Obama's Libya intervention and the "bias for action"

I always have reservations about foreign policy announcement coming from people closely associated with the libertarian Cato Institute. I'm always leery of an Old Right isolationism lying behind it.

That said, Emma Ashford's op-ed Trump’s Syria Strikes Show What’s Wrong With U.S. Foreign Policy New York Times 04/13/2018 makes an important point. We could call it the haste-makes-waste principle of foreign policy. Writing about the Obama Administration's 2011 decision in intervene in Syria at the instigation of Britain and France, she says:

Acting too quickly means that policymakers don’t have full information when making key decisions, and it prevents them from carefully considering the long-term consequences. In best-case scenarios, like Mr. Trump’s 2017 Syrian airstrikes, the harm done of rushing to action is minor. In other cases, it can be disastrous. Just look at the Obama administration’s 2011 decision to intervene in Libya.

The speed of that decision — relying on limited intelligence and questionable assumptions about impending genocide — effectively committed the United States to overthrowing Muammar Qaddafi. The result was the European refugee crisis and a civil war that scholars believe has killed more civilians than the initial intervention saved. Indeed, Mr. Obama’s own reflections on Libya (as well as Iraq) and his criticisms of the bias for action in American foreign policymaking were ultimately behind his decision to resist pressure to strike Syria in 2013. Mr. Obama came to understand that poorly thought-out military interventions can be even costlier.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was enthusiastic about the intervention. And this still strikes me as one of the more callous displays of her career. She's referring to the lynch murder of Muammar Qaddafi, which included raping him with a bayonet. Clinton on Qaddafi: We came, we saw, he died CBS News 10/20/2018. (That video does not allow embedding at this writing.)

Ashford doesn't mention it in that piece, but one of the most significant things about the Libya intervention is that it was a huge setback for the prospects of international agreements on nuclear arms control and on chemical weapons control, as well. Saddam Hussein's Iraq gave up their "WMD" programs, and the Cheney-Bush Administration invaded and overthrew him anyway. Libya announced just after the invasion that they had also given theirs up, which Bush claimed to be a sign of the positive effect of the Iraq War. Then in 2011, we overthrew Qaddafi.

You don't have to be a policy wonk to figure out the implications. If you give up your nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs, the US and NATO are willing to invade and overthrow you and put the leader to death. That surely contributed to the difficulty in working out the Iranian deal on nuclear arms development. And the Trump Administration seems to be on the verge of shredding that one and tossing the pieces to the wind. And, however paranoid the North Korean leadership may be, they aren't wrong to wonder whether giving up their nuclear weapons would be the prelude to a US invasion.

In the article linked in Ashford's piece, "A Model Humanitarian Intervention?" International Security 38:1 (Summer 2013), Alan Kuperman makes clear that the Libya intervention was actually a regime change operation, and not the humanitarian intervention it was justified as being by the US and the NATO allies:

If NATO had prioritized the protection of civilians, in accordance with its [UN Security Council] authorization, the transatlantic alliance would have enforced the no-fly zone, bombed forces that were threatening civilians, and attempted to forge a cease-fire.

Instead, NATO took actions that were unnecessary or inconsistent with protecting civilians, but which fostered regime change. Less than two weeks into the intervention, for example, NATO began attacking Libyan forces that were retreating and therefore not a threat to civilians, who were far away. the same time, NATO started bombing forces in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte, where they represented no threat to civilians because the residents supported the regime. Government officials, the New York Times reported, immediately protested that “Western powers were now attacking the Libyan Army in retreat, a far cry from the United Nations mandate to establish a no-fly zone to protect civilians.” To support this allegation, a Qaddafi spokesman noted that Libyan forces “were attacked as they were clearly moving westbound.” [my emphasis]

Trying to grasp Trump's foreign policy

Any attempt to define a coherent plan behind the Trump Administration's foreign policy is bound to run up against the arbitrary, the petty, and the just plain goofy.

But Asli Bâli and Aziz Rana take a stab at it in America's Imperial Unraveling Boston Review 10/16/2017. They call attention to a key paradox of US unilateral tendencies in international relations:

... the reliance on a politics of unilateral force has produced an interesting disconnect. While during the Cold War the United States faced serious adversaries, it was nonetheless largely able to avoid any real experience of existential threat. Today, faced with far more limited foes, the country has adopted a politics that presents the real possibility of existential violence and nuclear confrontation.

They identify two important tendencies in Trump's foreign policy:

If there is something like a “Trump Doctrine,” it lies in two developments: the boldness with which a declared reliance on coercion and conquest now sits uncomfortably beside America’s professed moral authority; and the implications of Trump’s ethno-nationalism for how global allies and enemies are conceived. For starters, whereas earlier administrations emphasized the need for diplomacy even as they consistently preferred unilateral uses of military force, Trump eschews such niceties. Instead his administration is at pains to dismantle the infrastructure of the State Department, with the president declaring that the United States intends to “take Iraq’s oil” and plunder “Afghanistan’s minerals.” Trump’s bald reliance on strongman tactics is difficult for elites to reconcile with their persistent belief in American exceptionalism. Yet, this is simply the culmination of the last quarter-century’s cleaving of U.S. power from its classic justifications.

The other development is that by giving a seat at the foreign policy table to proponents of a virulent ethno-nationalism, Trump’s presidency marks a shift in U.S. self-presentation. Such ethno-nationalists contest the universalist and inclusive premises of Cold War rhetoric. They defend a harsh anti-immigrant position and proclaim the link between Americanism and European racial and cultural identity. These racialized premises are central to the fixation with Iran - rather than say Russia for example - and to the insistence that a country with which the United States was, until recently, able to conduct complex diplomacy now presents a paramount national threat. [my emphasis]

But they aren't making the suggestion that because Trump's foreign policy continues some major trends in US policy that we shouldn't consider it as especially radical.

They also suggest, without putting in exactly these terms, that Trump policy in the Greater Middle East may be the kind of laboratory for brutal mischief in something like the way Central America was for the Reagan Administration. "Trump’s posture on Syria is to treat the country as a sandbox where he can try out various regional alliances, without any actual plan for - or regard to - how lasting peace might be generated there."

They provide a useful description of the contradictory nature of the position the US established for itself in the world in the postwar period under the assumption that America had a legitimate mission to shape the world in our own image:

In practice, this justified restructuring foreign societies on U.S. terms by spreading abroad both market-based capitalism and the institutions of liberal democracy. It also called for the creation of an international framework marked by these same principles, especially through multilateral and consensus-based legal structures, to address the problems of global governance. The United States was at the forefront of establishing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Charter, the Bretton Woods institutions, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and a plethora of other interlocking institutions aimed at shaping everything from international monetary policy and global trade to health, education, and scientific cooperation. The overall aim was a U.S.-led world driven by collective security and capitalist economic principles, with U.S. military power and wealth as the ultimate backstop. [my emphasis]

They remind us of some of the mistakes and bad acts of US foreign policy in that process. But as long as the Soviet Union existed as a competing superpower, US policy also had a major stabilizing effect on international politics, as well. But, "While the end of the Cold War meant the end of the perceived Soviet threat, it also decreased the pressures that had led U.S. leaders to value international institutions as conducive to national self-interest."

The Clinton Administration embraced that process tending toward more unilateralism. The Cheney-Bush Administration embraced unilateralism with enthusiasm. "The George W. Bush administration repudiated the Geneva Conventions when justifying its use of force against al Qaeda, withdrew from arms control agreements, and promulgated a national security strategy premised on preemption." Yes, he did.

And then there was the Libya War, in which President Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton willingly intervened:

If anything, the 2011 intervention in Libya, which recalled the chaos and violence of the Iraq invasion a decade earlier, raised doubts about whether the United States was legitimate - or even competent—in its uses of force. Whatever the stated aim—whether fighting terrorism, countering arms proliferation, or serving humanitarianism - U.S. military force seemed ill-suited for the task.

Yet, "For all the ways that the Obama years continued the basic orientation of U.S. foreign policy - highlighted specifically by the intervention in Libya and the arming of factions in Syria - the one break was his focus on using diplomacy with Iran to deescalate any nuclear confrontation."

This is a very useful piece in trying to understand the current direction - such as there is - of US foreign policy under Trump.

North Korea, nuclear proliferation and regime change

Robert Parry makes an important point about a huge problem with US nuclear nonproliferation right now (How ‘Regime Change’ Wars Led to Korea Crisis Consortium News 09/04/2017):

... the current North Korea crisis, which could end up killing millions of people, can be viewed as a follow-on disaster to President George W. Bush’s Iraq War and President Barack Obama’s Libyan intervention. Those wars came after the leaders of Iraq and Libya had dismantled their dangerous weapons programs, leaving their countries virtually powerless when the U.S. government chose to invade.

In both cases, the U.S. government also exploited its power over global information to spread lies about the targeted regimes as justification for the invasions — and the world community failed to do anything to block the U.S. aggressions.

And, on a grim personal note, the two leaders, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, were then brutally murdered, Hussein by hanging and Gaddafi by a mob that first sodomized him with a knife.

