Emerging Powers and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Liberia

In the last two decades emerging powers such as China, India, Brazil, and Russia as well as Turkey, South Africa, South Korea, Indonesia and the Arab Gulf states, among others have been playing a much more prominent role in international peacekeeping and in providing development and humanitarian assistance. These emerging powers have become important donors, investors and diplomatic and trading partners for countries affected by fragility, violence and conflict.

Emerging powers both challenge and accommodate aspects of the liberal peacebuilding model that traditional donors, such as the United States or Great Britain, have championed in the last two decades. This model has emphasized the importance of establishing democratic forms of governance and market economies as the key to creating conditions favorable to sustainable peace. Most emerging powers, like traditional donors, are interested in creating conditions in post-conflict states that are favorable to foreign direct investment and trade. On the other hand, emerging powers challenge the liberal peacebuilding model in areas they view as affecting state sovereignty, be it conditions attached to assistance funding or promotion of particular political reforms. At the same time, emerging powers are a diverse group and the differences among them are often as significant as those between them and the traditional donors.

Despite our still incomplete and fragmentary knowledge of emerging powers’ assistance to post-conflict states, a number of conclusions can be drawn based on the available data. First, the way emerging powers define, disburse, and report aid is significantly different from traditional donors. For instance, emerging powers finance development using alternate mechanisms, which “combines commercial and development interests on financing modalities,” (African Development Outlook 2011, 52) and include export and other types of credits.

Second, emerging donors have diverse policies and strategic objectives, economic interests, assistance provision philosophies and priorities. There are significant differences among emerging powers in areas of assistance focus and how and in what form that assistance is delivered Third, emerging powers are now paying greater attention to countries outside their immediate geographic neighborhood and looking to establish a more global presence.

Just as important, emerging donors’ public rhetoric masks much more complex rationales for aid provision, what assistance is allocated and how programs are implemented. This rhetoric prioritizes solidarity, cooperation and mutual support as well as the principle of non-interference in internal affairs of other states. Emerging donors largely eschew the language of assistance and conditionalities used by traditional donors, preferring to frame these relationships in collaborative and cooperative terms. When it comes to engaging with post-conflict states, emerging powers use very different terminology than traditional donors, refusing to refer to them as fragile or failing states.

Post-Conflict Reconstruction Assistance to Liberia

Historically, Liberia has received significant assistance from many traditional donors. The United States has been the largest single bilateral donor in Liberia, followed by the European Union, the World Bank, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan. Since 2003, when the second civil war ended, Liberia has also hosted the United Nations Mission to Liberia (UNMIL), which included over 10,000 peacekeeping troops. In recent years, however, emerging powers have had a growing presence in the country. Among the most important emerging donors and investors are China, India, Russia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Indonesia.

When examining the assistance dynamics of traditional donors and emerging powers in Liberia, a number of patterns emerge. There are clear differences in how traditional and emerging donors engage with the country. There are also differences among emerging donors that can be explained by their very different political economies and geopolitical interests. The Liberian experience also clearly shows that the modalities of assistance provision and the way emerging powers engage with a post-conflict state differ in important ways from traditional donors’ policies.

Although traditional donors have channeled significant aid to the reconstruction of the devastated health care and educational system, a key focus of their activities has been security sector reform, support for government capacity building, strengthening the rule of law and improving access to justice, promoting democratic reforms and support for strengthening civil society. Additionally, their assistance has focused on promoting economic development primarily through agricultural capacity building and strengthening natural resources management, building up the small business sector. In other words, the overall traditional donor assistance to Liberia has reflected the priorities of the liberal peacebuilding framework, which sees establishing of robust democratic institutions and a market economy as the most effective means for ensuring sustainable peace.

In contrast, emerging powers have deliberately avoided many of the areas of traditional donor focus, and have especially eschewed those supporting good governance initiatives, civil society building and democracy promotion, seeing them as interfering in the country’s internal affairs. This is true even of those emerging powers with democratic forms of governance at home, such as India and Brazil. Instead, most of emerging powers’ bilateral aid has focused on reconstructing Liberia’s infrastructure, although there are differences in programmatic focus among them. Unlike traditional donors, emerging donors have preferred to channel their bilateral assistance to the Liberian government rather than to non-governmental organizations. At the same time, while not explicitly promoting economic reforms, emerging donors have been supportive of and benefit from the economic components of the liberal peacebuilding agenda. In particular, foreign direct investment from emerging powers has grown significantly, especially in the natural resources sector, such iron ore mining, forestry, and agriculture, totally about $19 billion since 2003. However Liberia’s experience with these investors has varied. Foreign direct investors from emerging donors who have democratic political institutions have tended to be more responsive to local community needs and to pay greater attention to respecting labor and human rights.

Emerging powers have become much more important donors to countries emerging out of conflict. The Liberian experience suggests that although there are significant differences in how traditional donors and emerging powers provide assistance to post-conflict states, there are also considerable differences among emerging powers’ engagement strategies and philosophies.