MAKING THE PERFECT THE ENEMY OF THE GOOD:

War Justifies All: Donald Rumsfeld courts a repressive government in the horn of Africa. (Alex P. Kellogg, 12/17/02, American Prospect)

When U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld concluded a whirlwind tour of the horn of Africa and the Persian Gulf last week, he left in his wake more than just a handful of new allies in America's war on terrorism lined up behind him -- most of them countries that prior to September 11 rarely turned up on America's geopolitical radar. He also lent legitimacy to at least one government whose policies in recent years oppose everything the United States claims to stand for.

Rumsfeld's four-country tour of the region began on Tuesday, December 10 here in Eritrea, where he spent several hours meeting with President Isaias Afewerki before being whisked off for a similar meeting in Addis Ababa with Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi. He and Afewerki emerged from their meeting saying that Eritrea and America had agreed to cooperate closely in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

"This is a country that has been dealing with the problem of terrorism in the same way our country has," Rumsfeld told reporters at a press conference in the Eritrean capital. "And we both agree that these kinds of problems require cooperation over a sustained period of time."

Yet given its policies in recent years, Eritrea -- a country with which the United States has had strained relations at best for the past 14 months -- makes for a strange bedfellow. Of late, the euphoria in this part of the globe that surrounded Eritrea's 1993 independence has turned sour, as its government has failed to make the transition to multiparty democracy and its once-promising young president has overseen a descent from nationwide
unity to disturbing authoritarianism.

This would seem to be one of the instances that Russell Kirk (via Pat Buchanan) raised, where it is less important that a state become precisely like us than that we accept an unideal ally when it serves our own national interest. We should definitely prod them toward greater political freedom, but better a "strange bedfellow" than that we sleep alone. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 21, 2002 9:05 PM