Githii Mweru

Great Books: Paul Collier, Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places (2009)
Preliminary Remarks
I write this essay with strong emotions. I am not sure I see anything like a Great Book in this
book. I see it for what it is: an imperialistic book par excellence.

At the very least, the author is patronizing, condescending, paternalistic and utterly arrogant.
His language is cavalier for example, petty state of the bottom billion, export our
democracy, fortunately Jimmy Carter I could not help cringe at the suggestions. One
cannot even rule out an underlying racist mentality or the racist implications that Africans
cannot manage their affairs hence the need for intervention by the West1 and as Rodney notes,
it is in line with racist prejudice to say openly or to imply that their countries are more
developed because their people are innately superior, and that the responsibility for the
economic backwardness of Africa lies in the generic backwardness of the race of black
Africans.2

What is surprising is that Collier shamelessly has the audacity undeservedly assume a high
moral ground to write what he writes. The reading worth is for me simply because it reveals a
dangerous mentality increasing gaining currency in the West reminiscent of the civilising
missions and mentality that proceeded colonialism and slavery. This book deserves to be
ignored only that to do so would be a grave mistake since people genuinely concerned about
Africa ought to take cognisance of the mentality from a person who been the Director of the
Research Development Department of the World Bank in the period between 1998-2003 and
whose incredulous ideas are presently influencing the situation in Haiti where military his
1 See below where I argue that for Collier the international community is Euphemism for the West.
2 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. With a postscript by A.M. Babu Washington, D.C.:
Howard University Press, 1982, c1981. p. 21.

ideas intervention is already in place but no recourse to history is ever relevant. 3 His analysis
of what ails Africa completely misses the point. It is not Africa that is dangerous, it his
imperialistic ideas and those who buy these dangerous ideas that advocate for Guns to recolonize Africa. Imperialism camouflaged as humanitarian intervention and justified by
pseudo-science is certainly a dangerous recipe. He dares to refer to Africa as dangerous; it is
the ideas of Collier that are dangerous.

Q1 and Q2:

On Sovereignty, His Analysis Regarding, Structural Problems,

Governance, Smallness
On scrutiny, his work amounts to:
1. Showing that the South (he uses bottom billion states) is inferior (he uses the language
of difference to make a case that the South cannot manage their affairs.)
2. To achieve the above objective, uses dubious correlations and personal deductions to draw
sweeping conclusions.
3. On the other hand the West (he uses international community) is assumed to be the ideal
with institutions that work.
4. He therefore draws the conclusion and also wants the West to invade (his language is
intervene) and he camouflages this with humanitarianism.

The question of sovereignty does not arise, at least not in the context the proposal for recolonisation. What ails Africa is too much interference with slavery, colonialism and IMF/WB
death pills in the name of economic reforms. These neo-colonial forces are still interfering

3 Cheap sweetshop labour is for him a paradigm as he notes as a special advisor to UN Secretary General and
also to the Prime Minister in 2009 in Paul Collier, Haiti: From Natural Catastrophe to Economic Security - A
Report for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Due to its poverty and relatively unregulated labour
market, Haiti has labour costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark. Haitian
labour is not only cheap it is of good quality. Indeed, because the garments industry used to be much larger than
it is currently, there is a substantial pool of experienced labour. p. 19.

even as I write this sentence.4 Collier is simply out of order. All Western interference in
Africa has been disaster. Brutality, genocide, racism, segregation, rape, exploitation, sums up
the relationship that Africa has had with the West. Is that not enough? On what grounds would
Africa cede its sovereignty to the West,

racial superiority as Collier insinuates? Colliers

civilizing mission is as Christian. Colonialism was effected under the guises of the
Commerce, Christianity, and Civilization with the gun and the Bible at hand. The parallel of
Collier proposals are unmistakable: elsewhere in his work he talks about African resources
(corresponding to Commerce and to bring elusive prosperity to the south); Christianity (how
the Christian is exemplified as honest); and Civilization (Africa cannot govern it self); and
hence Guns held by the West in the name of security. Perhaps when Makau wa Mutua rewrites his article, Savages, Victims, and Saviours: The Metaphor of Human Rights5 he ought
to take cognisance of the fact that now it is not just human rights, security is gaining ground.

