I’ve just published a foreign policy-related post at Outside the Beltway:
“Because Africa Just Doesn’t Have Enough Landlocked Countries”
The referendum on secession from the north currently going on in southern Sudan has reached the critical 60% participation level and is expected to succeed. What then? The separation would create two countries, an impoverished country with a seacoast in the north and another impoverished but oil rich and landlocked country in the south. To my eye Africa’s experience with its many landlocked countries has been a tragic one. Does being landlocked create conditions ripe for famine, civil unrest, and massacre or do the conditions that resulted in the countries being landlocked have those consequences? Or is it just because they’re in Africa?
I’m leaving the comment here because I fear it will be lost in the noise at OTB:
Perhaps a look at the landlocked nations in South America as a comparison would be helpful. I submit that the history of both continents in terms of how they were dominated by certain nations in Europe for decades and how they overcame that domination would be illustrative and informative.