“IF YOU’RE SO EVIL, EAT THIS KITTEN!” UNCONVENTIONAL LEVERAGE AT THE

GLOBAL PERIPHERY Valerie Freeland, Northwestern University. Draft: do not cite or circulate. Ever. Not even with author’s permission Abstract: In international relations just as in James C. Scott’s (1985) Malay village, the wealthiest and most powerful are vulnerable to reputational attacks. Their global activities proceed more smoothly when others view their exercises of power as kind to the poor or powerless, or as serving causes like democracy-promotion or human rights. Because of these reputational needs, many powerful states and international organizations find themselves constrained in using that power in their relations with peripheral countries, even where international law and bilateral agreements dictate that they should, lest they damage the legitimizing myths developed to support their global activities, be it as promoter of justice, democracy, economic growth or sovereignty. Within this context, governments in peripheral states can choose to support or detract from the legitimating myths on which great powers and international organizations depend, gaining leverage as a result. They develop ongoing relations with particular states or IOs as symbolic players in their partners’ mythologies—as “donor darlings” or “beacons of liberty”—and as the more powerful actor grows increasingly dependent on that symbolic partnership, the less powerful state gains greater freedom to act in its domestic politics and regional affairs.

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I. INTRODUCTION

The Tick, a nigh-invulnerable comic superhero devoted to pursuit of justice, is in a bind.

To thwart a pair of criminals’ diabolical scheme, he must infiltrate a band of supervillains. One

villain doubts Tick’s evil credentials, and poses a challenge: “If you’re so evil, eat this kitten!”

Unable to devour the innocent creature, Tick’s cover is blown. In other words, his long-term

commitment to justice makes him fail the test but, at the same time, failing hampers his shorter-

term pursuit of justice in this context. The explanation for his exercise of power in The City,

which normally legitimizes use of force and destruction of property, becomes a constraint that

allows less powerful villains to advance their agendas.

The same trade-off exists in international relations. Great powers and international

organizations (IOs), like the Tick, use legitimating myths to explain their interventions into other

countries’ domestic affairs. Donor states may style themselves as democracy-promoters or

protectors of debtors’ sovereignty, while aid organizations and international courts claim to

defend the most disenfranchised within less powerful states’ societies. These back-stories may be

more fact-based or more disingenuous, but are deployed to signal benign intentions and

competency in areas that affect others, especially others with limited capacity to defend

themselves. But why do even the most materially powerful states invest resources in maintaining

their personal myths? Furthermore, why do they sometimes risk undermining those myths when

dealing with individual less powerful states?

I contend that while powerful actors’ legitimating myths enable a variety of activities,

under some circumstances they become constraints that provide their less powerful counterparts

with leverage to pursue goals that were otherwise unachievable. Like the Tick, whose devotion

to Lady Justice temporarily blocks his pursuit of criminal masterminds, more powerful states and

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IOs often face situations where their broader missions—and the reputations those missions

support—seem to depend on undermining those missions in the short-term. A debtor state’s

value as a successful economic reformer may be so high that creditors cannot afford to

acknowledge, let alone punish, the government’s shortfalls. If they opt for the Tick’s solution

and walk away from their “donor darling”, they lose authority within the aid community as

competent promoters of economic growth. But if they play along—if they ‘eat the kitten’—a

symbiotic relationship develops. The less powerful side has leverage over its benefactor and is

able to extract more resources, security and reputational capital as a result, but can only maintain

this leverage if it continues seeming like a supporter of its powerful ally.

This paper begins by introducing the concept of the legitimating myth and outlining both

the mythologies great powers use and the actions they sought to legitimate. It then provides an

overview of two ways myths can bind powerful actors who need to show their benevolence to

the system’s most vulnerable members, at which point they become caught in an asymmetrically

interdependent relationship. Post-Rose Revolutionary Georgia’s courtship of the Millennium

Challenge Corporation (MCC), an American good governance fund, shows the interaction of two

countries’ legitimating myths, and outlines the ways these states became indispensible to one

another. It concludes with implications for the study and practice of international relations.

II. LEGITIMATING MYTHS AND GEOPOLITICAL AMBITIONS

Countries regularly tell stories about themselves to their populations and to one another.

None of these stories reach a wider audience than those of great powers and IOs that intervene in

the domestic affairs of states much less materially powerful than their own. Great powers are

protectors of former colonies or their own nationals abroad, promoters of democracy, or the last

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defenders of peripheral governments’ sovereignty. Because of these stories’ social purpose, I call

them legitimating myths.

Legitimating myths are stories states tell about their identities and their roles in

international society. States use these to explain and, when successful, gain others’ acceptance of

actions and affiliations that affect the system as a whole. The story pertains to but does not

determine the legitimacy of the state or of its actions. If legitimacy is social recognition of an

actor or action as “good, proper, or commendable”1 or a collective judgement that codes of

conduct “ought to be obeyed,”2 then legitimation is the ongoing process of gaining recognition

from one’s peers as a member in good standing of one’s society, as a respected authority within

that group, and even as a maker and implementer of social rules. The story is a myth not because

it is necessarily false, but because its symbolic elements can take on more causal importance than

its adherence to empirical fact. By the same token, the legitimating myth can accomplish many

of its goals without being accepted wholeheartedly by its audience. It need only be close enough

to the truth that the audience accepts it as a token of the state’s good intentions and agrees—at

least for the moment—to overlook minor inconsistencies.

