Foreign Policy In Focus

As presumably ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi remains in absentia, as Saif al-Islam Gaddafi emerges a free man after his alleged “capture,” as fighting continues in Tripoli, as murmurs pick up of NATO ground troops in Libya, and as myriad questions linger about the cohesion of the rebel forces who ousted Gaddafi and the intransigent loyalist forces who remain, it is easy enough to conclude that Libya’s civil war is far from settled.

Certainly, most post-mortems on the subject pay some or another degree of lip service to this particular narrative inconvenience, even as they also tell us what “lessons” there are to be gained from America’s latest encounter with regime change in the Middle East – on the vindication of “leading from behind,” on the extent to which President Obama is owed credit, on the effectiveness of NATO’s various methods of infiltrating the rebel ranks and coordinating their activities, and so forth.

This is more or less to be expected; journalists and bloggers have pressing deadlines and hungry audiences – and also perhaps editors who would find it remiss of them to pass up such a salient media hook just to gain a little more nuance or perspective.

However, there is something a bit unseemly about some of the coverage so far, and mostly it comes from progressive or Democratic-leaning outlets: boasting.

This was perhaps best encapsulated by a Think Progress tweet flagged by Glenn Greenwald, which asked, “Does John Boehner still believe military operations in Libya are illegal?” Greenwald, clearly irked, responded, “The towering irrationality of this taunt is manifest…  What comments like this one are designed to accomplish is to exploit and manipulate the emotions surrounding Gaddafi's fall to shame and demonize war critics and dare them to question the War President now in light of his glorious triumph.”

Greenwald points out, as have others since, that hardly anyone, whether critic or champion, ever doubted the ability of a NATO bombing campaign to oust Gaddafi. The realization of this objective (which, although it seems quaint to point out now, was not the objective authorized by the UN Security Council) is immaterial to questions about the legality, practicality, or appropriateness of the war – and this was of course a war, despite the White House’s weirdly Orwellian insistence to the contrary.

To the credit of Think Progress, which usually does commendable work uncovering the networks and rhetorical excesses of neoconservatives and sundry other militarists in the Washington establishment, it has also run cautionary posts about the “shades of Iraq” in Libya and on the uncertainties that lie ahead for the country. But for the most part these have succeeded or run alongside a handful of posts blasting various members of the GOP for “refusing” to credit President Obama with Gaddafi’s fall, or else a celebratory post showcasing a “Thank You” banner for the U.S. and its allies held up by Libyan demonstrators in Benghazi.

Certainly Libya is no Iraq or Afghanistan. And no doubt the hypocrisy of certain GOP politicians’ pronouncements on Libya, vis-à-vis their views on Iraq or Afghanistan (or even their previously stated views on Libya), has often bordered on breathtaking. It’s also admittedly hard not to be moved by the surreal scene of a U.S. president being honored in an Arab city – and not least at what the revolutionaries have accomplished so far.

But mostly I am taken by the similarities of such remarks to those that have appeared in neoconservative publications like Commentary, where editor Jonathan Tobin called the day of Tripoli’s fall “a bad day for Libyan intervention critics,” or the National Review, where torture apologist extraordinaire John Yoo declared that “Qaddafi’s fall should embarrass GOP isolationists,” even generously assessing the affair “a half-victory” for Obama.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter in the long run (or now, for that matter) whether the GOP gives any credit to Obama. And the efficacy of “leading from behind” is hardly the fundamental question about the U.S. approach to Libya, no matter how much mud some Republicans threw at it.

The crux of the matter is that even if the president led the NATO coalition from behind, he led his country into war from practically another planet. The administration scarcely shrugged when Congress voted against authorizing the Libya campaign, an authorization the administration had only sought belatedly because it was insisting all along that the United States was not actually “at war.” By then NATO was already waging a thinly veiled, open-ended campaign for regime change that hardly squared with the UN mandate to protect civilians in Benghazi (a mandate the United States may well have helped secure by agreeing to look the other way as Saudi Arabia helped quash the nascent democratic uprisings in Bahrain and beyond).

Unseemly developments still emanate from Tripoli: the $1.6 million reward Libyan business leaders have placed on Gaddafi’s head, for one, or the all-too-eager preparations of multinational oil companies to extract new contracts from the rubble of the Gaddafi regime – perhaps on the tail of UN or NATO ground troops. Progressives should be warier about gloating over another war that smells unsubtly of oil.