Paul Jay and Larry Wilkerson discuss that point among others related to North Korea in Larry Wilkerson: North Korea is Not an Existential Threat - But Many People Benefit by Saying It Is The Real News 09/05/2017:

This report includes a recent clip of Vladimir Putin making that same point about the effect of the Iraq and Libya wars on nuclear proliferation. I suppose these days we need to specify that surely Putin has some possibly nefarious agenda in saying so. But that makes it no less true.

Wilkerson also wrote about North Korea three weeks ago, before the supposed thermonuclear test now in the news, The American Conservative 08/18/2017. And he references the regime change problem there, too:

[W]hat makes North Korean leaders so desperate about their capacity to fulfill that goal [of maintaining the current dynasty in power]? That too is not hard to answer: the military power of the United States, power that has been used to unseat Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi and in the attempt to unseat Bashar al-Assad. Recently, President Trump even threatened Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with a possible U.S. military intervention in that country.

Friday's Paris terrorist attack and the dream of rebooting history

The Austrian news service, Nachrichten.at, the website of the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten, ran an editorial on Saturday, Europa in Krieg (Europe At War) 14.11.2015:

Unser Mitgefühl gilt allen Opfern, unsere Solidarität Frankreich.

Dabei hat das wahllose gestrige Morden nicht Frankreich allein gegolten. Es ist ein Anschlag auf Europa, unsere Werte, unsere Form des Zusammenlebens, unsere Prinzipien, die offenen Grenzen, das Nebeneinander verschiedener Kulturen, die Freiheiten. Die Codewörter dazu sind eindeutig: Syrien, Islamischer Staat, radikaler Islam. Unabhängig von der Zahl der Toten, die sich stündlich erhöht, steht der gestrige Tag gleichauf neben 9/11, er wird die globale Politik verändern. Europa befindet sich im Ausnahmezustand. Uns muss klar sein.

Es wird sich wehren und den Kampf aufnehmen. Es wird ihn überall dort führen müssen, wo der Angriff auf unsere Werte seinen Ausgang nimmt. Auch dazu bestehen keine Alternativen.

[All the victims have our sympathy, France has our solidarity.

In the event, the innumerable {sic} murders yesterday did not affect only France. It is an attack on Europe, our values, our form of living together, our principles, the open borders, the co-existence of different cultures, the freedoms. The code words there are clear: Syria, Islamic State, radical Islam. Regardless of the number of dead, that keeps increasing, yesterday stands next to 9/11, it will change global politics. Europe finds itself in a state of emergency. We must be clear.

It {Europe} will defend itself and take up the fight. It will have to conduct it everywhere from which the attack on our value originated. And there are no alternatives available.]

The euro crisis alone should have taught everyone that TINA (There Is No Alternative) can be a bad guide to action. At least, if the goal is to actually solve problems.

This kind of pompous, melodramatic declaration is painfully familiar to Americans. At least to the majority who don't want the Permanent War for Permanent Peace to which Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and the rest of today's Republican Party leaders are committed.

Realism and reason go out the window with this kind of posturing. And it's not just newspaper editors. The French President struck a similar tone (Adam Nossiter et al, Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS 11/14/2015):

“It is an act of war that was committed by a terrorist army, a jihadist army, Daesh, against France,” President François Hollande told the nation from the Élysée Palace, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “It is an act of war that was prepared, organized and planned from abroad, with complicity from the inside, which the investigation will help establish.”

The Oberösterreichische Nachrichten editorial is sadly reminiscent of the war and revenge talk after the 9/11 attacks in the US.

The 9/11 attacks were planned in Germany, but at least we didn't attack Germany. Early indications on the Paris attack Friday are that two of the places "from which the attack ... originated" could be Germany and Belgium. Hopefully, France will have the restraint not to invade either of those two countries. But defending our civilized values by bombing the crap out of some Arab (or maybe Persian) country has become a dreary cliche in American politics. So far, over 14 years after 9/11, our interventions and freedom bombs have left us with civil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya. The "war on terrorism" obviously hasn't done away with terrorism as a form of military conflict. And Europe is already experiencing a refugee crisis, many of whom are fleeing conflicts connected with our Afghanistan War and Iraq War, neither of which are entirely over.

The editorial's comment that the Paris attack "will change global politics" reminds me so much of the comment that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made to the Pakistani head of intelligence just after 9/11, "History starts today." But history didn't reboot itself. Nuclear-armed Pakistan is still supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan, and their long-standing dispute with nuclear-armed India over Kashmir still takes precedence over Washington's demands in their strategic decisions, in which the current Afghan government is a "pro-Indian" danger in their eyes. (James Mann quotes the Armitage comment in Rise of the Vulcans, 2004)

And the justifiable outrage over the Paris attacks won't make any French intervention in Syria any easier. History didn't reboot on Friday any more than it did on 9/11/2001. Many of the current problems in the Middle East go directly back to the ways in which Britain and France enacted their civilizing mission to the Arab countries after they dismembered the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. France got Syria as a colony, uh, "mandate." France and Britain took the lead in their most recent effort to civilize Libya with bombs, which the US joined. Even supporters of that intervention have a difficult time seeing the results as anything but grim.

Friday didn't "change global politics" in any way that will make an military intervention in Syria and Iraq easier. Outside powers will still have to make choices among supporting the Syrian government, of Daesh/ISIS, or the Al Qaeda affiliate there. They will still have to navigate the conflicting allegiances of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Qatar and Russia.

It's not as though nationalist delusions haven't already done tremendous damage to the EU with the euro and refugee crises, neither of which are over. A massive escalation of war in Syria will make the latter even worse. More border controls, more (literal) walls between countries, more refugees. The actions to come by France and NATO can certainly "change global politics" in some way. Further disintegrative pressures on the EU could definitely have that effect.

If the comment, "Europe finds itself in a state of emergency," is meant for, say, this weekend, it is just routine hyperbole. But if France or the EU were to respond to Friday's attack by creating something like a permanent state of emergency, well, Carl Schmitt will be laughing heartily in whatever nasty precincts of the Great Beyond he currently finds himself.

I see that France is already dropping their freedom bombs, which will surely kill no innocent civilians as the terrorists did in Paris on Friday. (Francia lanza primeros ataques aéreos contra ISIS en Siria La Opinión/BBC Mundo 14.11.2015)

By the way, the Obama Administration is still dropping our freedom bombs in Libya: Libya IS head 'killed in US air strike' BBC News 11/14/2015. Also magically avoiding killing civilian noncombatants, no doubt.

Libya, Syria and the perils of intervention and arrogance

Among the various serious problems of our mainstream press in the US is the scarcity of foreign affairs and international coverage, which means that reporters, editors and publishers are even more susceptible to spin from the government and various narrow interest groups. Stephen Walt looks at one consequence of the NATO regime change operation in Libya, which was sold to the public - and to the the UN - as a humanitarian mission to protect civilians in Will victory in Libya cause defeat in Syria? Foreign Policy 02/06/2012. Russia and China recently vetoed a proposed UN Security Council resolution addressing the repression in Syria. Walt writes:

You'll recall that UN Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized military action in Libya to protect civilians. The resolution was directly inspired by the fear that Qaddafi loyalists laying siege to the rebel town of Benghazi were about to conduct some sort of massacre there. In response, Res. 1973 authorized member states "take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory." France, the United States and other foreign powers quickly went beyond this mandate, using airpower and other forms of assistance to help the rebels defeat Muammar Qaddafi's forces and oust him from power.

One can argue that this was the right course of action anyway, because getting rid of a thug like Qaddafi was worth it. That's a debate for another day, although I would note in passing that post-Qaddafi Libya remains deeply troubled and the collapse of the regime seems to be fueling conflicts elsewhere. But what if the Libyan precedent is one of the reasons why Russia and China aren't playing ball today? They supported Resolution 1973 back in 2011, and then watched NATO and a few others make a mockery of multilateralism in the quest to topple Qaddafi. The Syrian tragedy is pay-back time, and neither Beijing nor Moscow want to be party to another effort at Western-sponsored "regime change." It is hardly surprising that Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin condemned the failed resolution on precisely these grounds. In short, our high-handed manipulation of the SC process in the case of Libya may have made it harder to gain a consensus on Syria, which is arguably a far more important and dangerous situation. [my emphasis]

He makes a number of qualifications, e.g., the obligatory reference to Qaddafi being a bad guy, Russia and China doing themselves and the UN Security Council some harm by vetoing the anti-Syria resolution.

But his basic point is important. The US is pursuing a global-dominance strategy, which Walt would prefer to see replaced by an "offshore balancing" strategy requiring a less massive military and considerably less military intervention.

The current strategy assumes that the United States can and should intervene to change governments where there is a perceived pressing need and the target country does not possess nuclear weapons (Iraq, Libya - and Iran?). National sovereignty in those cases is treated as a short-run annoyance to be overcome, not as an important basic element in international relations.

But for all the rest of the nations of the world that are not the sole superpower, those questions are important. And it's perfectly understandable that even more powerful nations like Russia and China are very hesitant to support a UN humanitarian resolution that they have reason to believe could be used for another NATO regime-change war.