Powerful states clearly value these myths and the acceptance they can yield since they

invest resources in their creation and maintenance. Great powers and regionally powerful actors

go to great lengths to signal benign or community-minded intentions abroad. States have

launched peace enforcement operations through regional and global IOs, despite administrative

complexities and even where they gain neither legality nor cost-sharing by doing so.3 States use

Security Council rulings to justify their actions since the latter’s paradoxical combination of

1 Katharina Coleman, International Organisations and Peace Enforcement : the Politics of International Legitimacy (Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 20. 2 Ian Hurd, After Anarchy: Legitimacy and Power in the United Nations Security Council (Princeton University Press, 2008), 30. 3 Coleman, International Organisations and Peace Enforcement.

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“extensive powers and political limitations” make it both uniquely dependent on its own

legitimacy and uniquely capable of conferring legitimacy on others.4 IOs’ centralization and

apparent independence, moreover, allow states to use IO approval to signal an action’s

conformity to communal norms.5 In each case, states invest time and resources to portray

themselves in a favourable light. Legitimating myths often serve immediate purposes in

coalition-building and sorting other states into a cast of characters, some more and some less

likely to benefit from the intervener’s use of power. But great powers’ tendencies to use myths

even when they are not actively building coalitions suggest that they place high value on longer-

term reputation management for projects not yet conceived. A good reputation can be deployed

in many directions, and is worth preserving even when no immediate benefit appears.

Ruling regimes also value mythology on the domestic front, and regularly use them to

order the societies they rule. Early European nationalism gave dynastic monarchs a way to

justify their rule over particular populations6 and to facilitate military recruitment.7 Socialist

ideology provided justification for Afro-Marxist regimes’ attempts to restructure their societies.8

Similar claims to revolutionary leadership secured popular compliance with totalitarian regimes

in North Korea and Burma after their performance legitimacy based on economic growth had

collapsed. These regimes’ audiences—that is, the populations they rule—need not take the myths

as absolute fact. Indeed, under many authoritarian regimes, populations are aware of the charade

4 Hurd, After Anarchy, 12. 5 Kenneth W. Abbott and Duncan Snidal, “Why States Act through Formal International Organizations,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 42, no. 1 (February 1998): 3–32. 6 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983). 7 Charles Tilly, “States and Nationalism in Europe 1492–1992,” Theory and Society 23, no. 1 (February 1, 1994): 131–146. 8 Marina Ottaway, “State Power Consolidation in Ethiopia,” in Afro-Marxist Regimes: Ideology and Public Policy, ed. Edmond Joseph Keller and Donald Rothchild (Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner Pub, 1987), 25–42; James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New edition (Yale University Press, 1999).

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in which they participate as a survival strategy, like the Soviet workers who “pretended to work”

just as authorities “pretended to pay them.”9 But the mutual delusion between state and subject

unfolds according to an agreed-upon script, their roles provided by the collective mythology that

orders interactions. Since rulers want to maintain myths that work to their advantage, they have

incentives to continue playing a given role even where it may limit their options, despite all

players’ knowledge that they are performing in a work of fiction.

The same two-way delusion unfolds in inter-state relations, with great powers and

influential IOs assuming the ideological ruler’s part. Since their actions have such potential to

help or harm others, great powers deploy legitimating myths to gain social acceptance of those

actions. Each professes a unique, historically-grounded ability to promote the ‘true’ interests of

less powerful states, particularly those in the developing world. These myths gained heightened

importance after the Cold War when stories of shared opposition to communism or capitalism no

longer sufficed. Great powers did not reinvent their mythologies, but recontextualized their Cold

War personas for a post-bipolar audience.

The US tends to style itself as a promoter of democracy worldwide. While American

concerns have often centred more on geopolitics than ideology,10 foreign policy failures led

officials to reassert the country’s role as a democracy-exporter. Cold War policies left the state

supporting “some of the most corrupt and tyrannical of Africa’s governments” which risked

undermining its new image,11 and failures in Iraq and Afghanistan drove the government to seek

9 See Timur Kuran, “Now out of Never: The Element of Surprise in the East European Revolution of 1989,” World Politics 44, no. 01 (1991): 7–48; Lisa Wedeen, “Acting ‘As If’: Symbolic Politics and Social Control in Syria,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 40, no. 03 (1998): 503–23; Monique Skidmore, Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) for analysis. 10 Michael Klare and Daniel Volman, “The African ‘Oil Rush’ and US National Security,” Third World Quarterly 27, no. 4 (2006): 621–623. 11 David F. Gordon, David C. Miller, and Howard Wolpe, The United States and Africa: A Post-Cold War Perspective (W W Norton & Company Incorporated, 1998), 78.

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out cases where democratization efforts seemed to succeed.12 Georgia’s Rose Revolution proved

timely, and the pro-Western Mikheil Saakashvili’s accession to power prompted US President

George W. Bush to label Georgia a “beacon of liberty for [the] region and the world.”13 The US

maintained this position as Georgia’s domestic politics became quasi-authoritarian. It offered

Georgia a Millennium Challenge Corporation grant despite its failure to meet the fund’s

criteria—a case I examine in more detail below—and pushed for Georgia’s NATO membership.

In highlighting and exaggerating successes, the US sought to direct attention away from its

failures and reassert its benevolent interventions in other states’ affairs.