One hopes this chapter ends happily for the Libyan people, and certainly the taunts of Libya hawks will be endurable if it does. But no progressive should celebrate yet another circumvention – this one by a Nobel Peace Prize winner, no less – of the mechanisms intended to prevent the wanton and unaccountable waging o­f war.

This commentary first appeared on AlterNet.

Muammar Gaddafi’s whereabouts are still unknown, and the defeat of his regime may be near at hand. But the consequences of that defeat remain uncertain.

The origins of the Libyan transition emerged very much in the context of the Arab Spring – a popular uprising against a brutal dictatorship. But unlike others in the neighborhood – Egypt and Tunisia especially, but also Bahrain, even Syria – Libyans quickly took up arms on a large scale to challenge the regime's assault. That initial decision soon led to calls for a Western no-fly zone, and quickly to the welcoming of direct US/NATO/Qatari military intervention based on the UN resolution's "all necessary measures" language. 

Despite the resolution's focus on protecting civilians, it was U.S., European and NATO officials who made the actual decisions about the use of force – and quickly the NATO planes soon began what one al Jazeera reporter described as "openly functioning as the air force of the opposition army." Particularly in these last few days of fast-moving gains by the opposition, air power played a disproportionately important role. That means that the ability of opposition forces to move into Tripoli, take control of at least parts of the capital so quickly, and potentially accede to power, was dependent on NATO.

The circumstances are different from other recent overthrows of Arab tyrants. The people visible overnight celebrating in Tripoli's Green Square (renamed Martyrs Square by the opposition) were overwhelmingly armed rebels, largely coming into Tripoli from the mountains to the south. Unlike the celebrations in Tahrir Square in Egypt and other similar venues, there were virtually no women except for reporters. Many local residents had already fled the city, most others remained indoors, as violence continued to flare across Tripoli. Few were visible to greet the rebel forces as they entered the city. This may have been the continuing uncertainty of conditions in the city, but it also may reflect ambivalence or perhaps even stronger unease about the opposition forces among Tripoli's population, which accounts for about a third of Libya's people.

In Benghazi, the rebel capital in eastern Libya, Sunday’s celebrations went on all night. By mid-day Monday the head of Libya’s Transitional National Council, the rebel leadership already recognized by the U.S. and numerous other countries as the rightful government of Libya, spoke at a press conference, congratulating the people of Tripoli and in effect claiming the expanding control by anti-Gaddafi forces as the achievement of the TNC. 

But the legitimacy of the TNC remains contested. It is a widely diverse, self-selected group already facing significant and sometimes lethal division within its ranks. It remains unclear how much popular support there was for the TNC’s decision to ask for foreign military intervention. Even now, as Patrick Cockburn wrote in The Independent, the “Transitional National Council (TNC) in Benghazi is now recognized by more than 30 foreign governments, including the U.S. and Britain, as the government of Libya. But it is by no means clear that it is recognized as such by the rebel militiamen who are in the process of seizing the capital. The rebel fighters in Misrata, who fought so long to defend their city, say privately that they have no intention of obeying orders from the TNC.” Certainly it is military and security exigencies that have resulted in Tripoli not being represented in the Council, but it also remains uncertain whether the TNC’s leadership is recognized in the capital or not. It remains too soon to say whether the TNC will show itself willing to broaden out to embrace Libyans so far excluded.

The success of Libya's uprising will have a great deal to do with the willingness of its leadership to break its dependency on the U.S. and NATO. In what might or might not be a positive sign in that direction, TNC officials have said they intend to call for United Nations assistance in holding new elections within eight months of taking power. But more immediately, if the U.S. and European countries turn over the billions in frozen Libyan assets directly to the TNC, the question of the breadth of its representation and its legitimacy become even more crucial. Will the TNC, eager to claim the billions of oil money being held by European and U.S. banks, demand that NATO and the U.S. pull back and allow Libya to sort out its own problems and develop its own trajectory for an independent future? That may be difficult with President Obama announcing that the U.S. “will join with allies and partners to continue the work of safeguarding the people of Libya.” During a Monday press conference the president of the TNC, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, thanked the international community as a whole but singled out those countries that had been especially supportive of the TNC; the implication was unmistakable that those countries, presumably the U.S., other NATO members, and Qatar (whose special forces had trained the TNC’s “Tripoli Brigade”) could expect closer ties and privileged access to Libyan resources in the future. 

That, more than anything else, will determine whether a "new Libya" has a chance of becoming a truly new, unified, and sovereign Libya, or whether it just moves from control by a small family-based autocracy to control by outside Western forces more interested in maintaining privileged access to Libya's oil and strategic location than in the human and national rights of Libya's people. 

