After the drama of Laurent Gbagbo’s capture in Abidjan, international attention has swung away from Cote d’Ivoire. At the precise moment when external voices for justice are most necessary, the cameras and critics seem to have moved on. Reducing Cote d’Ivoire’s political struggle to the recent presidential contest is a profound misunderstanding of the complexity of the Ivorian conflict and a sure way to miss the path toward peace.
Coming to terms with NATO’s intervention in the Libyan civil war is a little like wresting a grizzly bear: big, hairy, and likely to make one pretty uncomfortable no matter where you grab a hold of it. Is it a humanitarian endeavor? A grab for oil resources? Or an election ploy by French President Nicolas Sarkozy?
"We cannot assure our development on our own," stated France’s pet dictator and Africa’s longest-serving ruler, Omar Bongo. The Gabonese leader was talking about national economic development, but he might just as well have been talking about his own personal economic development. Transparency International’s French chapter singled out Bongo, who died this month at 73 after ruling his country for 41 years, for a spectacular misappropriation of state funds. The lawsuit, lodged via civil party petition, charges Bongo, Denis Sassou Nguesso of the Congo, and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea of acquiring vast patrimonies in France including expensive real estate, capital, villas, and cars that cannot be justified by official income.
The Iraq War tore at the already frayed fabric of transatlantic security relations. Although European countries declared their solidarity with the United States after September 11, they were increasingly uncomfortable with Washington’s emphasis on unilateralist approaches to global problems. After President Bush took office in 2001, his administration upset many European leaders by refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, opposing the International Criminal Court, and killing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In October 2001, Washington was reluctant at first to use the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the campaign to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan. While taken aback by U.S. reluctance, NATO leaders and Europeans generally approved of the U.S.-led operation.
The fiftieth anniversary of the Suez Crisis came and went this past November without much notice. That’s too bad because the Bush administration could learn a lot from the crisis, which ensued when the armed forces of Great Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt, then under the rule of Gamal Abdul-Nasser. In a move that earned the United States respect around the world, the administration of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower denounced the tripartite invasion as a violation of international law and used America’s considerable diplomatic leverage to force a withdrawal of these American allies.
The free flow of capital and information is the visible and oft-celebrated face of globalization. Hidden behind the flash of supply chains and e-commerce are countless people that migrate annually from the Global South to North America and Europe in search of work. These economic migrants form an immensely important but largely hidden side of globalization.