Bruce Whitehouse concludes his overview, in London Review of Books. of what happened in Mali (pretty much the standard story), with this paragraph:

What does Mali’s spectacular slide from celebrated democratic model to failed state augur for the rest of Africa? The number of electoral democracies on the continent has fallen from 24 to 19 in the last seven years. It may be that Mali is a portent of state collapse to come, as the façade of democracy erodes, exposing the informal government mechanisms that really run the show. What if, as the historian Stephen Ellis has argued, the increasing fragility of African states is ‘an early sign of a wider problem with the system of international governance’ built after World War Two? Western powers are discovering that in Africa, as in Afghanistan, there are limits to their ability to impose or even reform state systems. It may be that the way to help these societies sort out their conflicts is to let them do it on their own.

Especially that last line, rankles.  “The way.”  Not one among many possible good ways.  Maybe as a matter of tactics, the U.S. military doesn’t understand subtlety, and when you are writing in LRB they and State Dept. are your audience (hence the “impose”), so this is code language for don’t do really stupid things like invade northern Mali.

But for any other audience (after all, who is “help” referring to?), I just can’t get over the sentence’s odd phrasing: “these societies” and “their conflicts” on “their own”…. these, their, them their…. not language of “our”…. As if Mali was a “them” different from “us.”  As if readers of London Review of Books knew who “us” was?  Especially coming from an anthropologist who has written about transnational communities.

Obviously my discomfort is a subtle thing, but imagine someone writing about Russia, urging a human rights civil society group to go easy on their reporting of prison conditions, and stop meeting and supporting local civil society advocates, because Russia should “do it on their own.”  I’d really be much more interested in concrete and well-thought-out suggestions for civil society cooperation and coordination, than advice to “let them do it on their own.”

PS.  I also really dislike pop culture analysis like this, and was surprised to see it: “Malians love to blame their country’s predicament on foreign (particularly French) interference, but they seldom examine their own role in the weakening of their country’s institutions.”  It is fine to say these kinds of things in private, as conversation, but as an “expert”?  Is there any methodology behind this statement?  How was “love” measured?  A nationally-representative survey?  What is the frequency of “seldom”?  Is “seldom” the same as the number of times Americans in ordinary conversation question whether they should be more politically active regarding the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?