Book Review: Collective Insecurity: The Liberian Crisis, Unilateralism & Global Order: Ikechi Mgbeoji

Abstract

This arrangement raises several questions: How is this state of affairs possible in 21st century Africa? How is it that Charles Taylor, a power hungry and known felon, became an elected president of Liberia in the first place, one that left in his trail a crisis-infested country that constitutes a threat to West African regional security? And finally, what manner of collective international outside intervention is appropriate to tackle the recurring fratricidal crisis in Africa?...Mgbeoji argues that the regimes of "internal illegitimacy," "external indifference," and complicity that enabled dictators like Doe to dominate the African political landscape could not last...Nonetheless, Mgbeoji finds that ECOWAS intervention fulfills all the conditions for the employment of collective security both under customary international law and ECOWAS treaty framework..."Equitably dismantled?!" How is that feat to be achieved? Further, is Mgbeoji's call limited to Africa or is it global? It is difficult envisioning how Mgbeoji's terse treatise on legitimacy and his call for restoration of African precolonial political structures and value systems can spur a policy of transformation and change from Africa's present reality.