Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War. Elizabeth Schmidt

       Foreword

      Elizabeth Schmidt’s earlier work, Foreign Intervention in Africa (2013), focused on the period 1945–91, with a brief concluding chapter on 1991–2010. This companion volume focuses on 1991–2017, with a final chapter highlighting the potential impact of the Trump presidency. Schmidt’s approach in the two volumes is similar. Her aim is not to provide a comprehensive narrative or advance an explanatory theory, but to introduce a series of case studies, taking into account global narratives and common factors as well as the particularity and nuances of each case.

      Intended for undergraduate and graduate students as well as policymakers, humanitarian and human rights workers, activists, and other concerned citizens, both books provide succinct and readable narratives, without detailed footnotes but with abundant recommended readings for those who wish to dig more deeply into particular cases.¹ As such, they are unique resources that provide an overview and introduction to the complex realities they portray, complementing but not duplicating more detailed scholarly or journalistic accounts of specific cases.

      As this foreword is written in early 2018, the Trump presidency in the United States has been the catalyst for a level of uncertainty about the shape of the international political order not matched since World War II. Any predictions would be perilous, except to affirm that African countries will continue to be gravely affected by global political developments as well as by the distinct internal dynamics of specific countries and regions.

      As Schmidt explains, global narratives are both essential and misleading in explaining the course and outcomes of intervention in specific conflicts. Thus the grand narrative of the “Cold War” between the United States and the Soviet Union, from 1945 to 1991, was decisive for interventions in African conflicts insofar as it motivated perceptions and policy in Washington, Moscow, and other capitals. Cold War perceptions conflating radical African nationalism and communism affected policymakers, the media, and public opinion, not only in countries such as the United States and South Africa, but also in transnational networks and multilateral organizations.

      Even in this period, however, the Cold War paradigm was not fully hegemonic. The alternative framework of a united stand against Nazism, racism, and colonialism, linked to the common experience of World War II, was shared by Southern African liberation movements and by governments and movements around the world, including many in Western Europe and North America. An exclusive focus on the superpowers, moreover, ignores the distinct interests and roles of other external actors, including the European colonial powers and other communist states, most prominently Cuba and China. And finally, the interests of the African actors involved in conflicts, and the colonial and precolonial histories of specific countries, also shaped the outcomes. In some cases, African parties to conflict sought out foreign interventions—for their own reasons.

      Unraveling the course of any specific intervention thus requires a high degree of granularity, at the risk of asking the reader to assimilate a potentially bewildering range of names and places. Political actors such as states, parties, and agencies are not unitary: each is made up of subgroups and individuals with distinct interests, ideologies, and analyses. Schmidt’s clear writing style balances brevity with nuance. Readers who take their time and pay attention will be rewarded—not with definitive answers, which the author does not promise, but with a solid basis for asking more questions and pursuing further research.

      In the post–Cold War period examined in this book, Schmidt identifies two distinct paradigms applied by policymakers. A specific intervention might fall primarily under the paradigm of a “response to instability,” some cases of which might also fit under the newly defined multilateral rubric of the “responsibility to protect.” Alternatively, an intervention might fit within the framework of the “war on terror.” Or, as in the case of Somalia, both paradigms might be at work simultaneously. Characteristically, war on terror interventions were often counterproductive, increasing rather than decreasing the impact of movements defined as terrorist threats. Globally, these interventions were driven particularly by the United States, with accelerated militarization in Africa as well as around the world in the period following the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

      Interventions in response to instability, including those justified by the responsibility to protect, on the other hand, featured a far wider range of subregional, regional, and global actors. There was vacillation between indifference, leading to failure to respond in a timely way, and complex multiyear efforts in diplomacy and peacekeeping. The actors most consistently involved, for their own reasons, were neighbors of the countries beset by conflict, as well as African multilateral organizations such as the African Union and its subregional counterparts. And, as the cases considered in this book illustrate, the results, as well as the motives of outside actors, were decidedly mixed. The outcomes were difficult to evaluate, as were the possible alternative courses of action that might have produced different results (counterfactuals). While the United States was often a partner in multilateral efforts, consistent policy and commitment to multilateral engagement was in short supply.

      Despite the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the shift