Robert Mugabe is making a mockery of liberal interventionism. He has become

God's gift to cartoonists, politicians and commentators. He is depicted

wielding clubs dripping in blood. He stands triumphant over a pile of

skulls. He is Bokassa out of Idi Amin out of Charles Taylor. He is that old

familiar, the African heart of darkness, monstrous, buffoonish, grotesque

and evil.

There is a sense in which Mugabe's hysterical anti-western analysis

of his predicament is correct. His Zimbabwe is a creature of British

imperialism and post-imperialism. The last governor, Lord Soames, regarded

him as an affectionate regimental mascot, a "splendid chap," as he told me

in an interview shortly before handing power to him in 1980.

Britain duly tolerated the suppression of Mugabe's enemy, Joshua

Nkomo, and Zimbabwe's conversion into a one-party state. It turned a blind

eye to the 1983 Ndebele massacre by Mugabe's Shona Fifth Brigade under its

warlord, Perence Shiri, some say his present master. Margaret Thatcher's

Whitehall gave Harare lavish aid and barmy advice, helping turn a viable

economy into a basket case of pseudo-socialist kleptomania.

Now Zimbabwe is declared outrageous. Though Mugabe is hardly the

worst dictator in the world, he is regarded as "our" dictator and therefore

our business. The public asks "what is to be done about him?" Sated on

having "done something", presumably glorious, about Bosnia, Sierra Leone,

Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, public opinion is hard-wired to such a

question. So what is to be done?

The answer is splutter. Abuse is heaped on Mugabe's head in a

ministerial cascade of brutals, blood-thirsties, illegitimates and

revoltings. I have lost count how often the Foreign Office has excoriated

him with that lofty, impotent put-down, "unacceptable". As for sanctions,

we must listen to the ludicrous incantation of VIP travel restrictions,

Harrods accounts, French hotels, London kindergartens and reclaimed

knighthoods - the ceaseless chatter of sanctions chic.

Such sanctions are the weapons of cowards and hypocrites. They

never work in any meaningful sense and are on a par with not eating South

African oranges or not buying Brazilian coffee. By mildly inconveniencing

the powerful and starving the poor, they supposedly make us feel good. In

countries such as Cuba and Iraq they have condemned whole generations to

misery and early death.

The much-abused history of commercial sanctions shows that any

protracted squeeze leads only to internal economic adjustment. Control over

money and goods shifts from merchants to rulers, driving the former to

exile and increasing the wealth of the latter. As sanctions made Saddam

Hussein and his family rich, so they have made Mugabe and his cronies rich.

The only sanction that works is one that works overnight. It is

conceivable that if South Africa and Zimbabwe's other neighbours were able

to cut supplies of petrol and electricity they might precipitate some sort

of coup in Harare. But by whom? Anyone seizing power at present would be

anyone with petrol, and that is the army, which has power already.

Neither South Africa nor neighbouring states of the African Union

has shown the slightest inclination to force regime change on Harare,

however much they may condemn Mugabe. African rulers regard the

interventionist precedent as unappealing. Nor is there any British stomach

for an airborne assault, from wherever it might be launched (Diego

Garcia?). It is inconceivable that planes would be allowed refuelling or

over-flying rights in southern Africa. Such is the collapse of Britain's

moral authority after Iraq.

Toppling Mugabe would require a force strong enough at least to

decapitate his army and, presumably, install the opposition leader, Morgan

Tsvangirai, in power. What kind of power would that be, achieved with

foreign guns? It would probably be a prelude only to civil war, which must

be the last thing Zimbabwe needs just now.

The truth is that Britain and the west have grown tired of this

sort of thing. They could not summon up the muscle even to land aid in

Burma's Irrawaddy delta, hardly the most drastic of interventions. The

Labour bombast of Baghdad and Kabul is now reduced to nuanced caution. The

crusader cry, "You can't just leave the poor Albanians (or Shias or

Pashtuns) to their fate," has degenerated into a diplomatic monotone of

demarches and resolutions.

There is no realistic alternative but to sit out the Zimbabwean

tragedy, impotent on the sidelines. If Africa wants to help its own, it

will. If not, so be it. We cannot starve Mugabe into submission, since that

is his own strategy towards his people. We take comfort by endlessly

declaring his country "close to collapse" but that is idiot economics.

Subsistence and remittance economies do not collapse.

We can portray Mugabe in the press as a blood-thirsty gorilla and

impose so-called smart sanctions, in order that we can feel a little

better, but our fine feelings are hardly central to Africa's predicament.

So-called liberal interventionism is a will 'o the wisp, a vapid,

feel-good refashioning of foreign policy in response to a headline event,

motivated by self-interest or passing mood. We should send food to the

starving of Zimbabwe because that is something we can do, however much

Mugabe distorts the supply. But as for dreaming of toppling him, those days

are over. Britain has done enough damage to Zimbabwe over the years.

Prudence tells us please to shut up.