Liberia is a sea of suffering, its capital awash with hungry, homeless refugees, victims of civil strife. George Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and other administration officials ponder whether to send American troops in to stabilise the situation.
That scenario from today’s headlines also unfolded on the news pages of yesteryear — the spring of 1990 to be exact.
Then, George H.W. Bush was president. Cheney was defence secretary, Powell was chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and Liberia was in the grip of armed conflict.
At the time, US military vessels bobbed in the waters off the Liberian coast. Some marines went ashore to help evacuate Americans. Herman Cohen, then the State Department’s top African affairs official, had a more ambitious agenda for the marines: dispatch them to Monrovia, the capital, to stop the fighting. He believed that the ragtag factions there would opt to lay down arms once the marines showed up with their vaunted firepower.
Recalling that period 13 years ago, Cohen said on Monday that top national security and CIA aides felt US intervention could lead to the ”permanent dependency” of Liberia on the United States.
Cohen recounted a conversation between Powell and James Woods, then director of African affairs at the Pentagon.
”I want my ships back, I want my ships back,” Powell told Woods, according to Cohen. Not long thereafter, the ships were withdrawn, effectively eliminating the deployment option.
In addition to wanting ready access to the ships, Powell objected to use of US troops in third world trouble spots, as he notes in his autobiography, My American Journey.
Alluding specifically to Liberia and several other conflict-prone African states, Powell wrote: ”Television delivers tragic scenes from these places into our living rooms nightly, and we naturally want to relieve the suffering that we witness. Often,
our desire to help collides with the cold calculus of national interest.”
If fighting starts and puts American lives at risk, Powell wrote, ”our people rightly demand to know what vital interest that sacrifice serves.”
In weighing intervention in Liberia, the first President Bush may have been dissuaded by reaction to the US invasion of Panama just months before the Liberian crisis occurred. The UN General Assembly condemned the invasion by a vote of 75-20 with 40 abstentions.
With Liberia again in crisis, it is not clear whether Powell, now secretary of state, is resurrecting the same argument against deployment that he outlined in his book.
In their public comments about the situation, administration officials generally have refrained from talking about the possibility of casualties should Bush decide to deploy.
In 1990, much as he is today, Charles Taylor was a central figure. He was an insurgent leader then and now is in his sixth year as president, battling rebels opposed to his rule. The country is a wreck.
Cohen believes that the incumbent Bush may be more amenable to intervention in Liberia than his father was in 1990.
The notion that US intervention could lead to a permanent Liberian dependency on the United States, Cohen says, is less compelling now because American troops over time can be replaced by UN peacekeepers — an option more viable now than it was in 1990.
Beyond that, no one is contemplating a go-it-alone US intervention. Any peacekeeping force would consist primarily of West African troops.
Finally, Cohen says, deployment of US troops to Liberia could help America’s — and Bush’s standing — internationally.
By sending military personnel, Cohen says, ”Bush will be able to show he can use US troops for humanitarian reasons and not just for geo-strategic reasons.” – Sapa-AP