Robert I. Rotberg, director of Harvard's Kennedy School Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution and World Peace Foundation president, has an op-ed piece in today's Boston Globe in which he praises those world leaders who have stood up against Robert Mugabe, most notably Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel Great British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He concludes:
Zimbabwe's long, dark night of despair will not soon end unless Washington, London, and Brussels join forces to put massive private pressure on Mbeki. He and Jacob Zuma, his likely successor as South African president, hold the future of the remaining hungry, dispossessed, and afflicted of Zimbabwe in their so far temporizing hands.
Rotberg is certainly on to something, although his prescription, which includes his belief that South Africa must help “ease [Mugabe] out through jawboning, effective diplomacy, or the exercise of persuasive force,” embodies the vagueness that characterizes most of the criticism of South Africa's approach to Zimbabwe. Rotberg is rather unclear as to what he means by “jawboning” or “effective diplomacy” (as opposed, I imagine, to a plan of ineffective diplomacy?) or “the exercise of persuasive force.”