And, as Walt's post emphasizes, it is a setback for anyone genuinely concerned about the "obligation to protect" that is now part of international law. In a better-organized world, there would be some standards by which an international operation could be authorized to stop a genocidal operation.

But in a world still so addicted to war as ours is, and with the US pursuing a policy that involves considerable disregard of sovereignty and far too much willingness to engage in acts of war and subversion against regimes we consider undesirable, it's hard to see how the "obligation to protect" can be meaningfully enforced by the UN. I don't mean to dismiss what the UN does accomplish in its peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. But what it can accomplish, even through powerful members states, in cases of civil war or massive civil disturbance is often limited to minimizing the harmful consequences, not fixing the problems that are generating them.

Tags: libya war, syria, stephen walt

"Off with their heads!" (New York Times op-ed/Qaddafi version)

Historian Simon Bebag Montefiore has an op-ed gushing over the edifying spectacle of disposing of dictators by lynch-murder in the respectable Gray Lady, the New York Times, Dictators Get the Deaths They Deserve 10/26/2011. His flimsy justification:

The problem with such dictatorships is that as long as the tyrant lives, he reigns and terrorizes. As Churchill put it, "dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount."

Only death can end both the spell to bewitch and the prerogative to dominate - and sometimes, not even death can snuff out power. "The terror inspired by Caligula’s reign," wrote Suetonius, "could be judged by the sequel." Romans were so terrified of the emperor that it was not enough to assassinate him. They wanted to see him dead: fearing it was a trick and lacking cellphone footage, they had to be convinced. The mile-long line of Libyans who were keen to see Colonel Qaddafi'’s cadaver in its shop-refrigerator-tomb would understand this perfectly.

If what one wants is to strenthen the rule of law, as opposed to providing opportunities for the voyeurism that has always drawn eager crowds to public executions, the approach Argentina has taken toward officials who committed gruesome crimes during El Proceso, the military dictatorship of 1976-83, works much better. They give them the kind of fair trials they denied their victims. And if they are convicted in a court of law that produces sufficient evidence of their crimes, they are sent to prison. For a very recent example, see Argentina's "Angel of Death" sent to prison CBS News 10/26/2011. Here's a report on the case from Euronews (YouTube date 10/27/2011):



Glenn Greenwald has some useful thoughts about the corrosive effects of disposing of our Bad Enemies through summary execution in A remaining realm of American excellence Salon 10/22/2011.

Simon Montefiore obviously prefers the spectacle of lynch-mob justice.

I prefer to see the Argentines in the Euronews video above cheering for justice being done under the rule of law.

I hope one day that we also see those American officials responsible for torture crimes and illegal assassinations face justice in US courts.

Tags: argentina, assassination, libya war, rule of law

Our glorious (?!) victory in Libya

Our humanitarian war, waged ostensibly to protect civilians during a civil war, either came close to ending or has entered a new phase with the death of Muammar Qaddafi. "Death" in this case is a neutral description for lynch-murder, which is nothing worth celebrating. In this case it may have included raping the victim, just like in the "good ole days" in the Deep South. (Pablo Pardo, Gadafi, sodomizado en cuerpo y alma El Mundo 24.10.2011; Global Post has a story and some nasty video: Tracey Shelton, Gaddafi sodomized: Video shows abuse frame by frame (GRAPHIC): An analysis appears to confirm that a rebel fighter sodomized Gaddafi with a knife 10/24/2011.)

This video from Aljazeera English, Video footage shows 'Gaddafi's killer' YouTube date 10/24/2011, reports on the story of Qaddafi's execution while sparing us some of the more graphic video excerpts:



Kim Gamel in an AP report at the Huffington Post, Gaddafi Death Questioned 10/24/2011, quotes Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the interim leader of Libya's National Transitional Council (MTC) offered this statesmanlike comment:

"Let us question who has the interest in the fact that Gadhafi will not be tried. Libyans want to try him for what he did to them, with executions, imprisonment and corruption," he said. "Free Libyans wanted to keep Gadhafi in prison and humiliate him as long as possible. Those who wanted him killed were those who were loyal to him or had played a role under him, his death was in their benefit."

I guess the days of the NTC being represented to the world by exile politicians who sound like cultured gentlemen speaking excellent English are now over. Maybe they've hired someone from the White Citizen's Council to advise them on how to market lynch-murders. It was standard for Klan bombings and attacks in the Deep South in the 1950s and 1960s for Klan supporters to suggest that the targets staged the attacks themselves to gain public sympathy. This is pretty much from that same playbook. Lynch minds think alike, I guess.

Our allies in the humanitarian war in Libya displayed Qaddafi's corpse for four days. Apparently with no embalming: Hannah Allam, Libyan authorities unsure how to handle Gadhafi's corpse McClatchy News 10/22/2011; Carmen Serna, Un cadáver 'abierto' al público El Mundo 24.10.2011. Amnesty International has found evidence that the new Libyan government, whose victory was facilitated by NATO's freedom bombs, is abusing its prisoners: Hannah Allam, Libyan rebels abuse, torture prisoners, rights group says McClatchy News 10/22/2011. Human Rights Watch reports on what appears to be a mass grave of Qaddafi supporters in Libya: Apparent Execution of 53 Gaddafi Supporters: Bodies Found at Sirte Hotel Used by Anti-Gaddafi Fighters 10/24/2011:

All the bodies were in a similar stage of decomposition, suggesting they were killed at the same approximate time. Some of the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs with plastic ties. Others had bandages over serious wounds, suggesting they had been treated for other injuries prior to their deaths.

And, oh yeah, Libya is adopting a form of Sharia (Islamic law) as the basis of their legal systems, just as Afghanistan and Iraq have.

Tags: libya, libya war

Leaving Libya?

The reports on how Muammar Qaddafi died aren't likely to enhance the new Libyan government's repect for the rule of law. This is an obviously unsympathetic report from RT, Guts, No Glory: Gaddafi death leaves blood on hands of NATO PR machine YouTube date 10/21/2011.



This Aljazeera English report suggests that NATO may want to end its military role in Libya quickly, which strikes me as a very good idea. NATO set to withdraw from Libya YouTube date 10/21/2011:



The is a lot of skepticism about the possibilities of continued civil war, such as those Matthias Kolb discusses in Gaddafis Tod und die Folgen für Libyen: Nach dem Sieg ist vor dem Kampf Süddeutsche Zeitung 21.10.2011. Kolb notes that there was not even a dummy parliament nor pretend political parties under Qaddafi's rule. So, unlike in Tunisia or Egypt, even those committed to building a democracy have little relevant experience with the necessary political skills. Tribal divisions and the widespread availability of weapons in Libya could present serious complications for the future.

Juan Cole has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Libyan rebels, which has now become the official Libyan government, and he also supported the US-NATO intervention. He is one of the most optimistic I've seen on the immediate prospects for peace in Libya. In Informed Comment 10/21/2011, he writes:

Those who expect Libya now to fragment, or to turn into a North African Baghdad, are likely to be disappointed. It is improbable that Qaddafi’s cult will long survive him, at least on any significant scale. Libya has no sectarian divides of the Sunni-Shiite sort. Almost everyone is a Sunni Muslim. It does have an ethnic divide, as between Arabs and Berbers. But the Berbers are bilingual in Arabic, and are in no doubt as to their Libyan identity. The Berbers vigorously joined in the revolution and more or less saved it, and are very likely to be richly rewarded by the new state.

The east-west divide only became dire because Qaddafi increasingly showed favoritism toward the west. A more or less democratic government that spreads around the oil largesse more equitably could easily overcome this divide, which is contingent and not structural.

Libyan identity is not in doubt, and most Libyans are literate and have been through state schools. Most Libyans live in cities where tribal loyalties have attenuated.

If things work out that way, great. But I hope the Obama Administration disengages quickly from this ill-conceived intervention to minimize the chances of the US getting further involved as a partisan in a Libyan civil war.

Tags: libya war

Qaddafi's death and the Libya War

Another Bad Man is dead, this time Libya's Muammar Qaddafi. Time will soon tell whether that will bring something like peace to Libya or set the stage for a new phase in the civil war.

Here is a segment from RT's The Alyona Show featuring Robert Farley of the Lawyers Guns and Money blog discussing the Constitutional and practical issues around American intervention in the Libya War.



This is President Obama's announcement on Thursday 10/20/2011 of Qaddafi's demise with his framing of the American intervention:



The US intervention in Libya has not been popular at home. From George E. Condon Jr., Even Libya Victory Holds Little Promise for Obama's Success National Journal 10/20/2011:

"There was a good deal of interest in Libya during the first week of NATO bombing but relatively little since then," said Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Center. He said that in the week that rebels captured Qaddafi's compound, only 22 percent said they were following the story very closely.

And those who did follow Libyan developments were less than enthusiastic about Obama’s policy. A Fox News poll conducted Aug. 29-31 found that only 30 percent favored the U.S. military involvement. A majority of 55 percent opposed it, with 14 percent unsure. The opposition included 66 percent of independents, 58 percent of Republicans, and 50 percent of Democrats. More recently a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed 61 percent of the public views Obama’s foreign policies as favorable. The same poll shows they generally disapprove of his job performance.