British and French stances toward their former African colonies come laden with

mythology rooted in imperial history. France remains interventionist, largely driven by fear of

“Anglo encroachment” in Francophone territories.14 The need to guard against supposed Anglo-

Saxon ambitions, which some have termed the “Fashoda complex” after the battle that thwarted

the country’s imperial ambitions, informed at least a century of French African policy.15 Its

professed role as protector justified such dubious actions as removing Jean-Bédel Bokassa from

power in the Central African Republic and arming Juvénal Habyarimana’s troops prior to the

Rwandan genocide: the soon-to-be génocidaires were “regarded as worthy of support because of

the Anglophone character of [their] enemy.”16 Up to 2007 the international community tacitly

accepted that Côte d’Ivoire lay in France’s ‘sphere of influence’, something Franco-African

elites appeared to encourage, and the EU continues to look to French decisions in its former

12 Interviews with George Khelashvili, Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi), April 27, 2011; George Tarkhan-Mouravi, Institute for Policy Studies (Tbilisi), September 19, 2012. 13 Times (London), 11 May 2005. 14 Daniela Kroslak, “France’s Policy toward Africa: Continuity or Change?,” in Africa in International Politics: External Involvement on the Continent, ed. Ian Taylor and Paul Williams (Routledge, 2004), 66. 15 Mark Huband, The Skull Beneath the Skin: Africa After the Cold War (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 2001). 16 Huband, 319.

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colonies as policy-making cues.17 Europe looks for similar post-colonial cues from the UK.18

British rhetoric centres on human rights and an “ethical foreign policy” to explain its continued

involvement in Commonwealth Africa, and it has engaged in subtler interventions than France.19

But the two countries share a re-imagining of colonial roles that permits continued intervention

into their former territories but frames those actions, rightly or wrongly, as beneficial to less

powerful states’ sovereignty or their citizens’ security.

It is not only great powers and former colonizers who tell stories about their roles in

international society. Middle powers like Canada and Norway have often promoted themselves

as peacekeeping countries more fully committed to humanitarian intervention than great powers

bound by geopolitical concerns. Rising powers may become “norm entrepreneurs”, hoping that

by promoting a new standard of behaviour they will carve out a niche in world politics.20 Smaller

states use legitimating myths to gain recognition or respect from powers to which they might

otherwise be inconsequential. Romania professed its importance to European society in the

Middle Ages when its core principalities were dwarfed by neighbouring kingdoms, and again as

it emerged from the Soviet bloc, with reference to its Roman heritage history of shielding the

West and European Christendom from Eastern encroachment.21 Georgia also touts its European

heritage—one can hardly locate a country history that does not first locate the Golden Fleece of

Greek legend in its Western regions—though this has met with a cooler European reception.

17 Maja Bovcon, “Françafrique and Regime Theory,” European Journal of International Relations 19, no. 1 (March 1, 2013): 19–20; Bruno Charbonneau, “Dreams of Empire: France, Europe, and the New Interventionism in Africa,” Modern & Contemporary France 16, no. 3 (2008): 280. 18 Michael S. Kargbo, British Foreign Policy And the Conflict in Sierra Leone, 1991-2001 (Peter Lang, 2006). 19 Paul Williams, “Britain and Africa after the Cold War: Beyond Damage Limitation?,” in Africa in International Politics: External Involvement on the Continent, ed. Ian Taylor and Paul Williams (Routledge, 2004), 44–48. 20 Ann E. Towns, “Norms and Social Hierarchies: Understanding International Policy Diffusion ‘From Below,’” International Organization 66, no. 02 (2012): 179–209. 21 Lucian Boia, Romania: Borderland of Europe (Reaktion Books, 2001), 63.

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But while countries of all statures use mythology and rhetoric to explain or secure a role

in the international social order, stories of the most powerful have the greatest methodological

importance. They set the stage for reversals of fortune since, in justifying use of their material

power, they almost invariably imply limits on how they will use it. Even if these limits are purely

rhetorical at the outset, the larger power is liable to encounter a situation in which what they

want to accomplish directly opposes the supporting mythology they must use to do it.

III. EATING THE KITTEN: HOW LEGITIMATING MYTHS BIND

When the Tick refused to eat the kitten and thus failed to gain entry into the supervillain

world, he drew attention to an equilibrium that can emerge between actors of markedly different

material powers. The nigh-invulnerable superhero normally has the physical might to intimidate

any one of the evil-doers whose world he wished to infiltrate, but his commitment to using that

might in the service of justice made it difficult for him to gather the information he sought. The

same stalemate can emerge between materially weak countries and great powers or IOs with

significant mobilizational power. In these cases, though, a relationship will often develop which

is sustained both by mutual benefit and a kind of two-way blackmail. These relationships are

asymmetrically interdependent.

Asymmetrical interdependence refers to two actors’ mutual capacity to harm one another in

spite of their great conventional power disparities. Essentially, an asymmetrically interdependent

relationship is an ongoing game of reputational chicken, but one in which the more powerful

actor’s strength constrains its options, as it faces greater reputational damage if it moves first. At

the same time, the more powerful player draws reputational capital from its good treatment of the

other so long as the latter offers rhetorical support of its goals. Crucially, this risk and benefit

stems from the powerful actor’s material power or political voice, since inflicting harm on a

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seemingly defenceless state would damage its legitimating myths. Just like in domestic politics,

rich and influential actors are vulnerable to “symbolic sanctions” that paint them as selfish or

malevolent power-holders.22 As a result, the relationship gives leverage to the party that usually

has less material and social power, though only for as long as it keeps up appearances.

