Liberia has long been one of Africa's—and the world's—most troubling spots: the Economist
magazine voted it the "worst place to live" in 2003. In this utterly depressing account of the west African nation's history and politics, scholar and diplomat Pham offers a cautionary tale regarding Western intervention in Africa. Colonized by free American blacks in the early 19th century, Liberia has long been beset by tensions, not only among its native populations but between natives and the descendants of its Western colonizers. But Pham is no knee-jerk blame-the-West critic—far from it. As he points out, Western investment, by Firestone and other rubber companies, "served as the principal catalyst for Liberia's infrastructure." The author does, however, acknowledge that the workers were paid little for the labor that enriched the rubber companies, and that tribal chiefs were given a cut for the toil of their villagers. Liberia's worst times have come in the past two decades, with rampant corruption and civil war. In Pham's eyes, nation-states have failed, in Liberia and elsewhere in Africa, for a variety of reasons: tribal and ethnic tensions and the end of the Cold War, which allowed weak states propped up by the superpowers to tumble. Pham argues that these states must take responsibility for their own reconstruction and reconstitution as democratic nations, without Western intervention, if they are ever to emerge from their current struggle. A provocative thesis, for sure, one with which many will argue. (Mar.)