The higher approval rate among Republicans is a reflection of Republican partisan politics. Our super-patriotic Republicans aren't as enthusiastic about what Bob Dole once infamously called "Democrat wars" as they were about Dick Cheney's wars.

Lindsay Graham, one of the Senate's War Trinity (along with Maverick McCain and Joe Lieberman), talked to McClatchy News about the partisan politics of the Libya War, as reported by William Douglas in Lindsey Graham says GOP opposed Libya mission because Obama was president 10/20/2011. Graham said, "Congress took an irrational view of the War Powers Act. I guarantee you that a lot Republicans who wanted the War Power Act invoked would not have asked for it to be invoked if President Obama were not president."

That's surely true. But the Madisonian conception of separation of powers counts on, among other things, crass political opportunism and institutional jealousy between Congress and the Executive to raise Constitutional issues. In the case of war powers, the courts have traditionally been hesitant to step in. So if Congress doesn't challenge the President for overstepping his authority in a military intervention, in becomes one more in a long series of precedents that puts the Congressional war powers as defined in the Constitution in de facto abeyance.

Charlotte Observer cartoonist Kevin Siers celebrated the death of Qaddafi this way:

libya war, war powers

Forum of articles on "Regime Change Doesn't Work"

Boston Review for Sept/Oct has a forum called Regime Change Doesn't Work. Boston Review's forums, some of which have been published separately in book form, consist of a long introductory article, several response and a final word by the lead author.

Alexander B. Downes provides the lead contribution, which is also called Regime Change Doesn't Work: "The Libyan operation is the third post-9/11 U.S. military intervention whose explicit goal is regime change. The United States also played a role in a fourth case, the removal of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004." Downes mentions that one of the reasons regime-change adventures are attractive to policymakers is the tendency to personalize international conflict, e.g., git Saddam!

And this is an interesting historical observation:

Regime change is nothing new to the United States. Since the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the United States has been the world’s foremost practitioner. Of the roughly one hundred cases of externally imposed regime change in that period, the United States has been responsible for more than twenty.

This is also a sobering statistic: "More than 40 percent of states that experience foreign-imposed regime change have a civil war within the next ten years."

The responders include:

Greg Grandin, The Containment-Liberation Complex: "U.S. interventions in the Western Hemisphere have generally had disastrous consequences." He credits the title phrase to the quirky radical historian William Appleman Williams.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. in Prudent Strategy praises the Obama Administration's Libya intervention:

The outcome in Libya was and remains uncertain. Qaddafi might fall because of further defections, but the fighting between his forces and the resistance could also lead to a stalemated civil war. If so, Obama established a basis for avoiding ownership of a nasty problem. Some foreign-policy realists question Obama's decision to be involved in a humanitarian action based on what is known as the "responsibility to protect," but in terms of balancing interests and values while limiting risks, Obama provided a lesson in smart leadership.

Neta Crawford, Counterproductive and Wrong: "Promoting democracy by military intervention ... is an oxymoron in ethical and political terms."

James Fearon, Taking the Gamble: "Bush's Iraq fiasco is by far the best case for Downes's contention that U.S. administrations don’t know what they are getting into when they try regime change."

Mary Kaldor in Peaceful Regime Change defends the notion of humanitarian intervention, and seems to have an expansive definition of it:

Regime change by force rarely works in the sense Downes uses, whether undertaken by outsiders or insiders. Military coups and violent revolutions—I would contend, though I have not gone through the historical record in the way Downes has — rarely lead to a peaceful and democratic outcome. This was the lesson that the Eastern Europeans learned in the 1980s. This is what the protestors in the Middle East have also learned: nonviolent regime change is the only way to end dictatorship, as opposed to replacing one dictator with another. Support for this type of regime change is important; outside powers should be doing everything possible to assist the protestors in the Middle East.

John Tirman, A Bloody Affair:

The most popular accounts of the growth of insurgencies in Iraq tend to ignore U.S. violence. Academics contend that Sunnis suffered an intolerable loss of status; journalists' favorite has been the more prosaic "ancient hatreds" argument; and Washington emphasizes the destabilizing roles of al Qaeda and Iran. But we have ample evidence showing that U.S. violence is essential to any explanation.

The people of Iraq, when asked, have said that violence and insurgency were directly attributable to U.S. military actions.

Tod Lindberg argument in Weighing Alternatives is essentially to tout the general virtues of regime change as an instrument of US foreign and military policy:

But examining only cases in which the United States has opted for interventionist policies is like adding up one side of a ledger. You simply can’t calculate the best policy, intervention or non-intervention, from there. What about the cases in which the United States decided against regime change?

NATO’s 1995 bombing campaign against Bosnian Serbs was not intended to bring down the Milošević regime in Belgrade, but to pressure Milošević to negotiate. NATO’s 1999 air campaign targeting Serbia and Serbian forces in Kosovo likewise aimed not at removing Milošević, but at winning his accession to demands for Kosovar autonomy. Colin Powell labeled Omar al Bashir’s campaign against the people of Darfur a genocide in 2004, but the United States has never sought to change the Sudanese regime. The U.S. response to Hugo Chavez's fervent anti-Americanism has been to treat him as a pest, not to organize a coup against him.

In fact, the US under Cheney-Bush and Spain's conservative government at the time encouraged as coup again Chavez in 2002, a coup which failed. It's easy to imagine that Chavez' adversary attitude toward the US wasn't diminished by that experience.

Joanne Landy in The People's Interest argues that Downes gives too much credit to American policymakers for idealistic goals, as distinct from using idealistic justifications for policies :

Oddly, Downes says that repeated U.S. military interventions flow from an overly broad dedication to idealistic goals, "providing stability in most of the world, rooting out terrorism, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, curbing human rights abuses, spreading democracy." But U.S. policy and interventions actually have been guided by pretty much the opposite of these goals. The United States has often favored the false stability of tyrannical governments. Downes himself notes that the United States has made "common cause with right-wing dictators," and worked "to overthrow leftist regimes (or regimes viewed as susceptible to leftist influence) in Iran, Indonesia, Guatemala, Congo, Cuba, Ecuador, Brazil, Guyana, Chile, and Nicaragua."

Alexander Downes in his final response Wise Choices gives this perspective on the role of promoting democracy in US foreign policy:

Although I do not think that spreading democracy should be a high priority for U.S. foreign policy, to the extent that U.S. leaders wish to promote democracy abroad, there is evidence (from academic studies and recent events in the Middle East) that nonviolent protest is a better route to obtaining regime change and democratization than are violent means, and that foreign aid targeted directly at democratic reforms rather than the economy or civil society more broadly can be helpful. ...

Overthrowing the Arbenz regime in Guatemala [in 1954] may have served American interests (although this is debatable), but surely it did the Guatemalan people much harm. The same can be said of many other cases of regime change. ... More broadly, however, it is not obvious that regime change promotes friendly relations or reliable allies. Although interveners and targets rarely fight wars later on, militarized disputes involving the threat or low-level use of force occur in about one-fifth of cases. In fact, the high frequency of civil conflict suffered by regime change targets poses a threat to the interests of the interveners.

He takes issue with Joseph Nye's defense of the Obama Administration's Libyan intervention:

Obama has declared that the U.S. objective is regime change rather than simply protecting civilians and providing humanitarian relief. The United States has also recognized the rebel coalition as the legitimate government of Libya. The Obama administration would like somebody else to get rid of Qaddafi, but even as the rebels march on Tripoli, the hard work of regime change may well result in protracted conflict. By coming down on the side of regime change, the president has committed the United States to the rebels' aims, which they cannot achieve on their own. The longer the war goes on, the more pressure the United States will face to act decisively to remove Qaddafi. Obama has thus placed U.S. policy on a slippery slope; eventually we will face a choice between escalation and a humiliating retreat. A smarter strategy would have been to lend rhetorical and moral support to Libyans opposed to Qaddafi and provide humanitarian assistance, but leave the job of deciding what to do with their country to them.

This is a good summary of the practical risks that Obama's policy faced. At this writing, it looks much more like Qaddafi's defeat is all but inevitable. But the basic point that the US has committed itself to the rebel forces and their aims continues to be an issue. To repeat Lyndon Johnson's saying, "It's a hell of a lot easier to get into a war than to get out of one," a proposition which speaks very much to his own experience with the Vietnam War. Even if the Administration wants to take itself out of the picture of regime change and nation-building in Libya, the practical difficulties of doing so are real.