The least powerful try to disguise domestic policies that fit poorly with global expectations,

but where evidence remains, asymmetrical interdependence ensures that the investigating

authority wants to maintain the illusion of compliance. In a somewhat counterintuitive turn,

peripheral state support is sometimes more valuable than others’ since only these can provide

first-hand testimony of the great power or IO’s treatment of vulnerable countries. Great powers

invest significant resources into gaining those testimonies. Poor states can secure funds by

legitimizing great power expansionism, as Nauru and Tuvalu did for Russia by recognizing

Abkhazia and South Ossetia, likely hoping this would help create a veneer of legitimacy for its

expansionism and retaliate for its loss of influence in Kosovo.23 Governments with patchy human

rights records can secure funds by condoning great power military interventions elsewhere: the

US offered Guinea and Angola, amongst others, large aid increases for their Security Council

votes supporting its Iraq invasion.24 A government may even amass so much moral authority that

any criticism of its policies becomes intrinsically risky. The Kagame regime in Rwanda, for

instance, invokes its role in ending that country’s genocide—and, by implication, the UN’s

failure to intervene—to justify its operations in the DR Congo.25 In each case, a vulnerable

state’s approval, or withheld disapproval, is a marketable good only that population can sell.

22 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 25. 23 Bridget Coggins, “Friends in High Places: International Politics and the Emergence of States from Secessionism,” International Organization 65, no. 03 (2011): 433–67. 24 Laura McClure, “Coalition of the Billing - or Unwilling?,” Salon.com, March 12, 2003. 25 “Congo Killings ‘May Be Genocide’,” BBC News, October 1, 2010.

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In short, each side has “dirt” on the other, but also strong incentives to continue pretending

that the other is faultless. The less powerful party risks insecurity and financial ruin should it end

the game by calling attention to its partner’s deceit, while the more powerful risks being

perceived at best as a bully, and at worst as having sold out own its humanitarian, peace-building

or developmental projects by having withheld punishment in the first place—or even participated

in actions supposed to incur punishment. Peripheral states find this leverage in several ways: it

may lie in their internal fragility, or they may make themselves indispensible to actors seeking to

bolster legitimating myths. While the benefit to the materially weak often takes the form of

financial reward or absence of material punishment, the reputational benefit to the more powerful

side can take different forms depending on its partner’s internal attributes and strategic location.

i) States (not) breaking states

A pedestrian steps impulsively into oncoming traffic. The closest car screeches to a halt,

despite having the right of way, and allows the pedestrian to cross the road illegally. Why does

the motorist brake where formal rules are to her advantage? In fact, the physical might offered by

the automobile is the primary reason she cannot exercise her legal rights. Because the pedestrian

would suffer serious injury or death should she fail to brake in time, she would always remain

conscious of the harm she had caused and some reputational stain, uncomforted by the laws in

her favour. The vehicle’s material strength forbade her from doing what the law permitted.

Donor states and organizations can find themselves in this position. The consequences for

governments if they violate human rights or engage in gross political corruption may be explicit

in aid or loan agreements, but if aid withdrawal risks political or economic collapse, donors will

be reluctant to take agreed-upon measures. In the late 1990s international pressures on the

Taliban regime in Afghanistan had limited effect since the bulk of the aid that the government

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received was humanitarian and attaching conditionalities was frowned upon.26 Since punishing

the Taliban regime would necessarily harm its most vulnerable subjects, international leverage

faced severe limitations. In these cases, leverage derives from weakness.

Immediate post-war Sierra Leone’s extreme fragility became leverage with the British.

Of the many international actors involved by the war’s end, Britain played the most important

Western security role: a UK deployment after the Lomé Peace Accord, for instance, had a

mandate to protect United Nations peacekeepers in the country.27 When the UK had either to

push Sierra Leone into thorough accountability for war crimes or to withhold criticism, other

states were inclined to follow its lead.28 Not wanting to trigger state collapse, the British allowed

a de facto, targeted amnesty to persist in the country, and other states generally followed suit.

As its civil war ended, Sierra Leone faced intense international pressures to hold war

criminals accountable. But complex wartime identities and a fragile state made this dangerous.

There had been insurgent collaborators in the military, civil society, and amongst politicians,29

and “[a]ll factions specifically targeted civilians.”30 Uncontrolled airing of grievances was not in

any combatant party’s interest, as shown in successive peace agreements’ blanket amnesties for

atrocities. But international opposition to amnesty forced the government to make concessions

and provide for a tribunal. The UN’s representative attached a reservation to his signature on a

peace agreement and warned that the UN was pressuring him to withdraw its peacekeepers, a

statement the government read as a “clear threat” demanding legal accountability for atrocities.31

26 James K. Boyce, “Development Assistance, Conditionality, and War Economies,” in Profiting from Peace: Managing the Resource Dimensions of Civil War, ed. Karen Ballentine and Heiko Nitzschke (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005), 301–304. 27 Interview with Momodu Koroma, former Foreign Minister of Sierra Leone (Freetown), April 5, 2012. 28 Kargbo, British Foreign Policy And the Conflict in Sierra Leone, 1991-2001, 225. 29 Interview with Bishop Joseph Humper, Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chair (Freetown), July 9, 2010. 30 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Sierra Leone, Witness to Truth: Report of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Volume II p 33. 31 Interview with Momodu Koroma, former Sierra Leone Foreign Minister (Freetown), April 5, 2012.

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International agencies were preventing relapse into state failure, but strongly objected to what the

government had seen as the surest way to accomplish the task.

The government’s solution was to implement a high-profile Truth and Reconciliation

Commission (TRC) that did more to shape and suppress the truth than to promote accountability.

