Lucia

de Vernai

Read Lucia's bio and previous columns

July 10, 2008

Zimbabwe Sanctions: For the G8, Common Language Would Be a Good Start

The growing importance of clearly communicating in another language was lost on President Bush this week as he called Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi “amigo.” Berlusconi did not protest, however, since he was spared the backrub treatment German Chancellor Angela Merkel received at last year’s G8 Summit.

This year, the environmental crisis and elections in Zimbabwe were issues of top importance for national leaders from Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Japan and Russia. Meeting in Japan, they decided to seek targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s government in response to last month’s rigged elections. While reaching a consensus on how to react is a rarity among the top industrialized nations (Russia had previously refused to condone financial measures), a single strategy from the G8 nations does not equal a solution.

African leaders, including South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has been acting as the chief regional negotiator for Zimbabwe, have expressed grave concern over the measure. According to Mbeki, a proponent of a unity government in a country where the only contestant in the last presidential election dropped out because of state-sponsored violence, this could lead to civil war.

The past decade has shown how forceful action to execute political change without regard to regional cautions can have bloody results. The U.S. government’s willingness to employ economic sanctions and work with the UN and other supranational organizations to gather information ought to be encouraging. Yet given this administration’s preferred means of dealing with corrupt regimes, it doesn’t make Zimbabwe seem like the “real deal.”

Perhaps it is a matter of timing. President Bush is in his last year in office and protecting the democratic fate of an African country is not urgent. The U.S. is working with Great Britain – its trusty democratizing sidekick and Zimbabwe’s former colonial power, a recipe for success if there ever was one. At the G8 Summit British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that economic sanctions are "the strongest possible statement” that "shows the unanimity of the whole international community." Either most of Africa is not part of the international community or the conservatives have retained a colonial power definition of it.

I suppose those of us who have been whining about multilateral cooperation and UN involvement for the past two presidential terms should be excited. But somehow, it now seems that unless there is a military deployment, their hearts aren’t really in it. Perhaps after years of hearing that spreading democracy can only be done through single-handed force and preferably with no real plan, this just doesn’t seem right.

Or maybe what doesn’t seem right at all is that when those most affected by the conflict start resolving it on their own, the need for control drives G8 members to interfere. When the head of the African Union, Jakaya Kikwete, stated that African leaders want a power-sharing solution, the meaning was again lost on President Bush. Maybe international communication, rather than sanctions, should be the first priority in resolving the situation in Zimbabwe.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.