Tags: iraq war, libya war, regime change, us foreign policy

News videos on the Libya War

From PBS Newshour, "Libyan Rebels Press Toward Sirte in Hunt for Gadhafi, Sons" 09/28/2011:



Also from PBS Newshour, "Libyans Not Hearing Much About Nation-Building Process" 09/28/2011:



Euronews, "Gaddafi reported to be near Algerian border" 09/28/2011:



From The Real News, "Libyans Debate Who Will Benefit from their Oil" 09/25/2011:



From Aljazeera English, Fierce fighting rages in Sirte [24-09-2011]:



Tags: libya war

A war correspondent's early impressions of the Libya War

David Enders, a 30-yr-old war reporter who has been reporting from Iraq and has a forthcoming book on the subject, reflects about the Libya War in A reporter in Libya wonders about lessons of war McClatchy Newspapers 09/28/2011. He reminds us that for all the heroic and triumphalist rhetoric we hear about it, the Libya War is a real war:

During my first week or two in Libya I found it an affable salutation, and an inclusive one — Libyans are (almost all) Muslims. Encouraged, I participated, heartily adopting it at checkpoints and in response to questions about "what I thought" of the Libyan revolution.

Identifying myself as an American journalist elicited smiles and handshakes, thumbs up and "Thank you!" — as though I had somehow been personally involved in NATO's decision to support the rebellion. I smiled and reciprocated. The last time I had experienced anything similar in the Middle East was in 2003, after the fall of Baghdad to U.S. troops.

Then skepticism kicked in. Enjoy this honeymoon, I told myself. It took Iraqis about six months to go from shaking hands to shooting.

Actually, there was significant guerrilla resistance activity in June of 2003 after the March invasion. But I suppose Enders has some reason for picking the six-month. He makes his point.

There was no shortage of triumphalist rhetoric in the early weeks of the Iraq War, too, the Mission Accomplished speech by our Glorious Leader Bush in May 2003 being the most notorious. Military historian John Keegan had an article in April 2003 entitled, "Saddam's Utter Collapse Shows This Has Not Been a Real War." (London Daily Telegraph 04/08/2003); though in fairness to Keegan, he was focusing specifically on the conventional war at that point.

Enders confirms that the hostility to black Africans, even ones with long Libyan roots, continues to be a feature of the Libyan war/revolution:

Xenophobia quickly consumed the rebel forces, fueled by rumors that many of Gadhafi's soldiers were "mortezaka," foreign mercenaries paid to fight. There's no evidence that this happened, at least not on the scale that many Libyans think. But many revolutionary militiamen believe any black African without proper documentation is potentially mortezaka.

That's made the past weeks difficult, at best, for the thousands of foreign Africans working in Libya who entered the country illegally and have no documentation from the government. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of black Libyans and non-Libyans have been arrested by revolutionary forces on very little evidence and crowded into packed jails. ...

In Tawergha, a village of black Libyans that has been "cleansed" by the rebels, someone had scrawled the word "abeed" — a slur for blacks that means "slave." Some of the residents of Tawergha, a historically black city on the coast 25 miles south of Misrata, were descended from slaves. Others come from Libya's southern cities. With blacks being coded as supporters of Gadhafi, the rebel rhetoric of cleansing began months before the actual act. The people of Misrata have even developed a victim's narrative for it. They began by driving out many of the residents of Goshi, a predominantly black neighborhood in Misrata.

Out of the violence against Misrata came violence against Tawargha. Crushed, feeling weak, the people of a ruined city took revenge on those of another. Coupled with the violent manifestation of feelings toward black Africans, it was chilling.

Enders sees this as a major ugly trend in the development of events in Libya.

Even though the Free Libya forces are Our Side, it doesn't mean that the US and NATO bear direct responsibility for this. But war is a very messy and unpredictable business. Continuing with Enders:

Libyans scoff at the idea that their country could become "like Iraq," but one of the first things Iraqi militants did after the invasion was to prey upon minority groups. Later they turned on one another. With Saddam Hussein gone, factions once united in a common cause fought over power and resources.

Already, factions are emerging in Libya, with political leaders arguing that one area of the country is less represented than another. A dictatorship often creates a system of bureaucratic patrimony, and Gadhafi's appears to have been no different. The tribe of Gen. Abdulfattah Younes, the rebel military leader assassinated in July, has complained openly that it had been sidelined in the new power structure. So have the rebel fighters from Misrata.

Libya now boasts perhaps the most heavily armed populace in the world, thanks to Qatar and other rebel backers, who showered the rebels with weapons in the final months of their campaign, even as the rebels took more and more materiel from Gadfhafi's well-stocked storehouses. An unknown amount of munitions are simply missing. [my emphasis]

Lots of pissed-off people, with not much experience of politics, with lots of guns and ammo. Things could get a lot uglier.

A dose of cynicism is expected from war correspondence. But still, anyone looking at wars should have a healthy dose of cynicism:

The revolutionaries in Tripoli told me that they would be better than Gadhafi, but already the prisons are filling. Perhaps I am being too harsh on people who are still at war. But with Tripoli fallen, the clock is ticking. A vacuum is a dangerous thing.
Iraqis told me, over and over, that a civil war was impossible. They listed the reasons it wouldn't happen. Many were logical and reasonable. I believed them, and I don't think it was simply because I wanted to believe them.

I want to believe it when Libyans tell me the same. But with six months of civil war building toward bloody showdowns in Gadhafi's last strongholds, I am still waiting for Libya to teach me something new about war.
[my emphasis]

Tags: david enders, libya war

A few moments of actual news analysis from Mark Shields and David Brooks

The PBS Newshour for 08/26/2011 had the A Team - such as it is - on hand for the weekly Political Wrap segment, Sleepy Mark Shields and David "Bobo" Brooks: Shields and Brooks on GOP's Zeitgeist, Whether Obama Gets Credit for Libya. The non-dynamic duo actually had some notable things to say about the Libya War in the first couple of minutes.



Seemingly cutting-edge reporting is not something we usually associate with Bobo. And I don't want to give him too much credit. But my eyebrows did pop up when I heard Bobo say this:

JIM LEHRER: David, does President Obama deserve any praise or credit for what happened in Libya?

DAVID BROOKS: I think he does, and a lot more than he's getting, actually.

You have to remember, when the -- Gadhafi was marching on the rebels and threatening to massacre them, a lot of people in this country wanted to do nothing. A lot of people in Europe who were more upset about it just wanted to have sort of a no-fly zone.

And Obama has pushed them more aggressively than they wanted to go, so it wasn't just a no-fly zone. Were -- we actually ended up helping the rebels. We ended up helping the goal of regime change. And people have criticized whether it is was slow enough or fast enough, whether it was more aggressive or not.

But I think, more than anybody outside the country, I think Obama does deserve a lot of credit for showing that you can do an intervention reasonably well, achieve at least the first step of your objective, and do some large good for that country and potentially the region. [my emphasis]

What Bobo says here is that not only did NATO go beyond the no-fly zone which was the only military action in Libya authorized by the UN Security Council, but it was President Obama who pushed the NATO allies to do that.

Bobo doesn't mention that little business about Congress not authorizing the President to go to war. But I know that's so, like, 1940s to even mention. Still, it bothers some of us who like parts of Article 1 of the Constitution.

And Sleepy Mark, who I also don't want to give too much credit, is actually often decent on military issues. And he managed to mention something about the scope of the NATO intervention:

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Why? Why is he not getting any credit?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think because, when the economy is bad, the economy is the only issue. I really do. I think American opinion or interest in Libya has been episodic at best.

There was a lot at the beginning. But the people who most strenuously supported intervention now refuse to -- mostly Republicans -- refuse to give the president, the prime intervener, any credit. And most of the people who opposed the intervention were Democrats.

So they're reluctant to -- seem to be reluctant to crow, although they do acknowledge the president's role. And it is a case of NATO working. The stalemate that was -- loomed is over. A despot has been removed -- 17,000 sorties were flown. You know, it's a...

JIM LEHRER: Seventeen thousand sorties, that's a lot of hardware.

MARK SHIELDS: Seventeen thousand. That's a lot. It sure is. It sure is. [my emphasis]

A sortie in this context is an aircraft combat flight. Sleepy Mark didn't get into the reports suggesting that US Special Forces and/or CIA were operating on the ground in Libya. Also without Congressional authorization. But then, that's not so unusual these days, as Nick Turse explains in A Secret War in 120 Countries: The Pentagon's New Power Elite TomDispatch 08/03/2011. Personally, if I heard about a foreign military running its own hostile operations in the United States, it would irritate me. I would probably think of it as an act of war. Something that might make a lot of Americans resent the foreign country running hostile military operations on our soil. I guess that's another way I'm just sort of old-fashioned. But I digress.

The rest of the segment is pretty much standard, mostly pointless political chatter about the Presidential race. With Bobo, as he often does, rehashing the content of his latest New York Times column. In this case, President Rick Perry? 08/25/2011, in which Bobo warns that Perry is another warmongering Texan backed by demon-fighting Pentecostalist fanatics explains that Perry is a Good Ole Boy with a charmingly distinctive style.

Still, you have to give the Political Wrap Twins credit for jarring their viewers' brains for a few seconds.

This video extra, though, shows that such moments of lucidity are likely as not entirely accidental. Sleepy Mark and Bobo give a brief repeat of their Political Wrap segment, then chatter about sports for a few minutes.



They have to still fake being serious analysts for the PBS audience, an especially hard pull for Bobo. But they see their business as infotainment.

