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Profs & Pints: Outsiders Wreak Havoc in Africa

Profs and Pints presents: Outsiders Wreak Havoc in Africa, with Elizabeth Schmidt, professor of history at Loyola University Maryland and author of Foreign Intervention in Africa after the Cold War.

To outsiders, the word Africa often conjures up images of a continent in crisis, a place riddled with war and corruption and imploding from disease and starvation. Many regularly place the blame for Africans' plight on Africans themselves.

Elizabeth Schmidt, a historian and author of several books on Africa, will challenge such myths in a talk that examines the historical roots of Africa's contemporary problems.

She'll demonstrate that many of the predicaments that plague the continent today are not solely the result of African decisions, but also the consequence of foreign intrusion into African affairs. During the Cold War and its aftermath, for example, dictators, warlords, and insurgents supported by outside powers manipulated local ethnic, political, and religious tensions for their own ends. When strongmen were overthrown or cut adrift, other opportunists, including international terrorist networks, filled the power vacuums.

Focusing on foreign political and military intervention in Africa during the quarter century after the Cold War, Professor Schmidt will explore the motives for foreign political and military interventions, the rationales used to justify those interventions, and their consequences. She'll examine outside involvement as a response to instability and the responsibility to protect civilian lives and also as part of the global war on terror. She'll especially focus on the role of the United States from President Bill Clintons administration through the first year of President Donald Trumps administration.