Read on Twitter
When I was working on my dissertation, I found this 1993 article that appeared in the NYT, written by English journalist and historian Paul Johnson. It's frankly titled "Colonialism’s Back—and Not a Moment Too Soon." https://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/18/magazine/colonialisms-back-and-not-a-moment-too-soon.html
Johnson argues that "the most basic conditions for civilized life have disappeared" in underdeveloped places (especially Sub-Saharan Africa), because these countries are unable to govern themselves. The "horrors," he insists, are not related to the legacy of Western colonialism.
Johnson blames "bad, incompetent and corrupt government, usually all three together, or by no government at all." This incapacity for self-government has led to "revival of colonialism, albeit in new form," which "should be encouraged... on practical as well as moral grounds."
This evokes the sort of reasoning of earlier imperialists, like U.S. Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana, who celebrated the "white man's burden" as part of God's plan to bring civilization to the entire world. In regards to U.S. control of the Philippines, he said:
As an argument against self-governance, Johnson points to Haiti and Liberia—independent for 200 and 150 years respectively—as “two of the world’s most chronically unstable and poorest black states.” He omits the many disruptive U.S. interventions in Haiti. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/1/12/16883224/trump-shithole-foreign-policy-haiti
Intervention in Liberia has primarily been delegated to West African states like Nigeria (whose "peacekeeping" has been very violent), yet Johnson names Nigeria itself as a "basket case" African state and a candidate for more "Western civilizing." https://www.e-ir.info/2013/09/05/violent-peacekeeping-an-evaluation-of-the-performance-of-ecowas-in-the-first-liberian-civil-war-1989-1996/
Johnson argues that there is an unwillingness to admit that "some states are not yet fit to govern themselves" because it is politically incorrect. Like J.S. Mill said, liberty “is meant to apply only to human beings in the maturity of their faculties." https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/engl-161-spring2013/2013/02/21/mills-on-liberty-an-imperialist-view/
"Good governance" is the modern incarnation in development jargon, but the capacity for competent self-government has long been a determinant of "civilization." And if a society is deemed incapable of self-government, Western colonizers has always been eager to step in.