To suggest that African or Southern countries have a problem of too much sovereignty is to
suggest that Africans cannot govern themselves. He deliberates also chooses a period of 40 of
so year to suggest that the colonial period was better. It also suggests that someone else from
out knows better and can govern better. And this someone is the West. This is what
colonialism is. There are definitely challenges relating to size but Africa on its own initiative
is rising to the occasion. Yes, the states may be too economically small but so what? Collier
does not seem to think that Africa has known and knows this. Even though imperfectly, there
are already regional bodies for cooperation as well as working out some forms of cooperation
4 Business Daily, The Treasury has promised the International Monetary Fund (IMF) a three-year public sector
wage freeze, setting up government employees for a tough sail in an economy expected to come under increasing
inflationary pressure. The deal is part of the conditions for disbursement of the Sh40 billion that the IMF and
bilateral donors have promised Kenya to help shield the economy from forex rate fluctuation. Friday February
18, 2011.
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate+News/Treasury+puts+civil+servants+on+three+year+wage+free
ze/-/539550/1108280/-/4uk1a7z/-/
5
Makau W. Mutua, Savages, Victims, and Saviours: The Metaphor of Human Rights. Harvard International
Law Journal, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 201-245, 2001

in the African Union. Nkrumah and other proponents of Pan-Africanism knew that unity was
vital but forces of neo-colonialism could not allow for this to blossom.

It is true that there are problems related to governance and that some of what he notes may be
correct but the overriding concern here is not whether this is so or not. It is granted that
Africa has mis-governance but this is not the preserve of Africans. He sets that background as
the West (using terms as we our us international community e.t.c.) to attempt an
illegitimate isolations of the South and hence accomplish his civilising mission. The big
question is whether these governance concerns are unique to Africa or the South and also
whether they justify interventionist war. It can be easily shown, to undermine his difference
thesis, how the West is corrupt, ethnic and in deed responsible for the very ills that it is
supposed to solve through intervention. For him African people are presented as gullible and
manipulatable but this is so with the West too. How was Bush elected twice or is he the best
face of America? Talk of voter bribery and no elections surpass America with how money
rules. The special interests actually select who is to rule the citizenly are either resigned to this
by not voting or the are manipulated by sheer force of money. And now this electoral
manipulation has been elevated to constitutional principle by the Supreme Court through
unlimited funding of elections by corporations.

How about Berlusconi and Bush? Do they

represent the cream of Italian and American society?

On the Issue of Ethnicity, Conflicts and Politics

How can a representative of the West really forget history so soon? Not only was colonial
policy racist but they through such policies as divide and rule planted the seeds of ethnicity.
The way the colonialist cut-up and shared Africa, they way they destroyed African

mechanisms for conflict resolution and they way they practised racial and ethnic segregated
divided all have a being today. For example during colonialism in Kenya, no national wide
political parties were allowed but ethnic association were permitted. But even the later were
permitted after long agitation. For a detail account of how the imposition the colonial
nation-state bears on the present Collier should read, Davidson Basils: The Blackman
Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-state before maybe he will pause to think about
Africa as a Whitemans Burden. Rodney also makes a similar point saying that, Political
instability is manifesting itself in Africa as a chronic symptom of the underdevelopment of
political life within the imperialist context6 Mahmmood Mandani has this to say:
Alongside race, indirect rule introduced another political; market: ethnicity. Instead
of treating the colonised as a single racialised mass, indirect rule sliced them over not
once but twice.7
Why does not Collier write not talk about how democratic West massacred each-other and
involved the South in their wars (or was the logic of democracy as preemptive of political
violence not apparent then? Identity politics is not as phenomena of Africa alone. Collier
insinuates that the West is concerned about issues but he only needs to look at his backyard to
see how his superior Britain voted in the last general elections before he offers governance
lessons to Africa. Maybe he should heed the call by a former Chair of the Law Society of
Kenya now a commissioner in the Judicial Service Commission, Ahmednasir Abdullahi,
Spare Us The Lectures and Fix Your Electoral Systems where he, inter alia, in regard to the
British elections he noted:
Voting on tribal lines was the order of the day. This pattern was prevalent in England,
Wales and Scotland. In Scotland, the Conservative Party won a single seat.

