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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35579 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Here is another gem from the NY Times archives:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, in attempting to solve the problems of Southern Africa, has unwisely made a villain of Robert Mugabe. Press accounts of his trip last month indicated that Mr. Vance wanted to edge Mr. Mugabe out of a new Rhodesian settlement. Earlier, a Vance aide wrongly likened Mr. Mtigabe's electoral possibilities to those of George C. Wallace.

...Mr. Mugabe leads one wing of the Patriotic Front in its struggle to end white rule in Rhodesia. The other wing's leader is Joshua Nkomo, whom Secretary Vance and others persist trying to separate from Mr. Mugabe and, somehow, to merge with the white‐sponsored ongoing internal settlement that is propelling Rhodesia to ward an internationally unrecognized form of black-and-white condominium...

...Mr. Mugabe has always shunned the kinds of Sybaritic trappings that are so common among exiled liberationists. His asceticism and integrity are well known. He has managed by force of example since 1974 to give political coherence to the otherwise unsophisticated posturing of the Karanga military command. As stubborn as Mr. Mugabe sounds, only he is capable of selling an effective, fair settlement to the guerrillas.

Emphasis mine -- basically you can see the "international community" was unwilling to recognize the more creative Constitiutional setup that allowed for black voting and black rule but kept disproportionate white power and ensured a more moderate black president.

This bad take didn't stop the author of this article from having prestigous career in foreign affairs:

Robert Irwin Rotberg (born April 11, 1935) is an academic from the United States who served as President of the World Peace Foundation (1993–2010).[1] A professor in governance and foreign affairs, he was director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict, Conflict Prevention, and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government (1999–2010), and has served in administrative positions at Tufts University and Lafayette College.

In 2003-2004, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Africa, and was a Presidential appointee to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2007 at the Kennedy School, he directed the establishment of the Index for African Governance, to help evaluate leaders for the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, awarded annually by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. A trustee of Oberlin College, Rotberg is a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. In 2013 Rotberg became the Fulbright Research Chair in Political Development at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada.[2]

Mr. Rotberg seems to have deleted his early life section

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