Among the many important issues and events that have been shoved into the background in the past six weeks have been the messy stalemates in the Middle East. Libya and Syria have gotten some minimal attention; Yemen and Bahrain have gotten less.
Many people find Libya puzzling and somewhat disturbing. It is hard to understand what is going on and equally hard to understand what the U.S. is doing there. Let me try to clarify the major dimensions.
Libya’s Revolution
Like many countries in the Global South, “Libya” was constructed out of three distinct regions of North Africa by European colonialism. Opposition to the Italian occupation provided the primary basis for a Libyan identity. The externally imposed definition of Libya was continued during and after World War II, with British and French occupation leading to independence in 1951.
In 1969 a 27 year old colonel, Moammar Gadhafi, led a military coup against the traditional monarchy that emerged with independence. There were several sources of discontent, an important one was the feeling that Libya was locked in backwardness. Gadhafi had the personal and situational skills and resources to build a coalition of discontented fellow officers; he also saw himself as a visionary and transformative leader. Four years after taking power, he announced a total revolution, in which old political elements would be purged, formal institutions would be abolished, and the masses would rule directly through local consultative assemblies. The rationale and ideology for this attempt to create a new Libyan person in a new Libyan society was spelled out 1975 in the Green Book that proclaimed a third way, neither Communist nor capitalist.
Libya in the Gadhafi Era
Setting out to change everything, from institutions to people’s beliefs in the name of the Truth, led to the creation of a highly repressive, highly intrusive police system. Politics became top down dictation (if I’ve got the Truth, you either see it and agree fully with me or you are mired in lies and evil and need to be dealt with.) In addition to its domestic enemies, “the Third Way” was threatened by traditional Middle Eastern regimes, global Imperialism, and global Communism. The unholy alliance of traditional monarchies and U.S.-led Imperialism was the major external enemy. This led to direct action such as the Lockerbie bombing, assassination attempts on Mubarak and others, and intervention in Chad. It led to indirect actions such as supporting the Irish Republican Army, the Bader-Menihoff Gang, the North Korean regime, among a host of other presumptive revolutionary anti-Imperialists.
The Green Book is quite short and provides little detail on how to run a country. Gadhafi’s regime did not ever generate a coherent strategy for economic development. While oil revenues have been constrained by an international embargo and lack of maintenance for facilities, sizable amounts of money have been poured into the economy with precious little to show for it.
We’re Mad as Hell and We’re Not Going To Take It Any More
The failure of the economy to generate enough jobs for the youth who entered it each year, plus the repressive state apparatus, plus regionalism led to the 2011 rebellion. It is not accidental that it is centered in Benghazi, capital of the easternmost region. Gadhafi’s greatest support is in the westernmost section of the country. The fact that, despite rhetoric about the rule of the masses, Libyan politics is centered on Gadhafi and his personal allies and is almost exclusively top down, has meant that Libyans have had no opportunity to develop organizations or alliances or experiment with the various institutions we usually lump under the head of “civil society.” The lack of organized opposition has meant that the rebellion has suffered from lack of leadership and unity. In March almost everyone outside as well as inside Libya could echo Butch Cassidy, “Who are those guys?”
The rebels’ initial successes came in areas where traditional ties to the capital were weak and there were few personal or tribal links to the regime or to the tribes that most closely identified with the regime. But when the rebellion moved closer to Tripoli and Gadhafi deployed his elite troops, the untrained, undisciplined rebel soldiers were repeatedly routed. As rebel forces retreated to the East, Gadhafi threatened massive and bloody retaliation against “disloyal” elements. This was widely understood inside and outside Libya to portend indiscriminate violence against the citizens of Benghazi and surrounding towns.
NATO gets involved
The decisions to get involved were complex and differed somewhat from country to country. For the United States, I think a very important factor is the personal and professional backgrounds of many of the key policy makers. The Rwandan genocide happened back in 1994 and the Srebenica massacre in 1995, thousands of miles from Libya. But these atrocities, especially Rwanda, are widely regarded as a shameful failure on the part of the international community. They are particularly painful for former members of the Clinton administration (many of whom are part of Obama’s foreign policy team.) The conventional wisdom in the foreign policy establishment is that the United States could and should have exerted leadership to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths. When it appeared that Gadhafi’s elite army units were on the verge of unleashing mass killings in Benghazi, the choice seemed to be between a potentially messy intervention and the specter of a preventable massacre.
There were, of course, other motives and rationales. Everyone involved in policy making brings their own personal and professional interests and judgements to the table; no foreign policy action is ever taken for a single reason. [Quick, stifle the “It’s all about oil!” chants ... if it were all about oil, we’d have been rooting for Gadhafi to win.] For a variety of reasons, from short term questions of available resources to longer term questions of the future of NATO, the U.S. worked actively to make the intervention an international action. Hence NATO states were encouraged to take the lead and the UN Security Council was used to confer international legitimacy. Skillful diplomacy got approval from the Arab League and tacit support from the African Union and token participation from Turkey and Qatar.
A Fine Distinction
From the beginning of talk about intervention in Libya there were two issues, conceptually distinct but damnably hard to separate in practice. One issue was humanitarian intervention: the use of force by outside actors to prevent heinous actions by a government. The other issue was regime change: aiding and abetting an internal political process that would oust Gadhafi and his cronies.