6 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. With a postscript by A.M. Babu Washington, D.C.:
Howard University Press, 1982, c1981. p. 21.
7
Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. p. 25.

The voting system is corrupt and archaic. Take for instance the Liberal Democrats
who won 23 per cent of the vote, totalling 6,827,832 votes, but got only 57 seats.
Labour got 8,601,349 votes translating into 29 per cent of the vote and won 258
seats. How can a country that pretends to be a revered monastery of democracy have
such a flawed electoral system?
When one looks at the shambolic nature of this election, one could without any fear
of contradiction say that the UKs election miserably failed to reach the threshold of
acceptable international standards. 8(Emphasis mine)
This opinion on the ethnic nature and pattern of the voting in Britain is confirmed by even
British paper, The Telegraph, with headlines such as, English denied Tory Government by
Scottish and Welsh Labour Strongholds: English voters overwhelmingly gave their backing in
the general election for a new Conservative Government but have been denied by their
Scottish and Welsh counterparts.9

Rich Countries no longer fight each other and they no longer fight themselves so they fight
others in Iraq, Afghanistan and now they should be fighting under the banner of humanitarian
war? Yet they spend billions in military expenditures.

Without excusing the part that Africans have made, a proper account of responsibility for the
state of affairs ought to take account of history and prevailing unfair relations as Rodney put it
as noted by Rodney:
The question as to who and what is responsible for African underdevelopment can be
answered at two levels. Firstly, the answer is that the operation of the imperialist
system bears major responsibility for African economic retardation by draining
African wealth and by making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of
the continent. Secondly, one has to deal with those who manipulate the system and
those who are either agents or unwitting accomplices of the said system. The
capitalists of Western Europe were the ones who actively extended their exploitation
from inside Europe to cover the whole of Africa.10
8 The Daily Nation Saturday, May 15 2010. http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Spare%20us%20the
%20lectures%20and%20fix%20your%20electoral%20systems%20/-/440808/918884/-/q7642v/-/index.html
9 The Telegraph, Thursday 7th May 2010. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7692852/Englishdenied-Tory-Government-by-Scottish-and-Welsh-Labour-strongholds.html
10 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. With a postscript by A.M. Babu Washington, D.C.:

Apart from Collier's book failing to take account of history it also its take no account of
context. For the author, conflicts wars just occur.

Q3. Even if intellectually persuasive, are Collier's proposed remedies realistic and
feasible?
Collier is not persuasive in the first place. Principally because arguments are based are
methodologically flawed and I elaborate hereunder his account is ahistorical and without
context. So he does not have proper analysis of the issues that ails the South as he takes not
cognisance of the historical account as and the unjust structural imbalances that prevail
today.
Methodological Concerns Pseudo science

The book just gives conclusions and we have no opportunity to scrutinize the data on
which he says he relies to draw these conclusions.

Reading through his book one cannot but see a pattern of statistical concoctions. For
Collier, statistics are at his service for him to draw weird conclusions to suite his grand
imperial theory. If he wants to prove a point all he needs to do is to gather a few of
his friend and produce the relevant data then draw the conclusions.