The Libyan uprising began as part of the Arab Spring, with an effort to depose one more Arab dictator. Current developments are moving towards that goal. But the complications of the Libyan Summer, and the consequences of the militarization of its struggle, leave unanswered the question of whether events so far are ultimately a victory for the Libyan people, or for NATO. Given recent models of U.S. and NATO involvement in overthrowing dictatorships, we don't have a lot of examples of how it can be both.

As the Libyan people celebrate freedom from the rule of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, many are wondering what will come next for the North African nation. In an interview at 12:30 PM EDT, Emira Woods, Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies, stresses the need for the Libyan people to seize the opportunity to create a political and economic Libya that works for the benefit of all the people of Libya.

“After 42 years of Muammar el-Qaddafi, it is now long overdue for the Libyan people to determine their own destiny,” says Woods. “The question is, can this be a real revolution, where the interests of all the people are heard, are reflected, where the political infrastructure that is put into place is representative of all?”

Interviewer: What does it mean for the Libyan people that the end of Qaddafi’s rule seems to be at an end?

Emira Woods: The most critical issue now is for Libyans to be able to control their own destiny. After 42 years of Muammar el-Qaddafi, it is now long overdue for the Libyan people to determine their own destiny. Whether it’s the oil sector or other elements of their economy, or it’s their political decision-making, it is now time for the Libyan people to take control of their own destiny and not for short-term interests of the United States or other NATO countries to determine key next steps in Libya’s future.

Interviewer: Do you think there is a chance that the Transitional National Council might hand over any part of Libya’s sovereignty to outside interests?

EW: Well I think the Transitional National Council is a big unknown. There are varied interests in the council, including interests that were allied with the CIA and other western agencies and other western forces, including interests that were quite frankly at odds with each other. You know, the internal fighting and bickering that led to even the recent assassination of their general from within I think shows quite a splintering of the rebel factions.

EW: The key issue now is, can they come together to pull together a political entity that has legitimacy for all Libyans, that is able to put the interests of all of the country first, and not outside interests or once again reinforcing the interests of the elite. So what we have is a situation where the elite and a very narrow segment of the population benefitted from the enormous wealth of Libya. And the question is, is there an attempt now to transfer from the elites that sided with Qaddafi to elites that are opposed to Qaddafi but still elites dominating the decision-making and the economic benefits and the economic resources of the country?

EW: So the question is, can this be a real revolution, where the interests of all the people are heard, are reflected, where the political infrastructure that is put into place is representative of all — both east and west factions and ethnic groups within the country, whether all Libyans regardless of their racial complexion, regardless of their political affiliations, will have an opportunity to have representation in decision-making for their future? I think that’s the key here. Can there be a legitimate political authority put forward, given how the ouster of Qaddafi has taken place.

Interviewer: Regarding that legitimate political authority, a lot of people have been saying that that includes “democracy.” Of course that is what our President Obama says should be the next step for Libya and what might you say that that means for Libyans?

EW: Democracy is rule of the people, for the people, by the people. In case of Libya now it means not having the oil companies determine what comes next because of tremendous interests in Libya’s oil for the global market. Democracy means having now a transitional government that looks to constitutional reform in a way that is representative of the needs and the interests of all of the country, that unites all of the country, that does a large measure of the national healing needed after this type of political as well as military crisis.

Interviewer: Will you be celebrating if the opposition fighters actually do manage to overthrow the last remaining part of Tripoli?

EW: I think “celebration” is a tough word. I think with the level of deaths and violence and civilians that have been killed now in this military operation, both from NATO and from the rebel forces and from Qaddafi’s forces, I think “celebration” is a tough word. But I think what is needed is a sense that Libya can actually turn a page, turn a page from dictatorship towards democracy, towards an environment where all Libyans are able to have a role in their future, determining their destiny, all Libyans have a role in determining the future of their economy so that it works in the interests of all of the people. I think that there is an incredible potential now for Libyans to be able to link hands in solidarity and look toward a future together in the region. Again, Libya is well situated between Tunisia and Egypt. It is a neighborhood that has dramatically transformed in the past eight months. And I think a key issue is, can that region, can North Africa, can the uprisings that it has encouraged throughout the world, those efforts at people power, can they be strengthened in ways that shape the months, years, and decades to come — not only for that region, but for the entire world.

Emira Woods is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.