Tags: david brooks, libya war, mark shields

Libya War: the evolving next stage

Aljazeera English "Inside Story" has a special report on the situation in Libya posted to YouTube 08/24/2011, with a reporter that asks real questions, which has sadly become a novelty for American news TV viewers:



We have some liberal-interventionist triumphalism going over the Libya War. Which is likely to have more destructive consequences than constructive ones. Michael Tomasky makes the case that foreign policy is Obama’s True Claim to Fame Daily Beast 08/23/2011. First listing several qualifications that mitigate against triumphalism at the moment, he goes on to indulge in it anyway, breezily dismissing the substantial criticisms of the intervention:

All that said, the administration has already handled a lot of these changes well (and in the face of absolutely constant know-it-all criticism). One of the best things an American administration can do when big changes are afoot somewhere in the world is stay out of the way and not act as if we can will an outcome just because we’re America. We have a group in this country that likes to will outcomes, and their track record demonstrates that that doesn’t work so well (unless you think, apropos Iraq, that eight years and more than 100,000 lives later defines “well”). Obama has been more in the mold of George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, Jim Baker, when the Eastern bloc was throwing off Moscow’s shackles. Offer encouragement and stability, give a few speeches about freedom, but otherwise let them do their own work.

Obama took a lot of stick [sic] for not being more forceful on Egypt in February, but he was right to be cautious—there were lots of stakeholders involved, and sorry, but the president of the United States just can't say every sweet thing romantics would like him to say. He then, as noted, took heat for moving too slowly on Libya, but here again he was correct. The nature of the Libyan regime is not a direct national-security issue, so there absolutely had to be a specific trigger to justify acting. That trigger was Gaddafi's threatened assault on Benghazi.

That was completely the right thing to do. It was as textbook a fulfillment of "R2P," or "responsibility to protect," as one could imagine. The subsequent bombing campaign took longer than advertised, but it has apparently done the job, quickly and with far smaller loss of life (including zero U.S. deaths) than if we'd followed John McCain and Lindsey Graham's advice and gone in with ground troops. [my emphasis]

In my mind, saying, "The nature of the Libyan regime is not a direct national-security issue," immediately raises a serious question of legitimacy. That's where Tomasky makes the humanitarian-hawk argument on the "responsibility to protect," an important but highly problematic concept in international law, made such in no small part by American support.

The legality problem and the use of the Libya War as a model

But "responsibility to protect" is not the same as a blanket license for externally-imposed regime change. And that's what we have in Libya. I haven't yet seen any claims that the Libyan rebel army on its own could have made the military gains they have so quickly absent the NATO support in active military operations. What the UN Security Council resolution authorizing foreign intervention in support of the responsibility to protect allowed was a no-fly zone. It didn't give international legal sanction to a regime change operation, which is what the US and NATO ran. See the invaluable Nancy Youssef, What turned the tide in rebels' march to Tripoli? McClatchy Newspapers 08/22/2011 for a summary of NATO's role in active combat operations to date.

Then there's the Constitutional issue, which has in practice become mute thanks to Executive overreach and Congressional laziness and irresponsibility. As Daniel Luban writes in Too Early to Claim Vindication in Libya LobeLog Foreign Policy 08/23/2011 about that issue, adding a warning that triumphalist interpretations of the Libya War can invite more recklessness with military interventions:

The fact that the war helped put Obama's seal of approval on the American practice of going to war surreptitiously, without congressional approval or public accountability — as well as the possibility that perceived success in Libya might make the U.S. more reckless in intervening in the future — are both potential pitfalls that have little to do with the outcome of action on the ground. And that’s before we even speculate about whether the rebels' victory will prove to be conclusive, or what Libya's next government will look like.

And as long as we're recalling Old Man Bush, let's remember that Bush's great military/foreign policy success in the Gulf War of 1991 not only failed to get him re-elected with an economy in bad shape - but not nearly as bad as it's likely to be in 2012. It also set the stage for years of direct intervention in Iraq in the form of a no-fly zone, which included the bizarrely-named Operation Desert Fox of 1998-99. That continuing military intervention in Iraq culminated in Bush the Younger's invasion in 2003, the destructive consequences of which are still very much with us.

I don't mean this as some kind of invocation of the conservative magic formula of "unintended consequences." It's a reminder on where reckless foreign policy decisions can lead. Über-Realist Stephen Walt even dates the Gulf War as the beginning of the decline of the American Empire. While I wouldn't venture to identify such a portentous turning point so specifically. But, as usual, Walt's observations are worthwhile: When did the American empire start to decline? Foreign Policy 08/02/2011. As he remarks, "no strategy is so bad that somebody else can't make it worse."

Helena Cobban also expresses concern about using the Libya War as a model for further military interventions in Libya: The longer view Just World News 08/24/2011. She also raises a caution about triumphalism:

Libya, after 40 years of Qadhafi's rule and the recent five months of armed conflict, has very few institutions of good governance and almost no culture or tradition of good governance left to it. We have also seen very disturbing social fissures opening up during these most recent months of war-- between easterners and westerners, and between Arabs and Imazaghen. I am trying hard to muster some hope that the country's "transition" to a decent level and quality of self-governance can be well achieved within the next 2-3 years, but it is really hard to see any indications of how this might be achieved. ...

What is clear now, though, is that this task will be huge, and it has barely even begun... [my emphasis]

Business interests

And yes, Virginia, oil has had something to do with Western actions in Libya. The fact that oil companies pecuniary interests may have been in a happy coincidence in this case with humanitarian concerns or the "responsibility to protect" shouldn't mean that we ignore that important aspect of the Libya War. See Alessandra Migliaccio, Eni Lobbies to Keep Oil Dominance in Libya After Qaddafi Business Week 08/24/2011 and Robert Dreyfuss, Obama's NATO War for Oil in Libya The Nation 08/23/2011; Kevin Hall, Oil companies see quick return to Libya, once peace restored McClatchy Newspapers 08/22/2011. Hall reports:

Before the war, Libya provided about 1.1 million to 1.6 million barrels per day, roughly about 2 percent of the world’s daily oil demand. But while that production made Libya only the world's 17th largest oil producer, it has the largest proven reserves in Africa and it played an outsized role in supplying Western Europe, where refineries easily process its lighter grade of crude.

Saudi Arabia stepped into produce more oil, but Saudi oil is more difficult for European refineries to process.

Oil politics undoubtedly played a part in the Saudi monarchy's support of this Western humanitarian intervention.

Dreyfuss puts the role of oil pointedly: "What do you call it when the full force of a US/NATO aerial bombardment is coupled with political support for a ragtag rebel group that, when victorious, promises to hand over its oil resources to its Western backers? A war for oil."

Pragmatism has various incarnations

There's usually no shortage of hypocrisy to be found in the vicinity of foreign policy questions. Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a couple of examples from the bold Maverick McCain and his good buddgy Joe Lieberman on Libya. As Ali Gharib reports in Leaked Cable: McCain Promised Qaddafi To Help Secure Military Equipment From U.S. Think Progress Security 08/24/2011, we had this from that great friend of democracy and liberation from tyranny Joe Lieberman: "Lieberman called Libya an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends."

That's from a diplomatic cable reporting on a trip to Libya that Lieberman made with the Maverick and their fellow triplet Senator, Lindsey Graham. It also reported:

Senator McCain assured Muatassim that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for its [a Libyan security program]. He stated that he understood Libya's requests regarding the rehabilitation of its eight C130s [a transport plane] and pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress. He encouraged Muatassim to keep in mind the long-term perspective of bilateral security engagement and to remember that small obstacles will emerge from time to time that can be overcome.

The Maverick and his li'l buddy Lindsey also pledged to help our their partner in the War on Terror: "Senators McCain and Graham conveyed the U.S. interest in continuing the progress of the bilateral relationship and pledged to try to resolve the C130 issue with Congress and Defense Secretary Gates."

Now, this provides a bit of schadenfreude because the triplets griped about Obama's not doing enough fast enough to help overturn Gaddafi's government in Libya this year. Because it shows how cynical these characters can be.

But there's also something to be said from a pragmatic attitude toward relations with governments that are cooperating with the US in important national objectives. The triplets would have added something more constructive to what little debate there has been about the Libyan intervention if they had talked publicly about why the US government had seen Qaddafi's regime in a more favorable light the last few years.

My biggest concern in the probable repercussions of the US intervention is that Libya had agreed back in 2003 to abandon its nuclear weapons program, which should always be at the front or very near the front of US foreign policy priorities. Giving up its attempt to develop nuclear weapons that would have deterred a foreign attack, Qaddafi this year found himself at war with the United States and NATO, and not in response to any attack by Libya on NATO countries. Is this likely to make Iran or any other country more likely to cooperate in nuclear nonproliferation efforts? I don't see how.

Tags: libya war

The new stage in the Libya War

Maybe the new stage will be called peace, democracy and improved government. Or it may be called a protracted civil war. Let's hope for the best.

Robert Dreyfuss gives an account of The Fall of Qaddafi The Nation 08/22/2011. Juan Cole, who is a careful observer and has also been an enthusiastic supporter of the NATO intervention, writes about the turn of events over the weekend in Top Ten Myths about the Libya War Informed Comment 08/22/2011.