Even giving him the benefit of doubt, he seems to make very broad sweeping
conclusion from very questionable associations. For example some research
attempting to show correlation between elections and infant mortality leads to a broad
general conclusion: electoral competition is not producing accountable government!
At the very least, this is manipulation and pseudo-science

Howard University Press, 1982, c1981. p. 27

The book is full of sweeping conclusions based on very selective and highly
contestable correlations and partial information some of which is highly subjective.

He seems to easily transpose from one context to another. Its is amazing how he
scuttles with hits data and conclusions from Kenya, Iraq, Somalia, Nigeria, Chad,
Congo, India, UK etc.

While an interpretation on the West is taken as given and no data is needed to validate
claims. The same is not true of South research is needed e.g. in the mature
democracies our political leaders smile: they are desperate to ingrate themselves with
their masters, the voters. So much for voter concern and smiling have a look at
Bush, Blair, Berlusconi! While the first two should be facing trials over crimes against
humanity as commanders-in-chief in the War against Iraq as wiki-leaks has shown
wanton torture and killing of civilians was prevalent while the third, the smiling
Berlusconi, needs to extricate himself from allegations of sexual misconduct. Where
is the evidence that in the case of us (the West) democracy contributes to less
political violence?

Is democracy simply instrumental in the sense of bringing peace or development.?

And who claimed that African struggles are simply for the purpose of managing
political violence? Who said elections is all what democracy is about? Who said
democracy was to secure peace? How about democracy in Yugoslavia and the former
Soviet union with the attendant break-up. Werent there breaks-ups? What is the per
capita income rationale?

What for Africa could be complexities of the issues history, politic, economy,
ethnicity, etc, for Collier, they are simple statistical questions that are explainable by
some isolated research. What is could be true in one in a particular context, sometime
this is even personal judgement, translates into a generalisation.

His method is reductionist. Complex issues get reduced to remote correlations and
strong casual conclusions are drawn. Only a civilising science is carried this way.

He makes broad sweeping often subjective statements that are potentially contested,
without either bothering to define or even qualify. Such as:
o The international community is agreed on the goal of intervention. (Since
when? who agreed?
o Economic reform what are these?
o Considerable improvements in economic policies and governance what are
the standards and criteria?
o What for instance is war? Was not the whole of colonial period a continuing
war?

The Book Has No Sense of History11

In order to have a clear understanding of why Africa remains underdeveloped, it by is not
enough to simply look at Africa without looking at its history as well as the current
relationship that that continues to exist with other places especially in the West and this was
noted quite clearly by Walter Rodney in his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa:
Mistaken interpretations of the causes of underdevelopment usually stem either from
prejudiced thinking or from the error of believing that one can learn the answers by
looking inside the underdeveloped economy. The true explanation lies in seeking out
the relationship between Africa and certain developed countries and in recognising
that it is a relationship of exploitation.12
If one needs to understand the problems of Africa, one has to look at history of the
relationship between the West and Africa to how Western savagely and the rape of African
11 Rodney comments of Western scholar explanation of underdevelopment, and one cannot fail to see the
applicability to Paul Collier noting that, However, the bourgeois economist in question does not give a
historical explanation, nor does he consider that there is a relationship of exploitation which allowed capitalist
parasites to grow fat and impoverished the dependencies.
12 Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, London and
Tanzanian Publishing House, Dar-Es-Salaam 1973, Transcript from 6th reprint, 1983; Transcribed: by Joaquin
Arriola. p. 37.

people and resources has had devastating effects. It all began with the Gun which is now the
solution couched as Security.

Who barbarically and savagely sliced up Africa in a cannibalistic scramble for Africa
in during the Berlin Conference in 1884/5? Did these brutes care for the people of
Africa and how they would cut up communities? They even hard the audacity to
allocate Congo as a personal property of the dictator of Belgium, Leopold II.

Why

does Collier not talk about this brutality and how millions died? For him this is simply
a misfortune of Belgium colonialism!