Most people were more concerned for material reparations and survival than revisiting the past in

the TRC’s repentance and forgiveness style.32 But the TRC’s failure to generate popular

investment was valuable that it restricted the amount and kind of “truth” that could emerge to

destabilize society. When the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) began operation in the

TRC’s late stages, this selective truth was already available for its use. Moreover, poorly-defined

relations between the two, competition for key witnesses, and rumours that they were

collaborating stifled information flows and likely prevented more incrimination of government

actors in particular.33 Behind the scenes and in public, the TRC’s mechanisms were calibrated to

produce a particular kind of story, airing certain truths whilst covering up many more.

The UK set the tone for international observers in the post-conflict arena, and the

likelihood that Sierra Leone would relapse into state failure under pressure turned the state’s

frailty into its greatest strength. Britain had special interest in Sierra Leone’s non-failure since it

would be responsible for clean-up should its former colony collapse. The British were motivated

by the “embarrassment” President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah’s ouster had constituted for the

Commonwealth,34 and the desire not to waste the resources it had already sunk into conflict

resolution. The TRC’s selective mandate also made sure that British mercenaries who had been

32 Rosalind Shaw, “Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone,” International Journal of Transitional Justice 1, no. 2 (July 1, 2007): 200; Tim Kelsall, “Truths, Lies, Ritual: Preliminary Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone,” Human Rights Quarterly 27 (2005): 386; Interview with Yasmin Jusu-Sheriff, Human Rights Commission (Freetown, 8 July 2010. 33 Interview with Joseph Rahall, Green Scenery (Freetown, 5 July 2010). 34 The Guardian (London), 10 January 1998.

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involved in early wartime operations, and whose possible links to UK state officials had caused

scandal within the former metropole, would not be investigated.35 Exercising wilful ignorance

allowed Britain to preserve its influence with the ruling regime as enforcers of human rights and

good governance norms, which it often used leading up—and perhaps contributing—to the

Kabbah government’s loss of power. It used this influence to commandeer the Anti-Corruption

Commission, an institution it had previously imposed on the country: a top Kabbah government

official described drafting ACC legislation as mere “playing to the gallery.”36 British and EU

support may have enabled Kabbah’s loss of the 2007 elections when, disenchanted with his more

recent record, they approved of the Electoral Commissioner’s illegal cancellation of votes in four

hundred South-Eastern polling stations, in the outgoing party’s heartland.37 Preventing state

collapse in the early post-war days was a priority for several reasons, ranging from concern for

the population and narrower British interests. Ignoring imperfect transitional justice was

necessary to that end, but this imperative lessened as the state moved further from failure.

ii) Preferential treatment for the useful poor

Great powers and IOs may refrain from exercising legal rights out of a desire for order

and not becoming responsible for disorder, as the British did in Sierra Leone. They may also

leave their hands unplayed when dealing with less internally fragile states if the latter are

uniquely placed to offer rhetorical support for their legitimating myths. The supporter state’s

material weakness on a global scale remains crucial, though it may be internally capable and

even influential in its sub-region. Unlike its more fragile cousin, this state matters for what it can

contribute to as well as how it might detract from the global power’s story. In this way it can

trade its rhetorical support for the other’s concessions. A prime example appears between the

35 Interview with Paul Richards, Wageningen University (Wageningen) July 23, 2010. 36Interview with Momodu Koroma, former Sierra Leone Foreign Minister (Freetown), April 5, 2012. 37 Interview with Joe A.D. Alie, Fourah Bay College (Freetown), April 3, 2012.

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Ugandan government and donor countries and international financial institutions (IFIs). By

cultivating a reputation as a “donor darling”, the country served as a symbol of donors’ correct

and successful approaches to economic growth, but the burden of maintaining the its symbolic

value fell at least as much to donors as to their recipient when Ugandan governance fell short of

their benchmarks.

When Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army captured the Ugandan capital in

1986, international observers were quick to name him as one of the continent’s “new leaders”

committed to political and economic reform. In keeping with their expectations, Museveni began

implementing a structural adjustment package negotiated in the late 1980s, which seemed to

yield strong economic growth rates soon after.38 Actual reforms were opportunistic and often

failed to meet donors’ substantive criteria. The regime implemented donor conditions slowly and

selectively. Divestment of state-owned enterprises gained momentum once the government

learned to “direct and manage the privatization process.”39 Where pressures existed, minimalist

efforts at deceiving donors often sufficed. In response to donor demands for both a slashed

military budget and increases to spending in education and health, for instance, Museveni placed

training of reservists under the Ministry of Education’s auspices and medical care for veterans

under the Ministry of Health’s.40 As donors’ focus shifted from growth to poverty-reduction and

good governance, the government adapted accordingly. Over time, domestic institutional change

entrenched the state’s and donors’ roles as financial planners via a fusion of ministries that

created a single interlocutor for relations with bilateral donors and IFIs.41 The result has been a

38 E. A. Brett, “Rebuilding Organisation Capacity in Uganda Under the National Resistance Movement,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 32, no. 01 (1994): 54. 39 Andrew M. Mwenda and Roger Tangri, “Patronage Politics, Donor Reforms, and Regime Consolidation in Uganda,” Afr Aff (Lond) 104, no. 416 (July 1, 2005): 451–454. 40 Interview with Godfrey Asiimwe, Makerere University Department of History, Kampala, 1 July 2011. 41 Graham Harrison, “Post-Conditionality Politics and Administrative Reform: Reflections on the Cases of Uganda and Tanzania,” Development and Change 32, no. 4 (2001): 64–65.