While the fall of Qaddafi's government is certainly a dramatic event, it could be the start of a more problematic stage of US/NATO involvement in Libya's internal politics. The Afghanistan War began nearly 10 years ago, and the pariah Taliban government in Kabul fell to the US-backed Northern Alliance quickly. The 10th anniversary of the start of that war will arrive in a few weeks. There is no end to the war in sight.

The supposedly rapid success of US Special Forces and airpower enabling the Northern Alliance to take Kabul quickly boosted then-Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his conviction that Saddam Hussein's government could be overthrow with a minimal force. The neocons had visions of the US knocking off one Middle Easter regime after another with relatively little effort. Baghdad fell, the famous statue of Saddam came down. And then the looting in Badgdad started. Rummy cackled on TV at how silly it was to worry about the chaos in the capital city. But virtually all accounts of the Iraq War now agree that the looting in Baghdad was a disastrous turning point for the occupation. American troops are still in Iraq, though they are under pressure from the pro-Iranian government that resulted from the US invasion to get out later this year. The Pentagon is trying to keep troops there indefinitely.

Air war true believers saw the Kosovo War of 1999 as proof that airpower could win wars with virtually no ground troops involved. Serbian troops were able to proceed with ethnic cleansing during the air campaign. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were able to proceed with the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo under the subsequent NATO-protected regime. NATO troops remain in Kosovo today.

US military involvement in Libya isn't over. And this apparently ill-thought-out military intervention could have unpleasant consequences, even if things go well with the new government that will initially be the current Transitional National Council (TNC). As Dreyfus writes, "So who’s in charge in Libya now? We don't know. Qaddafi wasn’t entirely wrong when he said that he was under assault by Islamists, though Islamists were probably not the main component of the opposition and the so-called Transitional National Council (TNC)."

And as he also reminds us, this government was installed with difficulty through the heavy use of NATO firepower in aggressive military operations. It's worth remembering that the UN resolution authorizing foreign intervention gave a green light to establishing a no-fly zone to impede government massacres of civilians. The US and NATO went considerably beyond that:

What does Qaddafi’s departure mean? First, what it doesn’t mean is that the United States and NATO are powerful actors in the region. It took nearly six months for the full might of NATO, bombarding every Libyan tank and armored personnel carrier that moved, decimating Qaddafi’s command-and-control system, and serving as the air wing of the fractious Libyan opposition, to clear the way to Tripoli.

Our policymakers should be restrained about making "Tripoli" into another "Kabul" and assume that this is some hot new model for regime change on the cheap.

Then there is the fact that the Qaddafi regime had cooperated with what should always be one of the very highest priorities of American foreign policy, nuclear nonproliferation:

And we can all hope and pray that the “Libyan model”—an armed opposition backed by US and NATO air power—isn’t the model for Syria or, worse, Iran. At the very least, President Assad of Syria will look at Libya and draw the appropriate conclusion, namely, that he must at all costs prevent the emergence of a Syrian "Benghazi." For Ayatollah Khamenei, the equally mentally imbalanced leader of Iran, he’ll draw parallel conclusions, one of which will be that Qaddafi was foolish to give up his nuclear weapons quest in the 2000s and trust the West, which then seized the first opportunity to impose forcible regime change. Khamenei will likely conclude the Qaddafi would still be in power if he had had nuclear weapons, and although that conclusion would be idiotically wrong — the West would long ago have invaded Libya to stop it from getting the bomb [???] — Khamenei is going to think so, anyway, making a deal between the United States and Iran far more difficult. [my emphasis]

Über-Realist Stephen Walt gives advice on Avoiding a 'Mission Accomplished' moment in Libya Foreign Policy 08/22/2011:

The danger is that we will have another "Mission Accomplished" moment, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen, President Obama, and their various pro-intervention advisors give each other a lot of high-fives, utter solemn words about having vindicated the new "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) doctrine, and then turn to some new set of problems while Libya deteriorates. And as an anonymous "senior American military officer" told the New York Times: "The leaders I've talked to do not have a clear understanding how this will all play out."

Neither do any of the rest of us. We can all hope that the worst doesn't happen and that Libya's new leaders exhibit Mandela-like wisdom and restraint. Nobody expects perfection, of course; I can live with the "I told you sos" from hawkish liberal interventionists if it all works out reasonably well. But it will be no small task to construct a workable government in Libya, given the dearth of effective institutions and the potential divisions among different social groups. And then there's all that oil revenue to divide up, which tends to bring out peoples' worse instincts.

As in Iraq, therefore, ousting a discredited dictator is likely to be the easy part, and the hard part is just beginning. Aren't you glad the United States and Europe have lots of time and money to devote to rebuilding yet another potential failed state? [my emphasis]

Tags: juan cole, libya war, robert dreyfuss, stephen walt

Mark Fiore's "Declaration of Thingamajig"

Tags: mark fiore, libya war

Patrick Cockburn on the mess known as the Libya War

Patrick Cockburn consistently did some of the best reporting on the Iraq War. Which means you don't see him on the Sunday morning talking-heads shows in the US. But it's worth paying attention to what he is writing about the Libya War in Why the West is committed to the murderous rebels in Libya Independent 07/31/2011:

The Libyan rebels are even weaker than those in Afghanistan and Iraq where the Western-backed opposition had a core of loyal and well-trained fighters. In Afghanistan, these were the mostly Tajik forces of the Northern Alliance and in Iraq the Kurds had a well organised and well led army in the north of the country. In Libya, rebel forces have always been more meagre, inexperienced and often appear to be one side in hitherto obscure tribal confrontations which have turned into mini civil wars.

The nature of the civil war in Libya has been persistently underplayed by foreign governments and media alike. The enthusiasm in some 30 foreign capitals to recognise the mysterious self-appointed group in Benghazi as the leaders of Libya is at this stage probably motivated primarily by expectations of commercial concessions and a carve-up of oilfields.

And he comments on the success of the Free Libya propaganda campaign in the Western media, no doubt assisted by the usual bank of consultants available to exile governments supported by friendly NATO governments:

In one respect, the foreign media has been more culpable than governments in giving credibility to the TNC as an alternative to Gaddafi's regime. Official rebel statements and claims have been treated with respect, as if they were not geared to winning the propaganda war. Atrocity stories, such as the use of the mass rape of women as a weapon of war, were broadcast uncritically by CNN and others. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as well as a UN commission, found there was no evidence for the allegations, but there was no retraction by the media. How could it be that for month after month Gaddafi's forces were still fighting when he was meant to have no support? One answer was that he had hired mercenaries from black Africa. Frightened labourers with no documents were arrested and presented by the rebels at TV press conferences as mercenaries and later quietly released. In contrast to their limited military capabilities, the rebels have proved extremely effective in cultivating the foreign media. [my emphasis]

Tags: libya war, patrick cockburn

Libya War: expect to be there a long time

Stephen Walt writes in Whatever happened to the war in Libya? Foreign Policy 07/11/2011:

... back when NATO first got involved [in the Libya War], a number of people made the obvious comparison to the 1999 war in Kosovo. Both wars were launched on impulse, there were no vital strategic interests involved, and both wars were fought "on the cheap" through the use of air power. NATO leaders expected the targets to succumb quickly and were surprised when their adversaries (Milosevic in 1999, Qaddafi today) hung on as long as they did.

But there's another parallel that deserves mention too. Serbia eventually surrendered, and I expect that Qaddafi or his sons will eventually do so too. But in the case of Kosovo, NATO and the U.N. had to send in a peacekeeping force, and they are still there 10 years later. And Kosovo has only about 28 percent of Libya's population and is much smaller geographically (some 10,000 square kilometers, compared with Libya's 1,800,000 sq. km.). So anybody who thinks that NATO, the United Nations, or the vaguely defined "international community" will be done whenever Qaddafi says uncle (or succumbs to a NATO airstrike) should probably lower their expectations and prepare themselves for long-term involvement in a deeply divided country. [my emphasis]

And they are likely to encounter some problems in that longer mission; see C.J. Chivers, Reporter’s Notebook: Reading the Rebels in Western Libya, Pt. I New York Times 07/10/2011.

Tags: kosovo war, libya war, stephen walt

Obama's words, personality and policy

I've become particularly fond of David Bromwich's analyses of President Obama. His close reading of Obama's speeches often yields some perceptive insights.

In Obama: His Words and His Deeds 06/16/2011 (07/14/2011 issue), Bromwich brings the story up to date:

Few members of Congress as yet hold a fully articulated objection to America’s wars in Asia and North Africa. But other causes in play may trouble the President’s determination to show his sympathy with the Arab Spring by military action in Libya. Obama has an unfortunate propensity to be specific when it would serve him well to avoid particulars, and to become vague at times when dates, names, numbers, or "a line in the sand" is what is needed to clarify a policy. On Libya, he was specific. He said the American commitment would last "days, not weeks." It has now lasted a little under three months. Reliable reporters such as Anthony Shadid of The New York Times and Patrick Cockburn of The Independent have suggested that an end to the conflict is nowhere in sight.

