A Rare Chance For Change.(Western powers can help stabilize West Africa)(Editorial)

Morrison is the Africa program director for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The crisis in Liberia has its roots in a broader regional decline that, over the course of the 1990s, has severely undermined West Africa's prospects for stability and economic growth. Several already weak countries--among them, Sierra Leone, Guinea and even the relatively prosperous Cote d'Ivoire--have devolved into nasty models of state failure, criminalized governance and human devastation. The question is, what can be done to not just stop but reverse the hideous slide into near anarchy?

President George W. Bush is now weighing how or whether the United States will re-engage to help fix Liberia--the biggest regional problem. Opponents of intervention argue that Liberia's situation is hopelessly complicated, that U.S. forces are stretched too thin, that the United States has no strategic interests at stake and that this sort of "social work" is best left to Africans and Europeans. In fact, the United States today has a unique and unexpected opportunity to work in concert with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, West African leaders, Britain and France to contribute significantly to restabilizing both Liberia and the broader West African region.

As West Africa's regionalized war escalated in the 1990s, Western powers looked away. Instead Nigeria, the regional hegemon, committed high numbers of peacekeepers to Liberia, with decidedly mixed results. Over time, the discipline of the Nigerian forces deteriorated and they became subject to, and part of, the criminalized networks they were supposed to be breaking up. Popular support for intervention within Nigeria faded. Moreover, Nigeria at the time was under the vicious, plunderous rule of Gen. Sani Abacha, and the regional consultative body ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) was internally divided.

The good news is that over the past several years, key West African democracies--Senegal, Ghana, Mali and newly democratic Nigeria--have stepped into the breach. They've made a serious commitment of diplomacy, peacekeeping troops and money to help establish peace. In addition, the U.N. Security Council is doing its part: imposing sanctions barring diamond, timber and weapons trafficking; curtailing travel by Charles Taylor and his inner circle; commissioning ...