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mutually dependent relationship between donors and recipient, in which the former backed a

symbolically useful but de facto authoritarian regime with “cascades of cash.”42

The Ugandan government was not the only one pretending, and its pretence did not fully

conceal its half-hearted reforms. Donors consciously turned a blind eye to the regime’s creative

approach to reform. Early in the structural adjustment period, donors refrained from using the

leverage of conditionalities for fear of “upsetting the economic balance” in the country, creating

political disorder, and wasting the political capital it had invested.43 At the same time, apparent

success allowed IFIs to frame their reform packages as the correct route to economic growth and

justify their interventions on the continent and worldwide. Uganda was a “major case of

economic success in Africa” for others to emulate, and a reproach to countries that failed to

reproduce its success.44 One donor official remarked that Ugandan successes allowed them to set

higher benchmarks for other countries, noting that “If Uganda can do it, no other government has

an excuse.”45 As IFIs invested political and financial capital in their “darling”, the need for it to

remain a positive example increased.46 To protect and bolster their myths as pro-growth—and

later, pro-democratic—reformers in the developing world, donor states and IFIs needed to

pretend that policies directly undermining those aims were unfolding in Uganda.

The enabling effects within Uganda and the region were broad. Corruption in the

Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) ran rampant when excess military spending went

unpunished. When the UPDF intervened in the Eastern DR Congo, military entrepreneurs set up

their own business networks to export plundered minerals and other resources, all of which was

42 Mwenda and Tangri, “Patronage Politics, Donor Reforms, and Regime Consolidation in Uganda,” 452. 43 Ellen Hauser, “Ugandan Relations with Western Donors in the 1990s: What Impact on Democratisation?,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 37, no. 04 (1999): 623; Harrison, “Post-Conditionality Politics and Administrative Reform,” 672; William Reno, “Uganda’s Politics of War and Debt Relief,” Review of International Political Economy 9, no. 3 (August 2002): 417. 44 Mwenda and Tangri, “Patronage Politics, Donor Reforms, and Regime Consolidation in Uganda,” 451. 45 Cited in Reno, “Uganda’s Politics of War and Debt Relief,” 430. 46 Harrison, “Post-Conditionality Politics and Administrative Reform,” 660.

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facilitated by the force’s pre-existing status as a patronage network.47 Creditors remained silent

on the matter, by this time needing the country’s success to legitimize the Highly Indebted Poor

Country (HIPC) programme, and thereby showed “tacit acceptance of war-related commerce.”48

This status allowed the government to forestall democratization until it had sufficiently

centralized its patronage rule that elections posed only minimal threat to its hold on power.49 The

range of policy areas in which the Ugandan government has been able to violate liberal

economic norms, human rights and even international law seems to have increased rather than

contracted over time, all because it has served so neatly as a lead character in donor mythology.

The notable feature of this relationship is donor states’ and IFIs’ decision to undermine

pursuit of their stated goals in one case, apparently to further those goals worldwide. Museveni

was not passive, and has been adept at making his country indispensible to outsiders, providing

them not only with a selective view of the facts but supplying the context for interpreting that

information.50 But donor states and IFIs have been just as conscious participants in the charade

and, unlike the UK’s wilful ignorance in post-conflict Sierra Leone, they have drawn more on

organizational goals and active bolstering of legitimating myths than on protection of a much

weaker partner and avoiding reputational stains.

IV. MYTHOLOGY IN ACTION: THE US AND GEORGIA

When mythologies coincide, the result can be mutually beneficial and mutually binding.

The less materially powerful side gets access to funds while the more powerful earns that

reputational glow that only the weak can confer upon the strong. A prime example of twin

47 Sandrine Perrot, “Entrepreneurs de l’insécurité: la face cachée de l’armée Ougandaise,” Politique Africaine 75 (October 1999): 60–71. 48 Reno, “Uganda’s Politics of War and Debt Relief,” 425. 49 Hauser, “Ugandan Relations with Western Donors in the 1990s,” 622; Peter Mwesigye and Lillian Muyomba, Deepening Democracy in Uganda: Legislative and Administrative Reforms ahead of 2011 Elections, ACODE Policy Briefing Paper (Kampala, 2007), 2. 50 Jonathan Fisher, “Managing Donor Perceptions: Contextualizing Uganda’s 2007 Intervention in Somalia,” African Affairs 111, no. 444 (July 1, 2012): 405.

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mythologies in action exists in Presidents George W. Bush and Mikheil Saakashvili’s

reinvention of US-Georgian relations, especially in Georgia’s early receipt of a Millennium

Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant despite its still-unreformed civil service and movement

toward a quasi-authoritarian ruling style through elite patronage. Each needed the other for

internal and international reasons, but to fulfil that need each had to pretend that the other’s

democratic and democratizing credentials were strong.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in the 2004 Rose Revolution that

deposed Eduard Shevardnadze after the latter tried to falsify election results. From the beginning,

Saakashvili and his supporters portrayed themselves as pro-Western and particular allies of the

US, in contrast to Shevardnadze’s Soviet ties and Russia-friendly stance. Despite limited direct

American involvement in the Rose Revolution, the victorious side flew US flags and mounting a

billboard that read “Thank You U.S.A.” in the capital.51 Georgia’s self-portrayal as a success

case of American democracy-promotion secured its importance to the superpower.

Misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan had damaged the US’s reputation, which it sought to

bolster via emphasis on its role as a defender of democracy.52 President George W. Bush was

quick to accept the credit Georgians offered to the US and, in a speech in Tbilisi, called Georgia

“a beacon of liberty for this region and the world”; the Georgians repaid the favour by renaming

the route between the capital and the airport “George W. Bush Boulevard”.53 Proximity to Russia

increased its value as a pro-Western state54 and it sought to lock in this status.

51 Lincoln Mitchell, Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia’s Rose Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 45–47; Stephen F Jones, “The Rose Revolution: A Revolution without Revolutionaries?,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19 (March 2006): 42. 52 Interview with George Tarkhan-Mouravi, Institute for Policy Studies (Tbilisi), September 19, 2012. 53 Times (London), 11 May 2005; Associated Press Online, 4 June 2007. 54 Interview with Vladimer Papava, Georgian Foundation for Strategic and International Studies (Tbilisi), April 11, 2011.

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Georgia’s own mythology and material vulnerability made preferential status with a

Western backer both possible and essential. Pro-Western rhetoric mobilized a country still trying

to re-imagine itself as a state in its own right, and aimed to build relations with states that saw it

as a post-Soviet fragment.55 Western imagery signalled a break from the Shevardnadze era’s

corruption and nepotism, and the Rose Revolution allowed Georgians to “feel European again.”56

The country also needed a Western supporter to counter Russian ambitions in the region, and had

neither Azerbaijan’s oil nor Armenia’s diaspora to provide it with funds or political voice.57 Just

as the US was seeking a smaller partner to support its legitimating myth as a democratizer,

Georgia was renegotiating its status as what one official called a “pure European country”

building high-quality democratic institutions.58 The result was a lucrative partnership.

Saakashvili turned these coinciding mythologies into cash and security. The former came

with the country’s receipt of an MCC grant. Formally, the MCC—a US government fund aimed

at promoting good governance institutions and liberal economic policies—identifies states that

qualify for aid based on their domestic policies. Aspirant governments must meet measurable

standards of corruption-free governance, market economic practices, and investment in human

capital.59 Unofficially, aspirant states try to showcase their viability in advance. Courtship

between Georgia and the MCC began under Shevardnadze when US Treasury Secretary Paul

O’Neill toured the region in 2002 in search of potential MCA recipients.60 But after his

55 Interview with Irakli Menagarishvili, former Georgian Minister of Foreign Affairs (Tbilisi), September 13, 2012. 56 Ghia Nodia, “Breaking the Mold of Powerlessness: The Meaning of Georgia’s Latest Revolution,” in Enough!: The Rose Revolution in the Republic of Georgia 2003, ed. Zurab Karumidze and James V Wertsch (New York: Nova Science Publishers Inc, 2005), 95–104. 57 Interviews with Archil Gegeshidze, GFSIS (Tbilisi), September 13, 2012; Irakli Menagarishvili (Tbilisi), September 13, 2012. 58 Interview with Eka Sepashvili, Office of the State Minister on European and Euro-Atlantic Integration (Tbilisi), September 21, 2012. 59 State Department, Seventeen Countries Eligible for New U.S. Aid Program Funds; MCC Chief Applegarth Says Disbursals Could Begin by End of 2004, n.d. 60 Kavkasia Press, 16 July 2002; Economic News, 17 July 2002.

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departure, Shevardnadze remarked that Georgia’s status remained unknown, since only countries

embracing the most “comprehensive and all-embracing economic reform” would receive

benefits. Competition was high between developing countries for MCC recognition, as well, and

Shevardnadze noted the difficulty Georgia would have implementing the necessary reforms.61

Neither levels of corruption nor quality of governance under Saakashvili did much to

advance Georgia’s case before the MCC. Of the indicators aspiring countries, corruption is

ostensibly the sole “non-negotiable” factor.62 Saakashvili had undeniable success rooting out

bribe-taking at low levels of bureaucracy and policing, and more or less ridding the country of

the organized crime that once governed Georgia. Yet reliance on elite corruption and quasi-

authoritarian rule remained high throughout his tenure. A small inner circle managed the

“minutiae” of decision-making outside their constitutional roles, while oppositionist media

outlets were subject to legal and illegal attacks, business-owners suspected of disloyalty to the

regime were shut down, and party members were often exempt from the rule of law.63 As such,

Georgia was not on the initial list of eligible states even with a surge of international goodwill.

But the Saakashvili government secured a MCC grant despite the country’s serious

shortfalls in the supposedly non-negotiable area of corruption. The organization argued its point

in a statement submitted to US Congress, claiming that its decision was based on the country’s

“reform potential” and the need to recognize changes the regime had implemented.64 The choice

was a purely political one originating in the US government, however, and the underlying logic

61 Georgian Radio, 22 July 2002. 62 Emma Mawdsley, “The Millennium Challenge Account: Neo-Liberalism, Poverty and Security,” Review of International Political Economy 14 (August 2007): 494. 63 International Crisis Group, Russia vs. Georgia: The Fallout, Europe Report, August 22, 2008, 5; Anonymous, April 14, 2011; Interviews with Erekle Urushadze, Transparency International (Tbilisi, 10 September 2012) and George Tarkhan-Mouravi, Institute for Policy Studies (Tbilisi), September 19, 2012. 64 Eurasianet, 19 July 2004.