Yes, as Collier says, Mobutu was a dictator but how did he come to power and wasnt
he a darling of the West? Werent both Western powers USA, Belgium and UK
involved in the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba who was not only democratically
elected but had a vision for a united Africa which the West feared?13

How about the devastation that West rendered to Africa by slavery? And one needs to
note that slavery contributed negatively to Africa and positively to Europe.

Should not Collier be writing about how to make reparation to Africa rather than to
invade Africa? For a start in this project, he ought to begin with a recent book by his
compatriot Carolene Elkins Imperial Reckoning: The Untold story of Britains Gulag
in Kenya14 which show the genocide, torture and murder the British inflicted on the
people of Kenya even in the dying days of direct colonialism.

Context of Conflicts and Under-Development

Collier ought to take the follow concern in to account:

13 See for example details of CIA, Belgium and UK involvement. David Akerman, Who Killed Lumumba?
BBC documentary. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/974745.stm
14 Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. New York : Henry
Holt and Company, 2005

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That there are serious global trade imbalances perpetuated under the World Trade
Organisation and Economic Partnership Agreement. This imbalance also has a historical
root

That many conflict, as Michael Chossudvisky ( an economist too) including in such

places as former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda,

have been precipitated by the free

market globalisation agenda to which Collier seems dedicated. In fact he reaches totally
opposite conclusions to Collier namely that it is the peace interference by IMF/WB that
is the cause and catalyst for war but as the following passage show he too needs to catch
up since war now is now explicitly advocated:
The imposition of economic and macro-economic and trade reforms under the
supervision of IMF, world bank and World Trade Organisation purports to
peacefully recolonize countries through the deliberate manipulation of market
forces. While not explicitly requiring the use of force, the ruthless enforcement of
economic reforms nonetheless constitutes a form of warfare. More generally, the
dangers of war must be understood. War and globalisation are not separate issues.
..The IMF, World Bank an WTO which police country level economic reforms
also collaborate with NATO in its various in its various peace keeping endeavours,
not to mention financing of post-conflict reconstruction under the auspices of the
Bretton Woods institutions.
On Solutions
This book is laden with them and us categorisations that are clearly reminiscent of
civilizing missions of colonialism. Who is us and who is them? This is a strategy that is
employed by all oppressors intent to dehumanize others, to make the other seem as if they are
incapable of managing their affairs and to justify taking control of their lives and resources all
in the name of humanitarian interventions (this is nothing less than War by the West on the
South). They assert some form of difference. Who is, for instance, the bottom billion states?
This is an amorphous categorisation. For me, increasingly it is becoming evident that
impoverishment is not the preserve of the South; it is and perhaps has always been a question
of small elite both in the North well as in the South controlling vast recourses. Globalisation

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is only making this more evident as Michel Chossudovsky notes in his compelling book, The
Globalisation of Poverty: and the New World Order where he notes:
since the 1980s, a large share of the labour force in the United States has been driven
out of high pay unionized jobs into low pay minimum wage. Thirdwordization of
Western citiespoverty in America ghettos is in many respects, comparable to that of
the Third World. 15
With the recent financial meltdown this process has been hastened and one only needs to look
have a casual look at the news to see that pictures that were characteristically associated with
the South are becoming common place in the North. 16 There are emerging billionaires in the
South17 who often collude with the West in their plunder. The point here is that does not make
sense to talk of billion bottom states though more poverty may be found in the South.

I also take issues with international community from the usage in the book turns out to be
simply euphemism for the West as most references seem to speak the international community
Africa where does seem I not part of.

