the land more sustainable in terms of population, but it also makes it more valuable, and therefore more worth fighting over.

The reason why I crankily eschew the promise of single solutions, especially resource-based ones, as answers to conflict ("Get them water!" "Get us off oil!") is that they strike me as treating symptoms. If they're bad enough, then yeah, every bit helps. No sense in killing the cancer if the infection's gonna get you first. But relieving the resource pinch doesn't solve the underlying problems that yield the deprivation or misuse and perpetuate them. There are plenty of water-stressed places in the world without genocide. So it's a bit neat to say, "Give them water and the genocide will cease," even if that may well be true (and thus worthy) in the short term.

Simply put, there is no silver bullet, but always a complex interweaving generating enough connectivity that allows for individual creativity and entrepreneurship to emerge.

The denial of basic needs certainly hampers that emergence, but their provision, especially when unsustainably provided by outsiders via aid, is more status quo-enhancing than paradigm breaking.

Why do I argue like this?

I want to escape the logic that says, "For pennies a day, we can keep this disenfranchised, marginalized, unempowered person barely alive, assuaging your sense of personal guilt and moral obligation. You too can 'save' Africa/Country X!"

I don't want to save Africa. I want it integrated into the global economy with the same brutal, indifferent efficiency that pulled Europe together first, then North America, and now Asia. I want the entire package to come to Africa, in all its glory and pain and liberation and dislocation and pollution and innovation.

I don't want to make Sudan simply survivable. I want to make it accessible and therefore exploitable.

And whether we like it or not, China's doing more than we are to make that happen. It ain't pretty, it ain't often just, but it connects.

I want to connect American grand strategy to that sort of unstoppable force--that greed for a better life.

You might call it the "pursuit of happiness."

But the story does show why it makes so much sense for CJTF-HOA to focus on well digging in East Africa. Having traversed the area, it's clearly the long pole in the tent. Serious hydrological work, I might imagine, is a rare thing in those parts. Why? You need outside technology abetted with outside money fueled by outside greed to connect that region to the outside. We're now toying with that in our military penetration of the region (toying in the sense of pursuing in a limited fashion). China and Asia in particular offer more base ambitions, suggesting longer legs (remember, one Blackhawk down last time and we pullled).

I want to put those two together.

Thanks to Matthew Garcia for sending this.

Comments

[nykrindc]

...China's doing more than we are to make that happen. It ain't pretty, it ain't often just, but it connects.

Did you hear that China just acquired rights to oil exploration in Somalia? In my own blog (shameless plug) I noted how this follows the pattern you identified back in 2005 after playing the New Map Game..."U.S. sets the table with Leviathan and Chinese SysAdmin effort eats the meal."

[Tom Barnett]

Yes, and that starts to bug me after a while, simply because the opportunity is staring us in the face and we refuse to see it.

My next piece.

[Michael]

And even if this find was a cure-all, it would only last as long as the water did. If the people of Darfur use it up, it's back to square one.

[Bill C.]

The example of China and Vietnam may represent the quickest, most efficient and most up-to-date model for achieving global connectivity today. Their method:

(1) Defeat the Core, cause it to withdraw, and throw out all aspects of Core/foreign influence.

(2) Achieve necessary security requirements using your own methods, your own forces and under your own flag (in this case, communism).

(3) Now embrace the global economy because, with dignity now restored, this is the next most logical and practical thing to do.

(Important notes: (a.) The incumbrance here was Core interference/influence -- which denied dignity and delayed success. (b) This method required no involvement of Core/foreign military or nation-building forces.)

Considering these most-recent examples of quick and efficient success in China and Vietnam via communism, one wonders if similar quick and efficent success could be achieved via Islam in Africa and the Middle East (and less, rather than more, Core involvement).

[Bil C.]

As a follow-up to my comment above:

In adopting the China/Vietnam model for Africa and the Middle East (or at least parts of these regions), we would (1) skip the unnecessary, counterproductive and premature parts (war, occupation, nation-building), (2) consider working with the religious rather than the secular leaders, (3) send FDI and other help only when it was asked for and (4) formally and officially embrace Islam as the best hope for quick and efficient success in these areas.

In trying to quickly and efficiently connect Africa and the Middle East to the global economy, I think we must not let our religious and political prejudices, nor a few of our special business interests, get in the way.

[stuart abrams]

To Bill C.:You are in synch with what I have been saying. My theory is that this is exactly what the Mullahs have been doing in Iran for the past 28 years. It's also what Japan did and it's what we did for most of the 19th Century - Monroe Doctrine. It's a bizarre concept - Mao and Ho Chi Minh as capitalist heroes - but I think it's what they accomplished.

[Tom Barnett]

Please guys, your rose-colored history here is a bit scary. Nothing fast nor efficient about either case. Mao kills probably 80 million in the process.

I don't see that model in that extremis being useful today. There are easier routes. Plus, we lack the colonial model as precursor, which was really the story un both china and Vietnam.

[stuart abrams]

Tom:You are right to curb our enthusiasm, but I think there is a valid point here. If you view colonialism as an economic system rather than a political system, then it is still very much at work today, and it gets you into what Collier calls the natural resources trap. That's my problem with what China is doing in the Gap now, and why I'm not enthusiastic about it as being a viable route out of the Gap. You need to have some way of making the jump from colonialism to the Core, and selling off a country's natural resources doesn't do it. Historically, the most successful way of accomplishing that has been for a country to erect barriers against the outside world for some period of time, until it is ready to interact on a more equal footing. With enlightened leadership in the Core, we ought to be able to come up with strategies to make that possible while avoiding nightmare regimes like Mao's.

[Bill C.]

Tom: Significant Core/foreign interference (of which colonialism looks to be but one aspect) seems to destroy the basic conditions needed for connectivity (security, integrity and cohesiveness based on national pride).

Driving the foreigner out and getting these basic conditions back seems to entail significant delay and the adoption of radical ideologies and methods.

Viewed in this light, the destruction of pre-communist China's viability (and the 10s of millions of deaths before Mao), the measures needed to correct this deficiency (the adoption of communism and the 80 million deaths thereafter), and the corresponding delay in achieving connectivity, can be seen as blood on the hands of the then-Old and New Core.

Once national integrity and pride are restored, connectivity may be achieved rather rapidly.

It is in consideration of these facts that I have tried to offer a "Core/Foreigner-Light" model in my second comment above. Hope it is useful.