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remains unclear.65 The US government continued direct governmental assistance to Tbilisi,

including several hundred million dollars via the MCC, even as the state’s increasingly

authoritarian approach to liberalization pushed many Georgians further into poverty.66 Alongside

positive reforms, many aspects of Georgian governance continued to worsen even as MCC funds

continued to flow into the state budget. In November 2007, Saakashvili ordered violent closure

of Georgia’s most important private television station, which triggered popular protests.67 The

President’s reputation among the Americans remained untarnished, though: in July 2009, Vice

President Joe Biden expressed his “unequivocal support” for Georgia as Saakashvili spoke of his

anti-corruption exploits.68 US approval for the Georgian President’s less savoury domestic

practices remained firm up to the very late days of his tenure and helped the regime craft as

strong supporters of democratic governance, anti-corruption and the rule of law.

The American decision to cast Saakashvili’s Georgia as a democracy assistance success

story not only proved resilient, but enabled the Georgian government’s quasi-authoritarianism.

Officials that heaped praise on the ruler in his early days were reluctant admit to mistakes of

judgement, and organizations responsible for disbursing aid were reluctant to recommend

punishment measures that would reduce their budgets—and as a result, their influence.69 The

flow of American funds to the country, meanwhile, not only increased but entered through less

monitored channels than regular democracy assistance does. Democracy assistance funds pass

through a watchdog organization, are more difficult to justify providing to a state one has

declared democratized.70 Issues of corruption and quality of democracy remained less important

65 Interview with George Khelashvili, Tbilisi State University, April 27, 2011. 66 International Crisis Group, Georgia: Sliding Towards Authoritarianism?, Europe Report, December 19, 2007, 13. 67 International Crisis Group, Georgia: Sliding Towards Authoritarianism?, 2; Freedom House, Nations in Transit Report: Georgia, 2008. 68 BBC Worldwide, 9 July 2009. 69 Interview with George Welton, Open Society Georgia/Geowel Consulting, (Tbilisi) April 29, 2011. 70 Interview with George Khelashvili, Tbilisi State University, April 27, 2011..

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for the US than issues of geopolitical stability.71 Saakashvili used this to his advantage by

threatening to sell a major pipeline to the Russian firm Gazprom, thereby securing a larger MCC

package as compensation for having to declare the pipeline a strategic entity not eligible for

sale.72 More broadly, funds like the MCC that come with conditionalities constitute strategic

resource flows that tie donor countries to Georgia’s security: if the donor says the recipient has

met conditionalities, they have a far more difficult time backing out of the partnership.73 The US

championed Georgia in its failed bid to join NATO, which it argued was Georgia’s only defence

against Russian expansionism,74 a view some observers saw as vindicated when Georgia’s non-

receipt of a Membership Action Plan was closely followed by the August 2008 war with Russia

over Abkhazia and South Ossetia.75 American officials even overlooked abuses within the

penitentiary system whose discovery led to the government’s loss of the 2012 Parliamentary

elections.76 The Saakashvili regime ultimately failed to portray itself as democratic to its own

people, but its approval by the Americans remained untarnished to the end.

Georgia needed a patron at the same moment that the US needed a client, and each one

had traits that made the other an ideal partner. The match was far from perfect, but the benefits of

pretending outweighed the risks of seeming disingenuous. While one might expect a country like

Georgia to need a strong (and non-Russian) outside supporter, it is more surprising to note the

extent of the US’s apparent need for Georgia to be classed as democratic. Somewhat tangible

benefits could have appeared in rebranding other American interventions as pro-democratic and

offering some containment of Russian ambitions, though these effects were far from uncontested.

71 Interviews with George Tarkhan-Mouravi, Institute for Policy Studies (Tbilisi), September 19, 2012; Archil Gegeshidze, GFSIS (Tbilisi), September 13, 2012. 72 Interview with Vladimer Papava, GFSIS (Tbilisi), April 11, 2011. 73 Interview with David Aprasidze, Ilia University (Tbilisi), April 27, 2011. 74 International Crisis Group, Russia vs. Georgia: The Fallout, 12. 75 Interview with Archil Gegeshidze, GFSIS (Tbilisi), September 13, 2012. 76 Interview with Soso Tsiskarishvili, Independent Experts' Club (Tbilisi), September 21, 2012.

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But its vigorous support of the Saakashvili regime to its detractors suggests that a reputation as a

good and generous power-holder is valuable for strategic reasons, if only in the longer term.

V. CONCLUSION

The legitimating myths great powers and IOs invoke when they intervene in others’

affairs suggest that ideological commitments and global ambitions are not easily separated as

motivators to action. If these mythologies were true representations of powerful actors’ designs

on the world, those actors would not likely become caught up so regularly in side-deals that

seriously undermine their stated goals in particular cases. On the other hand, if the myths were

pure façade, less powerful states would display little if any confidence in the implied limits each

one suggests on the type and extent of interventions powerful actors will undertake.

At the same time, the potential for materially unequal countries’ legitimating myths to

complement one another offers leverage to peripheral states, sometimes even to those with the

fewest domestic capabilities. Donor states and IOs often need these states’ co-operation not in

spite of their disempowerment but because of it, as they seek to paint themselves as benevolent,

generous, capable power-holders. This can help recipient states solidify patronage-based or

rights-violating orders at home even where international rules sought to bring about the opposite.

But even if powerful states or IOs promoting those rules turn a blind eye to current violations

solely with norm-promotion over the medium-term in mind, doing so risks backfiring in the

longer term. By muddying the concept of compliance with particular global codes of conduct,

they risk increasing the laxity of those codes and undermining their future capacity to regulate

other states’ behaviour. When less powerful states gain leverage through asymmetrically

interdependent relationships, they may contribute to change in the meaning of compliance with

norms of human rights, good governance and democracy.