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On The Mark
By Alan Tacca |
Bush will abandon Museveni in 2006
June 13, 2003
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On July 5, The Monitor published an extract from a transcript wired by the White House two days earlier. In the transcript, President George W. Bush was answering questions from print journalists. The appearance of the extract in The Monitor followed concerted denials by Uganda government officials that when Yoweri President Museveni visited Washington recently, Mr. Bush made some frank remarks on Mr Museveni's perceived desire to prolong his rule beyond 2006. Ironically, on the same day, The Monitor published an article by one of Museveni's leading spin-doctors laughing off the idea that Bush would embarrass his guest by raising such questions. The transcript makes interesting reading. First, let me comment on Bush's unedited language technique. If you prefer a form of language where ideas flow smoothly through well-constructed sentences based on incisive grammar, you may find difficulty with Bush. His phrasing often only makes sense as part of a section larger than a sentence. The effect reminds me of an "impressionist" painting. If you stand close to a large picture by Monet or Seurat, you will see patches and dots of colour that do not form distinct shapes. When you go back a few meters, things that looked like blurred or jumbled masses of paint become strikingly resolved as patterns and shapes of familiar objects. Flowers. Boats. A bridge. Reflections in water. One way of dealing with Bush, of course, is to dismiss him that he does not think "properly". But the power at the disposal of the USA as a nation is too huge for anyone to ignore its ruler. A more useful approach would be to stand back a little and try to understand what Bush is saying, and how he goes about doing things. We know already from various sources, that after "September 11" Bush is taking quite seriously the danger of Africa's failed states becoming a nurturing environment for terrorism. He is also learning that, more than poverty, disease and illiteracy, Africa's bad cases of instability are primarily the fruits of shattered dreams of freedom and democracy. His prescriptions may or may not work, but the White House interview reveals clearly that he is probably determined to deny Africa's despotic hard men a free hand. Historically, Uganda lies in the East African cluster of three; with Kenya and Tanzania. But during the last ten years or so, the reckless idealism of Uganda's leadership has drawn that country westward. In those few years of militarism, occupation, proxy manipulation and plunder, the country has made a geopolitical shift to become part of the Central African quagmire; the recent revival of the East African Community notwithstanding. President Bush and his foreign policy bureaucrats are beginning to understand what Bill Clinton probably didn't want to grasp, that Uganda has played a big role in making Central Africa one of the unstable regions on the continent. When Bush bids President Museveni and his army (the UPDF) not to return to the Congo, he is utterly serious. There is no point in helping to remove Mobutu from Kinshasa and then promoting a state of anarchy in eastern Congo. And there is no logic in working hard to tame the spread of HIV/AIDS at home but remain cynical about the conditions in which hunger, AIDS and other diseases have reportedly harvested three million people in a neighbouring country. The kind of frustration and despair this engenders in the region worries Bush. It is the very stuff in which the agents of terror could plant their saplings. We know already - and it is indicated again in the White House press transcript - that one of President Bush's preferred medicines for troubled places is "regime change", presumably because the value of easing current tensions is perceived to be greater than the risk of introducing new kinds of chaos. But he will not necessarily act on impulse. In the Liberia case, he hints at the various government departments that piece together the picture that guides his decisions. After he has decided, he can sound harsh and uncompromising, throwing some of the conventions of diplomacy out of the window. With Liberia's Taylor and Zimbabwe's Mugabe, he has come to that pass. Some of President Museveni's opponents would want him ostracized and lumped with With that approach, the USA will be better able to use the remainder of Museveni's lame duck years to strengthen its security and intelligence foothold in the region. As a bonus, tomorrow there may be oil and other big business as well. By 2006, the shenanigans of pre-election politics may have made Uganda a truly weird-looking member of the East African cluster. And there is a chance that Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo will have secured his image as the finest statesman in the Central African region. Museveni will appear even less relevant. If Bush is re-elected in 2004 and Museveni defies the 2006 rule, then the Ugandan opposition will begin to hear some really sweet music from Washington. That is why Museveni must read Bush's "impressionist" brush strokes very carefully. |
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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