The history of mankind is one in which the strong conquer the weak. One does not need to cite vast statistics and or issue extensive footnotes to support this well-known fact. Going all the way back to Roman times and beyond and even to this very century, stronger nations and peoples have invaded the lands of weaker ones and forcibly taken them over when they thought their national interests justified such action. Indeed, as of this writing, there are still colonial entities out there being ruled from far away countries.
The United Nations has a list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. There are seventeen countries currently on this list, from American Samoa to Western Sahara. The widely held belief that the era of colonialism or imperialism is over is therefore not supported by the available data. Russia’s current activities in the Ukraine and its actual takeover of Crimea clearly indicate that the era of the strong taking the territory of the weak is still with us.
Here in Africa, in spite of all this evidence, we appear to have lulled ourselves into the belief that having gained our independence, we have no reason to fear being re-colonized again. We clearly do not behave as if we fear any such a fate in spite of our own very recent history.
I suspect that this lack of concern is fueled in part in our belief in the international organizations of the modern era such as the United Nations. Institutions such as the Security Council would certainly not countenance an invasion of Africa for purposes of re-colonization, we have led ourselves to believe.
The idea appears so far outside the realm of the probable that we think of the possibility of re-colonization as being as inconceivable as the resurrection of mass slavery. The irony is that both of these “obsolete” institutions are still thriving in one form or another, yet we do not seem inclined to nor are we putting in place the necessary structures to guarantee our independence for the long term.
Ironically, the very countries that sit on the Security Council which is the supposed guarantor of world peace spend vast sums of money to beef up their defenses to guarantee that their territories are not forcibly taken over by others. The United States, a founding member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the Security Council spends many multiples of the defense budgets of any potential adversaries to keep them at bay. It is certainly not relying on Security Council resolutions for retaining its independence as we seem to do.
Of course the obvious question one needs to ask is why any potential colonizers will replay the imperial or colonial game. Indeed, one might argue that if the Europeans knew what they know now, that their countries would be flooded by immigrants, mostly from their former colonies, they would have thought twice about their previous colonial misadventures or structured the imperial relationships differently. For that matter, would the Americans have imported the huge numbers of black African slaves they did, if looking into the future they could foresee the consequences, the racial battles and animosities that appear intractable despite the best efforts of people of goodwill? I very much doubt it. The law of unintended consequences, by its very name, is not a predictive law.
So why should we worry ourselves silly about being re-colonized? “Why would any sane people want to take on Africa’s multitudes of problems?” we might well ask. This question presumes that one of the objectives of a conqueror includes the taking on and the solving of the problems of the conquered. Part of the genesis of this mythological interpretation of the colonial history is the post facto justification of colonialism as being, at least in part driven by a “civilizing” (or Christianizing) mission of the colonized peoples. History does not support this view. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, his objective was not to solve the problems the Ukrainians were having under Stalin in spite of what Nazi propaganda led the Ukrainians to believe and they soon found out otherwise. Indeed, our own colonial history, encapsulated by how the railroads were laid out in the then Gold Coast show that the British did not come to solve our transportation problems, but rather to extract our resources from the hinterlands for export to the British Isles.
Clearly, when Europeans invaded the Americas, resource extraction and land acquisition were the main objectives. History tells us the native people in the Americas did not fare very well during and after they were invaded and conquered. Let us also remember that a major reason Africans as a whole did not suffer the homicidal fate of major portions of the native peoples of the Americas was because nature provided us with the biological weapon called the anopheles mosquito. This is no more the case with the availability of anti-malarial prophylactics. And pretty soon, there may also be vaccinations against malaria. Our previous savior has been neutered. But the question still remains: “Why would anybody in his right mind want to re-colonize Africa?” I propose below a potentially credible answer to this question worthy of some consideration.
So far, scientists who have looked at the potential impact of global warming, mostly non-Africans, have focused, in the case of Africa, on the potential for drought, resulting in civil conflict on the continent. The theory is that weak African governments and societies will be unable to cope with the resulting stresses and will wither, resulting in massive chaos in Africa. In short, these scientists have predicted that Africa’s fate in an era of global warming will be purely in the hands of incompetent Africans with other non-African nations acting merely as spectators, perhaps giving a charitable hand here and there, when possible. We will call this “The Theory of Passive Outsider Impact on Africa’s Global Warming Future”.
Now, it has also been suggested that a consequence of global warming may be the possible disappearance or shutting down of the warm currents in the Atlantic that keep European temperatures reasonably warm. Under some predicted scenarios all of Europe could turn into a solid block of ice several miles deep as a relentless winter descends on that continent. The science is not conclusive and has been challenged as mythological, but a recent article in the Washington Post (September 7, 2015) by Joby Warrick titled “New Studies Deepen Concerns about Climate Change Wild Card” has resurrected the validity of this apocalyptic scenario. I am not a climatologist and I am not pretending to be in a position to argue for or against the validity of the “Frozen Europe” scenario.
