I still haven’t heard a good reason why* the US doesn’t want to support these armed rebels who want to topple dictators, since there is an extensive history of exactly that happening, as noted by our good Dopers, above.
One point which is often forgotten is that Mugabe was immensely popluar - and not at all a crazed dictator - from 1980 (when he was a leader in the independence movement) through many prosperous years to the late 90s, at which point he went nuts. Zimbabweans are not stupid. They know that their leader is insane and violent and all these bad things, but they also know
(a) he is probably not fundamentally evil - how would you feel if your beloved leader of twenty years suddenly went nuts? Would it be so easy to condemn him?
(b) there is no better alternative being offered. They don’t trust MDC or Tsvangerai, why would they? He’s probably no less corrupt than anyone.
© when someone leaves power it is quite important to make sure that there is a proper alternative in place. Look at Iraq. I have it on good authority that many Zimbabweans do not want the US mucking up their country the way they have mucked up others’.
Re the Commonwealth: The only real leverage they have is to chuck a nation out of the club, or to threaten to. The problem of course is that, once chucked, the club has no leverage on the country whatsoever.
Re trade sanctions: does anyone know how much international trade Zimbabwe is doing these days?
Note that I’m not offering any answers here. Waiting for him to die, combined with not making things any worse by creating a power vacuum, is the best strategy for now, until someone thinks of something better.
- The only reasons I can think of is that Zimbabwe has no oil or anything else of value to the USA. But I wouldn’t be cynical enough to suggest that this is what motivates their foreign policy.