In any case looking at the who controls the

undemocratic institutions like the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, Collier may be right is
the descriptive sense but not in the prescriptive sense. In fact the latter organisations that have
had dire impact in Africa are most undemocratic and are run on the basis of might is right
since the countries say is weighted by the dollar contributions. The five UN Security Council
veto powers reflect simply might not right; perhaps even outdated might as it was then 1945.
Perhaps Collier should first advocate that these organisations to democratise first before he
talks of his intervention.
15 See Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalisation of Poverty: and the New World Order. Pincourt, Qubec:
Global Research, 2003 (2nd ed.) p.3.
16 See for example article by Cain Burdeau, Katrina's Ruins Home to Thousands of Homeless. where said
Martha J. Kegel, the executive director of UNITY is quoted as saying "The homelessness here does seem very
Third World, and that shouldn't be happening in America in 2011. I am just horrified by the magnitude of the
problem." The Washington Post. The Associated Press. Sunday, February 13, 2011; 12:00 AM.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/12/AR2011021201406.html
17 Forbes, The world's billionaires have gained $1.2 trillion in collective net worth since 2009, and now 56
countries have at least one billionaire among their citizens . This includes billionaires from Africa.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/09/billionaires-2010-richest-people_interactive-map.html

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Collier and the West have no moral say to lecture Africa on the issue of violence. On what
grounds could a person who, most likely, is a beneficiary of the Wests violence and of
plunder on Africa lecture Africa on violence? The only equivalence to this kind of moral highground is a white supremacist in America, himself a beneficiary of slave trade, who lectures
the black community on the horizontal violence in the ghettoes saying that during slavery
there was less violence. If there is one word that sums up the relationship between Africa and
the West the word is violence perhaps the other is Rape. And if any single item has defined
and continues to define the relationship it is: gun. It should not be lost upon those that are
perceptive than collier knows no other strategy but guns this time sugar-coated as military
intervention. Come to think of it and the irony: he proposes the solution to Africa wars with a
grand WAR! Only that this time it is War by the international community (read the West).

Who are donors? Again the West and its structures IMF and World bank are assumed to be
donors? There is no such a thing. Africa is the donor. This is so if one takes into cognisance
that there is net outflow of resources in the serving of debt. That Africa pays more than it
receives is can be seen from the following:
A cursory glance at Africas debt profile shows that the continent received some
$540 billion in loans and paid back some $550 billion in principal and interest
between 1970 and 2002. Yet Africa remained with a debt stock of $295 billion. For
its part, SSA received $294 billion in disbursements and paid $268 billion in debt
service, but remains with a debt stock of some $210 billion. Discounting interest and
interest on arrears, further payment of outstanding debt would represent a reverse
transfer of resources. That Africas debt burden has been a major obstacle to the
regions prospects for increased savings and investment, economic growth and
poverty reduction cannot be denied.18 (Emphasis mine)
The picture that emerges from Collier work is an efficient honest West that plays by the rules
and a corrupt criminal greedy Africa that requires Western saviours. Would he give Africa a
18 UNCTAD, Debt Sustainability: Oasis or Mirage?, 2004, p. 9.
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break! It takes two to tangle. The story of capital flight that implicates both African and
Western players and other global players is undeniable and the basis for Collier moral highgrounding implying that there is less corruption in the West is unfounded. Did not the global
financial crisis expose just how greed and corruption reigns in the West?

This collusion

between greed from African lackeys and from the West ensures that even at the private level,
there is net outflow of resources from Africa as Global Financial Integrity Report shows:
Estimates [for the period 1970-2008] show that over the 39-year period Africa lost an
astonishing US$854 billion in cumulative capital flight--enough to not only wipe out
the region's total external debt outstanding of around US$250 billion (at endDecember, 2008) but potentially leave US$600 billion for poverty alleviation and
economic growth. Instead, cumulative illicit flows from the continent increased from
about US$57 billion in the decade of the 1970s to US$437 billion over the nine years
2000-2008.19
Why is Collier adopting a holier-than-thou attitude and is silent on this complicity and not
taking responsibility?

19

Global Financial Integrity, Global Financial Integrity, Illicit Financial Flows from Africa: Hidden Resource
for Development. Available at;
http://us-cdn.creamermedia.co.za/assets/articles/attachments/27265_gfi_africareport_web.pdf

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