Mali and the Confiscation of Moral Sentiment

Originally published on www.denverlibertarian.com

The recent Trump Administration military budget request of 750 billion dollars, which would easily dwarf the military spending of the next nineteen biggest spending nations combined, makes continued calls for increasing military spending seem preposterous. But, beyond excessive military spending and the crushing weight of debt, the most damning aspect of the U.S. Foreign Policy apparatus is its confiscation of moral sentiment from the American public.

The de rigueur excuses of national safety, preserving democracy worldwide and winning the war on terror fall flat given the results of recent military entanglements in the Middle East and Africa. A state of continued instability exists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, an epidemic of cholera and famine has taken over Yemen and open slave markets were operating in Libya, all under the watchful eye of U.S. military forces. Countless under-reported military campaigns across Africa are are sowing the seeds of resentment, which will ultimately lead to terror attacks here and death and destruction abroad.

A seemingly minor incident in the grand scheme of U.S. military involvement, the 2013 French led and U.S. supported intervention in Mali was undertaken ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, but this military action should give every American pause given the ongoing chaos, continued loss of foreign lives and especially with regards to just how far the military will extend itself on the flimsiest of pretexts. The lack of curiosity and empathy by the American public for the victims of U.S. military actions speaks volumes to the power and influence of the U.S. Foreign Policy apparatus.

The State to the Rescue:

The assumption regarding Mali is that the State is addressing the plight of an affected people and the average citizen need not think any more of it. This is a common sentiment that has its roots in the New Deal era. Many of the criticisms levied against the New Deal can be applied in relation to current U.S. Foreign Policy, including that it has needlessly burdened the economy under its crushing weight of debt, it has enabled a massively wasteful bureaucracy, it has encouraged a crony capitalist system, it has vastly reduced individual freedom and it has concentrated an absurd amount of authority in Washington, D.C.

Although these are all valid criticisms of U.S. Foreign Policy, perhaps the most damning criticism of all and its most spurious achievement, is its ability to morally corrupt the American public. This concept was identified by Albert Jay Nock, writing in a 1937 article for the American Mercury, wherein he stated that everyday Americans have been, “suffocated of that decent humanitarian spirit, and have allowed themselves to be dried-up of the ordinarily decent humane impulses toward one’s fellow-men.” Indeed, that is no small achievement.

With over 1,000 military bases in over eighty countries, the U.S. military footprint can be found imposing its will on sovereign people worldwide. Grandstanding U.S. politicians confidently wash their collective hands of the realities on the ground so long as the grand ideals of freedom and democracy are invoked triumphantly before any military action begins. As recounted in a recent article by Jim Bovard, historian Irving Babbitt explained (after World War One), “the American judges himself by the way he feels, whereas the foreigner judges him by what he does.” This sentiment continues to hold true, today.

A Brief History of Mali:

In 1960, France formally agreed to the independence of the Federation of Mali. Not surprisingly, they engineered a system in which Mali would remain economically dependent on them. The inhabitants of the region are commonly referred to as the Tuareg people in French literature, but they call themselves Azawad and they are an extension of the Berber people, whose living area historically extended across numerous modern countries, including northern Mali, southern Algeria, Mauritania and Niger. As is the case with many native populations in the Middle East and Africa, when modern borders were drawn, they were screwed out of valuable resources and were left with very little territory of their own, setting them up for perpetual struggles.

There have long been tensions between the black African population in the southern part of Mali and the Azawad people of the North, with cultural, economic and social discrimination toward the Azawad, who have a real case for grievances. As such, the Azawad have rebelled numerous times against the South in the time since Mali gained independence. In typical Neo-Colonialist fashion, the French have pitted one group against another, using one group as a vehicle to control the economic resources of the region.

The Current Conflict:

With the fall of Gadaffi in 2011 (there was no U.S. involvement there, right?), many Tuareg mercenaries came back to their homeland and brought their weapons with them. Mali is a desperately poor country, especially in the North and for many, the only way to make a living was to join up as a mercenary in the Libyan Army. Given the influx of weapons, the Azawad see an opportunity to rebel again and are bolstered by a recent military coup that had taken place in the capital city of Bamako (the U.S. played a role in this, as well).

It’s important to note that the Tuareg goals were economic and secular, but one fatal flaw in the Azawad plan was that they teamed up with a couple of Islamist groups, whose goals were radically different. These radical elements eventually took over the movement and began marching South toward Timbuktu and Gao, committing atrocities along the way. The Mali central government was helpless to intervene due to the military coup, which conveniently gave the pretext for international intervention.

What Was Not Reported:

Unbeknownst to most, according to African Foreign Policy expert Rob Prince, in two 2013 interviews (here and here) with Scott Horton, the U.S. had spent billions of dollars training the Mali military, but it also had trained the people involved in the coup, who then overthrew the Mali government! The failure of all this money spent training a military that couldn’t function became another pretext for military involvement.

Eventually, the coup ends and a civilian leader, Dioncounda Traoré, was installed as President. Interestingly, he happened to have strong ties to Paris and NATO and he immediately wrote a letter to the UN Security Council imploring them to help quell the rebellion. Although attempts were made to convince the Algerians to intervene, ultimately the French and the U.S. entered the fray.

It’s also noteworthy is that there are two important French facilities in the region: first, there is a large mining company in nearby Niger, owned by the French company Avena and secondly, there is a French military base in Mopti, in central Mali. The French were nervous about their military installation and also concerned that the chaos in Mali might spill over into Niger, providing another pretext for intervention.

Standard Media Narrative:

The standard narrative presented to the American public regarding the situation in Mali is the well worn excuse of necessary humanitarian intervention, which is a deliberate attempt at deceiving the public into thinking military action is absolutely necessary. The reality is that it is often military meddling and neo-colonialist attempts at securing resources that have caused the problem in the first place.

Add to that, it is occuring in place that is very far away, the boots on the ground aren’t from the U.S. and the military casualty rate is low, so who cares? The media will put up a series of out of context videos showing scary looking rebels firing their guns to the sky, which will suffice for a few news cycles. Soon enough, a couple years will pass, everyone will forget what happened and the process will repeat itself in a different part of the world.

The Big Picture:

The big picture of U.S. Foreign Policy includes a long term plan for the militarization of Africa in order to secure oil, uranium and other minerals. But, with the U.S. strategic focus shifting to Asia, the key is to achieve this militarization in such a manner where the U.S. military footprint is not as great as it has been in the Middle East. This will necessarily require other countries to provide the boots on the ground, which is what happened with the intervention in Mali.

If this story is news to you and you didn’t know anything about the conflict in Mali, you’re not alone. It’s not hard to see how this could play out negatively, for who in Mali has ever done anything to anyone in the U.S.? What would you do if the roles were reversed? How would you react to a foreign power commanding natural resources in your part of the world? Writing in the previously mentioned American Mercury article, Nock summed it up best, “We think a great deal about the State’s ever-increasing confiscations of money and power; why not think a little about its confiscations of sentiment? They seem to me the most damaging and degrading of all its confiscations, as well as the hardest to repair.” Indeed, we would be wise to reject the folly of militarized humanitarian idealism.