I was pointed to Paul Collier’s latest Guardian column on the violent political standoff in Ivory Coast by the always entertaining Wronging Rights blog. In the piece, Collier advocates for a military coup openly supported by regional and international powers. Indeed, he supports the option to:
…generate a credible threat of force from the government’s own army. In much of Africa, the national army is the force most feared by presidents. Leaders go to considerable lengths to keep the army happy, but coups are still common. Because neither African governments nor the international community want to encourage coups, they have taken the line that the military should simply stay out of politics at all costs. This is understandable, but misguided: it’s better to set guidelines as to the very limited circumstances under which the ousting of an incumbent ruler would be legitimate.
The legitimacy of the incumbent remaining in power is not at question here, and the international community has spoken quite plainly on the matter. The precedent that such an approach to transferring power could set, however, seems gratuitously risky in a political climate where legitimate rule and accountable militaries are already tenuous propositions. Perhaps it is too cliché to make ‘Pandora’s Box’ -type arguments, but what Collier fails to elaborate upon is how exactly the terms of such “very limited circumstances” for legitimate military coups should come about, or what they would look like once agreed to by some yet-to-be determined process.
I’m reminded that Collier’s position is generally the one of the realist, having little time for political ideals when the management of economic forces is at stake. Consequently, it is not a drastic step to advocate for legitimizing political coups as tools of regional and international order as circumstances require; such methods would be but means toward economic growth from which, in turn, democracy and human rights could eventually follow. The order that these process are bound to take is clear. It would be naïve to pretend that the incitement or encouragement of coups and insurrections have not found their place in the muddy waters of foreign relations. Still, embracing such an approach in order to avoid the difficulties of external intervention — and at the likely cost of massive further internal destabilization — is highly problematic when placed in juxtaposition to notions of the rule of law…regardless of the legal standing of the existing order.
Oh dear, I’m afraid I might have just made a Kantian argument.