If you're anything like me, you experienced many sensations upon hearing of the deaths of photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros in Libya. Among them were sorrow and anger, perhaps to a greater degree than when hearing of the deaths of others in the war. Following hard on the heels of those emotions was the attendant guilt that their deaths elicited deeper feelings in us than the deaths of Libyans, or Arabs in general.

On the most basic level, the effect their deaths had on those of in the United States and Great Britain can be attributed to the nationalities we share with them (Hetherington British, Hondros American). On another level, artists and journalists may have taken their losses especially hard because -- as anyone knows who has seen their photographs or the movie Restrepo, which Hetherington co-directed -- their talent and accomplishments.

In the New York Times David Carr explains why we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves if we mourn the deaths of Hetherington and Hondros more deeply than others.

Many people have died in the recent wars the two men covered, and we should not make the journalist's error of elevating the deaths of Tim and Chris above those of others. But beyond the personal loss for their families and friends, there is a civic loss when good journalists are killed. Most news organizations have retrenched and many overseas bureaus have been closed.

First, war journalists, noncombatants like medics, perform a valuable service. Second, as Carr explains, due to decreased funding they're already an endangered species. Carr thus enables us to push how exceptional Hetherington and Hondros were as artists -- okay, Western artists -- into the background for a moment and remember how useful, essential even, their services were.

That said, we can also use the occasion of the deaths of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros as an opportunity to resolve to acknowledge and mourn more deeply the deaths of nationals in all conflicts.

Robert Kaplan has never shied away from bad ideas. A seasoned and sometimes shrewd observer of international affairs, Kaplan’s chief failing has always been his unwillingness to analytically retreat when he’s out of his depth—a weakness that often leaves readers stranded between mind-numbing banality and outright erroneousness.

Case in point: Kaplan’s new essay at Foreign Policy. Posing a reasonably interesting question—“Why is it so hard for strongmen to say goodbye?”—Kaplan offers an answer that is as intellectually flimsy as it is poorly presented.  The reason, Kaplan argues, that Laurent Gbagbo, Muammar al-Qaddafi and Ali Abdullah Saleh just can’t bring themselves to leave political office is because…they’re “tribal warriors”!

The concept of warrior politics is familiar ground for Kaplan, who devoted an entire, and entirely absurd, book to the subject. Indeed, its only notable feature was the famous conclusion that “The short, limited wars and rescue operations with which we shall be engaged will…feature warriors on one side, motivated by grievance and rapine, and an aristocracy of statesmen, military officers, and technocrats on the other, motivated, one hopes, by ancient virtue,” a statement that stands out for being both nonsensical and patently wrong no matter how you slice it. 

You might think that the book’s poor critical reception would make Kaplan think twice before resurrecting the “warrior” leitmotif in attempting to explore the Yemen, Libya and Cote d’Ivoire crises. After all, the notion of warrior politics, and attendant claims of ancient hatreds and the like, have been scoffed at and dismissed as being racist, unhelpful, and politically dangerous since at least the end of the Cold War. 

But then you’d be wrong.

Things get off to a rotten start, and quickly. “By any rational standard,” Kaplan opens, “it would seem that the fighting and power struggles in the Ivory Coast, Libya, and Yemen should have been over weeks ago.” Really? What rational standard is that? And what precedent do we have to base it upon? Kaplan doesn’t bother with these sorts of considerations, but steams ahead to the observation that

the fact that they have already gone on as long as they have is an indication that there is a basic truth that those in the West fail to grasp about the individuals involved...[based on] reasoning [that] assumes that what divides these strongmen from their adversaries are issues as benign and susceptible to compromise as, say, Medicare and tax rates. 

It’s not clear that anyone is assuming any such thing, but the basic point is fair enough. What, then, drives leaders? “They have been fighting for something far more age-old, basic, and less susceptible to compromise: territory and honor.” One need not bother pointing out Kaplan’s “the-barbarians-are-at-the-gates” racism to appreciate the fact that his driving thesis—that “their world is not one of institutions and bureaucracies [but] of dominating scraps of ground through dependence on relatives and tribal and regional alliances”—is already coming apart at the seams. 

First off, according to Kaplan’s frame, “in such a world, figures like…Hosni Mubarak, are without virtue. They ruled in the Western style through institutions and bureaucracies, and when those institutions—the military and the internal security services—refused to shoot people in the streets, [they] had no choice but to meekly resign and quickly go into…exile.” Funny, I don’t remember Mubarak’s fall being quite so speedy. But this is largely beside the point. The real question here is: what does this have to do with anything? Nothing, it would seem, especially as Kaplan conveniently ignores the host of other cases where virtueless authoritarians operating through institutions and bureaucracies have stood fast in the face of popular protest—Iran, Bahrain, and Syria to name but three recent examples.   

