“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.” Henry Kissinger

It is not surprising that with all the commitment of resources to this work, the United States regularly fails miserably at identifying and supporting effective leaders around the world. Nowhere is this failure starker than in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

The Belgian government continued to subjugate the Belgian Congo until 1960. The United States inserted itself into the independence movement in the Congo in 1960 to back a junior Congolese Army Officer who would become President. To facilitate this, the United States was at least complicit in killing the popular nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba. President Mobutu Sese Seko would rule in his stead until 1997 while amassing a personal fortune estimated at over five billion dollars. Mobutu was a clown whose distinguishing style was his Leopard-print Fez hat. He and his family and friends all drove expensive new model Mercedes and built multiple Versailles-like residences around Congo while the common people died from starvation, disease and war. President Reagan referred to Mobutu as “a faithful friend to the United States for some 20 years,” describing their relationship as “based on shared interests and perceptions.”

We could have avoided empowering a brutal dictator like Mobutu in Congo. A Just engagement would have approached these based on a value for the other at least equal to Americans. The resulting support would have been conceived out of long-term relationship; invited by, not forced upon, the recipients; driven by empowered local leaders of character; designed in the interests of the local people as determined by the local people.

parentspriestsgenerals.com