Other people's governments

I'm very dubious about attempts to reform other governments simply on the grounds that they mismanage their own affairs inside their own borders.

I recall saying something of the sort to a gaggle of self righteous people picketing Sainsbury's because it sold goods from South Africa, though I think the only item of South African origin on sale at that particular branch was tinned pineapple.

When Apartheid came to a largely peaceful end a few years later, I wondered if I'd been wrong in the case of sanctions against South Africa, but as one intervention followed another (Yugoslavia, Iraq) my doubts revived.

It's most interesting that in the recent argument about sanctions against Zimbabwe, even the government of South Africa, an apparent beneficiary of a sanctions campaign in the 1980's, seems to have lost faith in the process and now opposes action against Zimbabwe.