The narrow aim of enforcing a "no-fly zone" to protect civilians, asserted by Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton as the limit of American aims, turns out to have been a wedge for an air war against Qaddafi, a war, in fact, as thorough as is compatible with avoidance of harm to civilians. The surest thing one can say about the end of this engagement is that the US—along with France, Great Britain, and perhaps also Italy, which arranged the intervention—will at some point install a client state and fit out a friendly government with a democratic constitution.

Stephen Walt is less generous in his evaluation of Obama's bizarre claim that the Libya War doesn't constitute "hostilities" by the United States under American law. In Obama, we're at war. Stop insulting us. Foreign Policy 06/16/2011, Walt writes:

... the Obama administration is claiming that it doesn't need congressional authorization for its Libyan intervention under the War Powers Act. Why? Because what we are doing doesn't amount to "full-blown" hostilities.

Oh, please. Let's start with the definition of "war" itself. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as "a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country." Now, let's see: what are we doing in Libya? What we know is that we've sent cruise missiles, and drones and U.S. aircraft to attack military targets in various places, including several attacks on Qaddafi's own compound. We are continuing to provide targeting information to our NATO allies, who are conducting additional raids on their own. Although U.S. ground troops are not present in force, it's a safe bet that U.S. special forces are operating in various places, probably helping provide some of that targeting info. And of course because the Obama administration isn't telling us everything that it's doing, we have no clear way of knowing exactly how involved we really are.

By any reasonable, common-sense standard, in short, we are at war. It doesn't matter that we aren't using our full strength to help the rebels or that other states are doing more than we are. The plain fact is that the United States is using its military forces and intelligence capabilities to attack Libyan forces. In plain English, we are killing (or helping to kill) Qaddafi loyalists (and occasionally innocent civilians), in an openly-acknowledged campaign to drive him from power. Sounds like war to me, and to anybody else who isn't being paid to find ways to evade or obscure reality. [my emphasis in bold]

Walt's comments points to one of the limitations of Bromwich's approach. Bromwich generally does a good job of looking at the policy context of Obama's words. But he tends to treat seeming inconsistencies in Obama's words as some sort of personality quirk. And in doing so, he sometimes makes useful assumptions, such as comments about his own personal wealth that suggest a strong identification with the wealthy and powerful. But it can also downplay policy and political concerns that make even more obvious explanations.

For instance, he writes:

Obama has always preferred the symbolic authority of the grand utterance to the actual authority of a directed policy: a policy fought for in particulars, carefully sustained, and traceable to his own intentions. The danger of the built-up speech venues — the Nobel Prize speech of December 2009 was another example — is that they cast Obama as the most famous holder-forth in the world, and yet it is never clear what follows for him from the fact that the world is listening. These settings make a president who is now more famous than popular seem not popular but galactic.

The speeches also display as a strength a personal trait that can seem, instead, an indulgence. For Obama, protracted moods of extreme abstraction seem to alternate with spasmodic engagement. The blend is hard to get used to. His detachment from congressional negotiations on health care and cap-and-trade was resented by Democrats, while leaders of the Palestinian Authority were at a loss to account for the dissociation from active pursuit of a settlement that followed his Cairo speech of June 2009. His decision to back the Libyan rebels was an instance of sudden engagement, against the prudential advice of a secretary of defense whom Obama trusts and admires. [my emphasis]

Yet he writes further on:

Obama in his Nobel Prize speech - which was in large part a defense of American conduct after 1945 and in smaller part a plea for the legitimation of humanitarian wars such as he has now committed the US to support in Libya - went on to say of the duties of a great power: “Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later.” The idioms of duty and utility are strangely mixed in that sentence. How can we be sure that an act that the President would like the world to see as benevolent will be seen as benevolent? It is surely easier to have that feeling if one knows oneself as the preeminent power, and believes oneself to be carried forward by the momentum of the world. [my emphasis]

Why do we need a psychological explanation postulating that Obama experiences "protracted moods of extreme abstraction [which] seem to alternate with spasmodic engagement" and that one of the latter moments was the Libya intervention, when Bromwich's observation that Obama used his Nobel speech in part for "the legitimation of humanitarian wars such as he has now committed the US to support in Libya" indicates rather than Obama was looking for such an opportunity as a matter of policy? There are indications, certainly, that the Libya intervention was poorly thought through. And even that Obama may have been suckered into thinking it was going to be quick and easy. But we don't need a speculation about a tendency on the President's part to "spasmodic engagement" to explain it plausibly.

Using grand phrases to deflect criticism from disappointing policies is a routine part of political speech and statecraft. Bromwich is also giving political theater too much credit in the matter of the health care negotiations. The White House was heavily involved with them but didn't make a big public deal about them. In summer of 2009, the White House cut their notorious deal with health industry lobbyists to make sure no public option would be included in the health care reform.

Bromwich gives a lot of attention to Obama's public rhetorical sparring with Benjamin Netanyahu. He thinks the Israeli Prime Minister got the best of Obama. But Bromwich leaves the impression that this is mainly because Obama failed to understand Netanyahu's rhetorical strategy. It seems more relevant to look at Obama's record to date, which strongly suggests that he never intended to apply major pressure to Israel to stop the West Bank settlements, which is essential to any remaining hope of negotiations leading to a viable two-state solution. A more parsimonious explanation of Obama's behavior is that he wanted to wave a diplomatic fig leaf to indicate that he tried to do something to get Israel to negotiate.

But Bromwich is being realistic when he writes, "Obama, as much as any American leader, is captivated by an image of America as the world-historical touchstone of generous conduct toward other nations." Politics, of course, require him to convey the impression to the public that he believes something along those lines. But Bromwich's conclusion in this case is consistent not only with Obama's words but his policy conduct.

Bromwich also seems to miss a basic and simple point here:

Walter Bagehot in The English Constitution divided government into two components, the dignified part and the efficient part. The dignified part is concerned with matters of ceremony, the arrangement and conduct of state occasions for celebration or mourning, the issuance of joint communiqués with foreign leaders and commands delivered from a majestic height. The efficient part is the part of government that governs - by making laws above all, but also by striking bargains between factions, and filling the positions of upper, middle, and lower functionaries, and threshing out party platforms on the way to becoming laws.

And he notes that Obama seems to have a distinct preference for the former. But one obvious distinction between the President and the British prime minister, and also the heads of many parliamentary governments, is that the President is both head of state (the role played by the Queen in Britain and the King in Spain) and head of government. That "dignified part" is a Constitutional role for the US President in a way that it is not for the British and Spanish prime ministers or the German Chancellor.

Also, how is Obama different in that way from other Presidents? The late John Kenneth Galbraith used to observe with his characteristic tone of sardonic amusement that Presidents and diplomats loved to go to summits and make foreign visits. And that the motivation was frequently primarily the pleasure of the trip. Think of Richard Nixon. As much as he may have enjoyed the less "dignified" aspects of his job, when was he enjoying himself more? Traveling to China and being hailed as a world statesman? Or sitting in his office with Haldeman and Ehrichman worrying about Jewish plots against him and planning domestic espionage crimes and figuring out ways of hushing them up?

This is also a useful observation on Bromwich's part:

The position of a moderate who aspires to shake the world into a new shape presents a continuous contradiction. For the moderate feels constrained not to say anything startling, and not to do anything very fast. But just as there is trouble with doing things on the old lines, there is trouble, too, with letting people understand things on the old lines. At least, there is if you have your sights set on changing the nature of the game. Obama is caught in this contradiction, and keeps getting deeper in it, like a man who sinks in quicksand both the more he struggles and the more he stays still. This is one lesson of his passage from inaction in Egypt to action in Libya, and from his summons of reform in Cairo in June 2009 to the guarded speech from the sidelines in May 2011. [my emphasis]

Here it's hard to avoid making judgments about Obama's personality, or at least the appropriateness of his leadership style to the current situation. A lot of frustrated Democrats have been saying, in some form or another, that the public interest in general and the Democratic Party in particular needed a transformative President. But Obama is instead a transactional one. And that's no doubt related to his own temperament and personality in some part. But it's also rooted in Obama's embrace of the neoliberal/Washington Consensus economic orthodoxy. He's a Democratic President who's made sure to keep the phasing out of Medicare and Social Security on the national agenda! It may be a personality quirk. But it's also a policy orientation.

Something similar is true in foreign policy broadly. Obama may want to wind down involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan to levels that are less politically disturbing. But his actions in Afghanistan have been consistent with the position he took in the 2008 campaign of supporting that war and promising to escalate it. The Libya War also shows that he buys into the interventionism that has loomed far too big in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. And his embrace of the Patriot Act, his legal pursuit of whistleblowers and journalists, and his extreme claims for government secrecy and the right to designate Americans abroad for assassination on his own authority all indicate that Obama supports the basic structure of the national security state as Cheney and Bush defined it.

Obviously, the personality of a person with such enormous power as the President of the United States is a legitimate and necessary matter for study and concern. But when actions fit into a clear and intelligible policy context (whether or not one approves of the policies), we don't need to postulate personality quirks to explain them.

Tags: barack obama, david bromwich, libya war, stephen walt