The United Nations and post-cold war conflicts in Africa: Liberia & Somalia

The end of the Cold War brought about shifts in the political landscape that provoked horrendous conflicts in Africa and beyond. A popular metaphor amongst analysts for this post-Cold War historical development is "tectonic motion". Because tectonic force has the power to reshape the contours of the earth's surface igniting earthquakes, volcanos and climatic changes, it becomes a good geological metaphor to explain the conflicts that have engulfed Africa since the end of the Cold War. This paper is an attempt to examine the post-Cold War conflicts in Africa, using Liberia and Somalia as primary case studies ( and other post-Cold War non-case studies) to demonstrate the UN dismal failure in responding to those conflicts as envisaged. Against the backdrop of Africa's apparent post-Cold War marginalisation, a question which is being raised centres on whether Africa can inaugurate its own peacekeeping and conflict management framework for the continent. Throughout the Cold War period, Africa was used as a geopolitical battle ground. African conflicts at that time were produced and assessed within the context of East/West confrontation for spheres of influence. Africa, to the major actors of the cold War, was important not as a continent that could relate to them in a mutually beneficial way, but merely as a pawn in the international political chessboard. The inability of the UN to respond effectively to many conflicts in Africa throughout the Cold War period was attributed to superpowers' rivalries. Successive UN spokespersons ha, on many occasions, posited that should the Cold War competition be brought to an end, ushering in an era of superpower co-operation, the UN would have a breathing space properly to execute its duties as a world institution. The demise of the Soviet empire transformed the Cold War. While the en of the Cold War was embraced with euphoria because of the reduction of the threat of a thermo-nuclear disaster, it also unleashed in its wake, multiple conflicts in Africa, thereby contradicting scholars who postulated "the en of history". The post-Cold War perception was that in the light of the huge cost exacted by their ideological and politico-military rivalries, the superpowers would, with the co-operation of the UN, maximise their political solutions to post-Cold War African conflicts. This assumption was derived from the premise that most African states that were in conflict were once satellite states of the two superpowers. Unfortunately, the expectation has failed to materialise. Based on this post-Cold War reality, this paper contends that Africa has outlived its usefulness geopolitically and geostrategically for the major powers in the Security Council. There is no longer a fear of Communist expansionism. The summation of the post-Cold War logic is: African solutions for African problems. This study deems it necessary to provide an alternative peacekeeping and conflict management paradigm for the African continent.