A Rare Chance For Change.

HUMANITARIAN intervention; INTERNATIONAL security; HISTORY of West Africa, 1960-

LIBERIA; WEST Africa; UNITED States

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? United States 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 United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, West African leaders, Great 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.