What about regime change in Africa?

Democracy in Iraq a more pressing concern for the west than for the starving millions in Africa

Roger Howard Articles Latest Show all Profile guardian.co.uk July 15, 2006

The arrival of the G8 leaders in St Petersburg for their two-day summit will doubtlessly be accompanied by familiar calls to help bale Africa out of its economic quagmire and end the shocking humanitarian crises that continue to blight so much of the continent and scar the conscience of the watching world.

Instead the contrast between contemporary silence about regime change for Africa and the active calls for intervention in the Middle East acts as a reminder about the curious double standards that pervade the debate. Liberal interventionists demand the promotion of "democracy" and "rights" on the world stage but they are really deluding themselves. What they are in fact doing is merely singling out their own chosen targets for particular attention.

As I argue in my new booklet, What's Wrong with Liberal Interventionism, the essential reason why the liberal interventionists' champion some causes at the expense of others is simply self-interest. If there had long been massive public clamouring for regime change in Africa but abhorrence at interference in the Middle East, then many of them would have performed a dramatic volte-face. Instead, they know that such calls would raise the spectre of racism and neo-colonialism that could electorally haunt them. In the same way, the demonisation of the Serbs in the 1990s made them an easy target for Nato intervention, just as the mullahs' regime in Iran is similarly demonised by a number of highly influential lobby groups in the United States.