Rhodesia: Admission of Failure

In the chamber of the U.N. Security Council last week, there was an unsettling sense of history repeated. The gallery was crowded, and delegates representing most of the world’s nations stood in knots on the floor as British Foreign Secretary George Brown began to address the Council. His mission was the product of failure. He had come to ask the U.N. to impose mandatory economic sanctions on Rhodesia, and in the minds of many diplomats present was the ghost of the old League of Nations —which began to fall apart 30 years ago when it proved unable to enforce economic sanctions against Mussolini.

The failure of British policy toward Rhodesia was equally apparent in London, where the House of Commons held its stormiest session since the Suez crisis of ten years ago. For the first time since Labor took control of the government two years ago, the Conservatives were in open opposition on the Rhodesia question. Wilson, charged Tory Deputy Leader Reginald Maudling, was leading Britain “into one of the greatest disasters in its history.”

Basis for Settlement. The tragedy is that only a few days before, a solution to the long Rhodesian crisis had seemed almost within grasp. Meeting on board the British cruiser H.M.S. Tiger, Wilson and Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith had taken only two days to hammer out a “working document” that, Wilson announced, “should serve as the basis for a settlement.”

The document called for constitutional amendments that would give Rhodesia’s overwhelming black majority an immediate minority voice in the government, yet preserve white rule for a period that Wilson estimated would last about ten years. A Royal Commission composed of Rhodesians would draft the necessary amendments, which would be submitted to “Rhodesians as a whole” for approval. In the meantime, censorship would be lifted, political prisoners freed and “normal” political activity permitted. The Rhodesian Parliament, whose hard-line white-supremacist majority might try to block the new constitution, would be dissolved and all legislative powers handed over to British Governor Sir Humphrey Gibbs, pending new parliamentary elections within four months. Smith himself would continue as interim Prime Minister, but half of a new “broad-based” Cabinet would be chosen from outside his ruling Rhodesian Front Party, and two members would be blacks.

Lost Opportunity. To a Rhodesian government that had snatched its independence and refused to budge during more than a year of negotiations, such terms seemed stiff indeed. Although Smith signed the document, he made it clear that this did not indicate the approval of his government. Sure enough, after a ten-hour Cabinet session in Salisbury, Smith emerged to inform a cheering crowd of whites that the document had been rejected. “The Rhodesian government is prepared to accept the constitutional proposals,” he said, but to accept the British terms for an interim government would amount to “unconditional and abject surrender.” Smith accused Britain of trying to install a “Quisling government” that “would not be responsible to the people of Rhodesia. There would be no domestic leadership in Rhodesia. A tough British proconsul supported by British troops and Whitehall administrators would be placed in charge, and the Rhodesia we know today would be doomed.”

Wilson thought otherwise. “It was a generous settlement we offered Rhodesia,” he told a nationwide television audience. “Never in my lifetime has Britain been prepared to offer independence to a country before it had reached the stage of majority rule. In the long history of lost opportunities, I find it hard to discover one more tragic than that which Mr. Smith rejected.”

No Force. An opportunity had been lost all right, but there was room for argument whether it had been lost by Smith—or by Wilson himself. Although the British demands fell somewhat short of “abject surrender,” they were unrealistically harsh, especially in view of the fact that Smith had yielded on the major issue—eventual black rule—that had caused his regime to break away from Britain in the first place. They were the sort of terms that can be imposed only with a much bigger stick than Britain has been able to wield against Rhodesia.

In the 13 months since the Rhodesian rebellion, Wilson has been high in dudgeon but low in bludgeon. According to London’s Sunday Times, he lost whatever chance he had to bring Rhodesia to heel when he “took the basic decision never to use force in Rhodesia.” His economic sanctions, designed to topple the Smith government, have backfired. True, Rhodesian exports have declined and gasoline is rationed, but the pain is not severe. Factories affected by the embargo have begun to produce other goods. Far from turning Rhodesia’s whites against Smith, the sanctions solidified his position as their leader against a hostile world.

Export Boycott. Nor were the “mandatory” sanctions that Foreign Secretary Brown proposed to the Security Council last week likely to be much more successful. What Britain was asking for was an international boycott of Rhodesian exports, and the boycott could hardly be expected to be effective without the cooperation of Rhodesia’s good neighbor, South Africa, which has already made it clear that it will not go along.

To have any real effect, U.N. sanctions would have to include a total blockade on oil imports by Rhodesia. But such a blockade would almost inevitably lead Britain into a direct economic confrontation with South Africa, which now supplies the fuel that Rhodesia cannot readily get anywhere else. That would cut off Britain’s considerable trade with South Africa, most notably including gold, which is one of the main props for the British pound. Last week sterling dropped of a cent in a wave of panic selling. Whatever happens, Wilson told Parliament, the U.N. sanctions “must not be allowed to develop into a confrontation, whether economic or military, involving the whole of southern Africa.”

Indeed, in taking the Rhodesia problem to the Security Council, Britain looked suspiciously as though it was simply passing the buck. The nation that only three decades ago ruled the world’s mightiest empire had given a pitiful demonstration that, as one Nigerian put it, “it is unable to spank its own child.”

“Abominably Dishonest.” The danger was that Britain might lose control of the punishment. Now that the matter had been hauled to the U.N., the Afro-Asian nations were demanding far tougher measures against Rhodesia. Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie called for troops to throw out the Smith regime. Zambian Foreign Minister Simon Kapwepwe took the floor of the Security Council to rage that Britain was “abominably dishonest, wicked, hypocritical and racist.” He demanded a total economic blockade against Rhodesia and any nation that dared trade with it.

Britain probably can count on enough votes to limit Security Council action, and can always resort to the veto to block total sanctions. But a veto would only put London in serious trouble with its own former African colonies, many of whom have been threatening for months to abandon the Commonwealth over Rhodesia. Even limited sanctions would pose a crisis for the U.N. If they are imposed, South Africa might be forced to resign from the world body and go its own way.