We Africans ought, however, to be aware of these discussions and should be asking ourselves what impact the “Frozen Europe” might have on our continent just in case it came to be realized. The question we need to be asking in our Think Tanks is what Europe will do if it does indeed appear to be on the verge of becoming covered by mile-high chunks of ice. Of course, Plan A is to prevent this from happening in the first place and the Europeans, along with the rest of the world are working furiously on technologies that might minimize climate change and keep any such possibilities at bay. But if we know anything about the West, it is that they typically do not restrict themselves to a Plan A and then sit back and hope for the best. They usually have a Plan B, C, D, E and F. Some of these plans, though quite fantastical, have been broached in public. One possibility is a move to a different planet inside or outside the solar system.
The fact of the matter is that the scientific work has already started on identifying the so-called “Goldilocks” planets outside the solar system that might be suitable for human habitation. Right now, this research appears to be motivated by scientific curiosity, but the fact remains that it is the early work needed to accomplish a mass migration from Earth of the peoples with the necessary technical abilities if and when the circumstances demand it and the technology, which is being developed as we speak, becomes available. As an aside, I hope we Africans do not expect that, if mass migration from planet Earth becomes necessary and we do not have the technology which we are making no effort to develop, that our Western “friends” will create space on their ships for us. If we think getting a visa to Europe or the United States is hard enough now, imagine trying to get on board a European or American space ship heading to these new habitats as the Earth approaches inhabitability. But all this is in the very, very far future.
The obvious short term approaches to a “Frozen Europe” consist of two possibilities.
1. European governments can watch their populations freeze and starve to death.
2. They can migrate en masse to warmer places right here on Earth.
I think we can all agree that no sensible government, if it can do something about it, would settle for the first, which clearly leaves the second as the only viable option. And where are the people of Europe likely to find a warm place that can be easily taken over and if necessary, colonized? Where are they likely to find a “defenseless” people just a stone’s throw from their borders? All one needs to do is to consult a map and the answer is obvious.
Now, let me be clear. I do not know for a fact that such a heinous plan is in the works or is likely to be carried out in the immediate future. And history tells us that there will be many, many Europeans and other Westerners who will fight with all their might against any such plan, risking their lives and fortunes to make sure such an evil act does not come to pass.
The fact of the matter, however, is that when national survival is at stake, charitable feelings may very well get chucked out the window. We Africans should not plan our national survival based on the charitable inclinations of others. Nobody else does.
The next major migration of peoples, if the consequences of global warming outlined above become reality may therefore very well be the movement of major portions of the European populations south into Africa. The delicious (or maybe not so delicious) irony is that the next “Syrians” in the planet’s migratory future may very well be Europeans fleeing their continent across the Mediterranean down into Africa.
However, unlike the current flood of migrants into Europe, these people might not plead with us, relying on our humanitarian impulses to be let in. They could, led by their powerful military forces, easily kick down the flimsy doors of our border posts, overwhelming us and taking for themselves the best and most fertile lands on the continent, Security Council resolutions notwithstanding.
Nothing that currently exists on the continent of Africa can guarantee against our being subjects of these same European peoples again if they so wished or felt it had be so as a consequence of the coming potential transformation of the globe due to global warming. Considering the long range planning that the West is known for, it would not surprise me in the least if the planning for just such an operation is already being discussed in the innermost recesses of NATO headquarters in Brussels. Let us call this scenario “The Theory of Active Outsider Impact on Africa’s Global Warming Future”. I do not believe we in African have even contemplated this possibility nor are we by any stretch of the imagination prepared for it.
Other than perhaps South Africa, there is no serious defense industry or capability on the continent of Africa. Let us be frank. Our militaries are a joke as we found out when Boko Haram easily kept kicking the butt of the Nigerian Army, supposedly, the mightiest in black Africa. With that in mind, I am willing to bet that any single European country (perhaps with the exception of Monaco and Lichtenstein) could sweep across Africa and be at the South African border in less than a month.
Certainly, a combined NATO force could do so in probably less time than that. And this is 50+ years after we have been independent from colonial rule, a period in our history brought about by military defeat by Europe but from which we appear to have learnt nothing about the strategic consequences of being militarily unprepared.
Let us on the other hand take the example of Israel. The Israelis are a people who actually started into the abyss of mass extermination. They have a big and powerful friend in the form of the United States. Numerous Presidents of the United States have assured the Israelis that their defense is in the national interest of the United States. No such guarantee has been given to any African country by any foreign power except perhaps for France half-heartedly looking out for their former colonies. And yet the Israelis have developed a robust defense industry with a military to match. One could argue that they live in a dangerous neighborhood, but as the Ukrainians found out, an otherwise friendly neighbor can turn on you overnight if it fits their national or geopolitical interests. Ask the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam if they ever expected the Chinese to claim all of the South China Sea and begin to make claims on their territories. The answer probably is no, but that is what is happening now that China feels strong enough and has decided this course of action is in its national interest.
We can, of course, keep on hoping that the Security Council, if we were ever invaded, will marshal the resources to save us. As the Kuwaitis found out, however, but for a different American President in the White House, they would be subjects of Sadam Hussein today. Even if the risk is not from refugees fleeing an abandoned European homeland, it may well be from some future event that none of us have yet considered. Right now, metaphorically speaking, all the doors to Africa are wide open and the fact is, if we continue to leave them in that state, we should not be surprised if we wake up one day and our most precious belonging in the form of our God-given continent, has been taken from us, once again.