This is not the time or place to discuss in detail the emerging norm in international relations of a “Responsibility to Protect.” The traditional view in international law and politics has been that sovereignty, flowing from the fact that the state is the highest moral authority, means that states must recognize the right of each government to rule its country and treat its people any way it sees fit. A growing body of scholarly analysis and political rhetoric has argued that like all rights, sovereignty comes with a corresponding responsibility. If the state has a right to run its internal affairs any way it sees fit, it has a correspponding duty to protect the well being of its people. This is seen as providing a moral and legal basis for violating the right of sovereignty in egregious cases.
So the U.S. and NATO and a few other states launched a military operation to enforce a no-fly zone over rebel held territory. That quickly morphed into a mission to destroy the ability of the Libyan armed forces to undertake offensive actions on the ground as well. And lots of stuff happened and didn’t happen ... I think it is probably fair to say that the original rosy scenario: some well placed cruise missiles and a moderate number of air strikes against military formations would erase the threat of massive casualties inflicted on civilians, was grossly over optimistic. (So what else is new? SNAFU and FUBAR are far more common than “Golly, that was easier than we thought.”)
At the same time, the U.S., NATO and other states undertook an active campaign to get Gadhafi out of power. This campaign was meant to be political not military and to involve the usual combination of sanctions, overt and covert support for opponents, and widespread condemnation. The aim was to topple Gadhafi from within by encouraging the regime to crumble and collapse. It was expected this would take time, although perhaps not as long as it has.
When tomahawk cruise missiles are exploding in Tripoli and French and British jets are dropping bombs or launching air to ground missiles, it can be darn hard to remember that nice distinction between humanitarian intervention and regime change. What began as a rebellion has grown into a civil war, with two distinct territories, two militaries, and two bodies claiming to be the government of Libya.
There is a military stalemate on the ground (although the rebels are claiming significant progress in the past few days) and slowly increasing support for the rebel government in the international community (most importantly those parts of the community, like the U.S. and UK who have possession of money belonging to Libya.) There is also widespread confusion, ranging from popular opinion in the countries involved to uncertainty about the eventful winners in a factional struggle within the Transitional Government, to when and how this might all end.
The Two Most Critical Issues
The Libyan episode raises a number of questions. The most important issues are: when and where to intervene and the War Powers Resolution.
Virtually no one consistently argues that sovereignty is the only value and any outside intervention in the internal affairs of another state is always wrong. For a considerable period of time the Chinese foreign ministry and its UN delegation actively promoted the widest possible definition of sovereign rights. But China, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council has declined to veto a number of actions, both military and civilian, that appear to violate an absolutist view of sovereignty. Leaving aside the normative arguments, states act as if sovereignty were contingent and other values can sometimes trump it. You don’t have to accept all the arguments advanced by proponents of the strong version of a Right to Protect to arrive at the conclusion that sometimes intervention is OK. Clearly, I think, not every injustice or violation of human rights justifies, let alone demands, an external intervention. But I do not think a contemporary American can argue that the U.S. should never intervene in the affairs of other countries. A moral argument, based on a common humanity and America’s founding values, may or may not be persuasive. There is a hard nosed, eminently practical reason as well. We are the single largest economic unit in a global economy. We are at the center of the global political system. We should understand that the quality of our future depends on the state of the rest of the world. We are a status quo power. We do not want massive change in the distribution of wealth and influence in the world. Injustice breeds instability. A government that harshly abuses many of its own citizens is ultimately a threat to its neighbors and the system as a whole.
The question, then, is not should we or should we not ever intervene. The question is prudence. Given the scope of the evil in another country, given our coercive resources and the resources of the other state, given our ability to bring other countries along (both for leveraging their coercive resources and the legitimacy an international consensus supplies), given the probability that an intervention can be designed and executed that will not cause more harm than it was meant to stop, is this particular intervention a good idea? This means it may be prudence, not hypocrisy, that expalins why we send missiles and planes into Libya but not Syria.
Saying “it depends” is not the easy way out. It is a recipe for soul searching, deep analysis, and spirited debate for each potential situation.
A uniquely American aspect to the Libyan situation is the War Powers Resolution of 1973. [The most relevant provisions allow the President to deploy U.S. armed forces for up to 60 dayus with prior Congressional authorization. The President must inform Congress of the action within 48 hours and seek specific authorization if the use of force lasts longer than 60 days.] It began as a joint resolution of the House and Senate, was vetoed by Richard Nixon. Congress overrode the veto and enacted the Resolution. [Thus it is sometimes referred to as the “War Powerd Resolution” and sometimes “War Powers Act.”] Every Administration since then has sooner or later argued that this is an unconstitutional infringement on Executive Power and every Congress has rejected that argument. Several Presidents have sent formal notifications to Congress after initiating the use of military force, always insisting that they are “consistent” with the legislation , not “pursuant” to it.
President Obama has argued that the initial use of U.S. forces in Libya was terminated before the 60 day notification deadline and U.S. direct involvement in the NATO operation is minimal. The House of Representatives has “rebuked” the President.
It seems to me that one could argue for or against the War Powers Act on legal and Constitutional grounds (it has never been tested in court.) One can also argue both the principle and the application in a specific case on prudential grounds. Declared wars between states are increasingly rare in international politics. The majority of conflicts in the world today are civil wars or insurgencies within a state, often with a lot of involvement by outsiders. If nothing else, I that guarantees that the debate over War Powers and humanitarian intervention will not die down.
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