How can the world show Robert Mugabe the door? Paul Wolfowitz, who knows a thing or two about overthrowing tyrants, tells Foreign Policy that the secret to ousting Zimbabwe's president is showing his people how much better off they'll be without him.

Visiting Scholar Paul Wolfowitz

Foreign Policy: You propose in the Wall Street Journal that some country should offer Robert Mugabe a "safe and comfortable retirement if he leaves without further violence." Do you think that today's more frequent international human rights prosecutions are making it harder to negotiate with a guy like Mugabe because he might fear the consequences of stepping down?

Paul Wolfowitz: I haven't seen any evidence of that. You could argue equally that it might encourage them to make a deal when they think they can get a deal. There's no single answer in these situations, but it's not a bad thing that these characters can end up facing justice.

One of the more complicated cases is that of Charles Taylor in Liberia, because he was offered exactly such a deal to leave Liberia and go to Nigeria. And I think that was a good thing. But what he did once he got to Nigeria was terrible, because he kept using communications and probably money to keep stirring up trouble in Liberia, and so eventually the Nigerians handed him over to the court. If I were going go to get very explicit, I would say any deal with Mugabe has to make sure that he is no longer interfering in the affairs of Zimbabwe. It really has to be the end.

Foreign Policy: In your view, how personalized is Zimbabwe's regime at this point? If Mugabe goes, isn't there still an entire military infrastructure backing him?

Wolfowitz: I think the truthful answer is, nobody really knows. It's obviously not just one man doing this sort of thing. The important point is that one way to move forward is to start getting concrete now about the problems of the future instead of passing fairly ineffective resolutions, or sanctions, which aren't much more effective, or talking about peacekeeping forces, which probably aren't going to happen. I'm not against any of those, and if I implied I'm against them, I'm not. These things could be complementary. But it would help a lot if people were talking about where the country could go in the future and what the international community is prepared to do to help.

Foreign Policy: Say your strategy works, and he takes the retirement bait. What replaces him? How do you get from Mugabe to a just, functioning government?

Wolfowitz: First of all, I wouldn't call it bait. Let's call it "the deal." It's not meant to be a trap; it's meant to be what it is. The idea behind this is to recognize that the key decisions are not going to be made by outsiders and certainly not by Westerners (although I'm not sure the Africans have done a whole lot better). They're going to be made by the people of the country themselves. So, if you want to answer the question you just asked about what it will be like afterwards, the first person to ask that question is the guy who obviously would have been elected president if there hadn't been fraud, and that's [opposition leader Morgan] Tsvangirai.

Foreign Policy: As you've noted, African leaders have begun to speak out against Mugabe, but the obvious exception is South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki. What do you think is holding Mbeki back?

Wolfowitz: Let me say something in introduction first. Africans in general, including the neighboring countries, have underestimated their own stake here in several ways, but most importantly the invisible effect that this has on Africa's reputation as a whole.

I have become extremely interested and cautiously excited about the fact that there are more than a dozen African countries, with about a third of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, that have been growing fairly respectably--four percent or better for the last 10 years, and a couple of them up at the 7 or 8 percent level. (And without oil. I'm not counting the countries that are doing it with oil and mineral resources, which is another chunk.)

But when I talk to Western investors about the opportunities in Africa, one of the first things they ask is about Zimbabwe. And the next thing they ask is why South Africa, which is supposed to be one of the brighter lights of Africa, is so condoning of Mugabe's misbehavior. And I don't have a very good answer. Part of the answer is that the history of the fight against apartheid and white supremacy in Rhodesia made these people real comrades in arms for many years, and those relationships are hard to put behind you. I'm pleased to see that increasingly, you're seeing South Africans themselves [come forward], including ones that are very much associated with the struggle against white supremacy--men like Jacob Zuma or unions like the longshoremens' union that refused to unload that Chinese ship. And I hope the signs of change that we're seeing are going to include President Mbeki.

Foreign Policy: Writing in the Guardian newspaper Wednesday, Morgan Tsvangirai called for international military intervention to protect opposition supporters. [Note: Tsvangirai has since disavowed the editorial.] You sounded a cautious note in your op-ed, so under what circumstances would you say peacekeepers are warranted?

Wolfowitz: Part of it was a skeptical note. The experience with these efforts is, where the views are divided it takes a very long time to get any agreement. And then if there ever is an agreement, you can get some incredibly ineffective forces. Remember, it was under the eyes of U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia that 11,000 Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered in 1995.

Let me just say, I am not at all trying to discourage thought and attention to what peacekeeping forces might be able to do. [Tsvangirai's] appeal for protection is a very legitimate appeal and I would hope the international community would take it seriously. Maybe also if they started to look like they were taking it seriously, the goons would back off.

Foreign Policy: David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, said he would push for more sanctions at the U.N. Security Council. Wouldn't that make Zimbabweans' suffering worse? And doesn't Mugabe benefit from this feeling of besiegement?

Wolfowitz: It depends very much on what they are and where they're targeted. I haven't heard what British officials have in mind, but they may be things like travel bans or other kinds of personally targeted sanctions. Again, there may be some that are useful, but it's not going to change the basic course of what's going on there. They are a potentially very important way of making a statement, however, and I think that's why people are interested in them.

Foreign Policy: What do you think will be the tipping point when Zimbabweans are strong enough to take matters into their own hands?

Wolfowitz: In some ways--there are some big differences, too--this reminds me of the experience in the Philippines 22 years ago, early 1986, when Ferdinand Marcos tried to steal an election. I was the assistant secretary of state at the time for East Asia. Some people thought we could simply snap our fingers and Marcos would leave, but we didn't have that kind of power. But what we were able to do, by the kinds of actions we did take and the kinds of statements we did make, was to do exactly what I hope would start to happen in Zimbabwe, which is [to ensure] that the people who are angry because the election was stolen will feel more emboldened to sustain the pressure, and the guys with the guns who are being asked to kill on behalf of the regime will begin to lose confidence.

At the risk of overdoing the analogy, it certainly didn't hurt matters 22 years ago that President Reagan offered President Marcos a refuge in the United States, and he left peacefully. I think this is a tougher situation, to be honest. I don't know where the tipping point is. What I do know is that it seems pretty clear who is the legitimately elected president of the country. It does seem pretty clear who are the people that want to get Zimbabwe onto a positive course.

It's amazing that this country is one of the very poorest countries in the world, and yet it was once a breadbasket of southern Africa. It shouldn't be this way. And the more we can get the people who see a better future willing to stand up--and they're standing up, one has to admire their courage, it's incredible--and the more we can get the people who are standing in their way to think that maybe it's not such a good position to be in, we'll reach a tipping point. You'll know when you reach it. I don't think we can sit outside here and put a mark on the wall and say what it is.

Paul Wolfowitz is a visiting scholar at AEI.