But it gets worse from there. According to Kaplan’s taxonomy of warrior thugs, “a figure like Gbagbo is especially despicable.”

In his mind, he fought an election and garnered close to half the votes. And those votes were not because of his position on this or that social or economic issue, but because of what he represented tribally and regionally…In places without sufficient economic development, like the Ivory Coast, elections often end up reifying differences based on blood and belief. To fight it out until he was cornered in the basement of his palace…is not a sign of moral weakness from his point of view, but of manly virtue. 

Kaplan offers exactly zero evidence to support this claim, assuming that its truth is apparent on its face. Instead, he follows with the observation that

The same, of course, might be said of the sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, who were killed in a gunfight with US troops near Mosul in 2003—except that they, the spoiled-brat, gangsterish sons of the Stalinesque ruler, were by no means self-made men. Thus, they belong in a lower category of specimen than Gbagbo, Saleh, and Qaddafi.

Here again, Kaplan succeeds more in revealing his own class antagonisms and biased assumptions than he does in offering a coherent argument to explain the behavior of thuggish political elites under threat.

Seemingly sensing that readers might be scratching their heads in confusion, Kaplan gently admonishes his audience. “Remember, we are not talking about politicians so much as about warriors.” Oh, of course! How silly to forget! Except this is exactly what Kaplan does himself in the paragraph immediately following. 

Take Saleh. The Western media labels the Yemeni president a recalcitrant tyrant whose stubbornness in clinging to power has, like Gbabgo in the Ivory Coast, threatened to unravel his country. [As if Yemen was the model of state stability before the recent protests.]...Saleh is clearly a man of steely nerves and subtle skill who, for decades, has dealt with levels of stress that would psychologically immobilize the most hardened Washington politico. The game he is playing now—negotiating the terms of his departure—is not just about him, but about the fate of his near and somewhat distant relatives. So, in a sense, who can begrudge him if he hangs on still longer, grasping for better and better terms?

Hold on. A moment ago, Kaplan was arguing that the manly ethic of tribal virtue militated against compromised solutions to political crisis. But now, Kaplan would have us believe that Salah is simply a crafty politician looking to work the angels for an optimum bargain. But never mind. Kaplan wraps up his discussion of Saleh by warning that “A few years from now, we may even look back on his rule as one of relative stability and cooperation with the West. Just because he deserves our condemnation now does not mean from an analytical perspective that he should be sold short.” Huh?   

As for Qaddafi, “the fact that he has not gone quietly is a sign that he, too, is not fighting about any particular issues, per se, but about a vision of honor that strikes us as primitive, connected as it is to region, tribe, and territory.” I don’t know about anyone else, but Qaddafi doesn’t seem to me so much primitive as just plain nuts. Kaplan, however, isn’t all that interested in actually grappling with Qaddafi’s nature. Instead, he shifts gears entirely to set up new arguments of even greater incoherence.

And while we are on the subject of tribe and territory, it is important to recognize that the particular kind of tribalism that is one background factor in the rules of Qaddafi, Saleh, and Gbagbo is actually not a primitive, before-the-modern-state tribalism at all, but, as the late European anthropologist Ernest Gellner defined it, a tribalism that constitutes a conscious rejection of a particular government in favor of a wider culture and ethic…life under these men was hell, no doubt, but there was an identifiable logic to their madness, however much I have simplified it. Indeed, nobody captures the attraction of life outside the state as brilliantly as Yale University anthropologist James C. Scott in his book The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. Tribes today, Scott suggests, do not live outside history, but have “as much history as they require” in order to deliberately practice “state avoidance.” That is to say, tribes are rich in traditions and consequently do not seek the intrusion of government officialdom.”

This may offer an explanation of Qaddafi’s historic troubles getting control over the eastern regions of Libya, but hardly explains his own decision-making behavior. After all, for all intents and purposes, Qaddafi is the state, not an actor trying to escape it.

But no matter. Just when it seems like Kaplan’s analysis is about to crash and burn, he ejects from the cockpit and parachutes to relative safety with the limp and, at least in the case of Gbagbo, inaccurate conclusion that the three warrior rulers “have lived within this complex and ambiguous reality their whole lives and have thus not been state builders, yet another reason, in addition to the moral ones, that they have not found sympathy in the West. But that is no argument against trying to understand them.” That may be, but this essay surely offers good reason to give up trying to understand Robert Kaplan.