Foreign Policy In Focus

Tales of ostensibly noble efforts to avert catastrophic human suffering have sanitized the complicity of U.S. policy.

Cross-posted from Ajamubaraka.com and ips-dc.

I continue to be amazed with the ease with which the dividing line is blurred between what is real and what is fiction in the reporting on Syria by the Western media. The press in the U.S. continues to dutifully report on the “objective diplomacy” by the Obama administration to broker a “peaceful” resolution to the conflict in Syria. However, those stories of noble and innocent efforts to avert the catastrophic human suffering that has eventually engulfed Syria has sanitized the bloody complicity of U.S. policy. Diplomacy, for the U.S., has meant calling for regime change from the outset and then encouraging Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel, their client states in the region, to arm, train and provide political support for a military campaign with the objective of effectively dismembering the Syrian state. 

Two years later, with tens of thousands killed, millions uprooted and the delicate social fabric of the country shredded by sectarian brutality, the next phase in the propaganda war leading to more direct intervention by the West to finish off the regime is being organized in the form of a peace conference scheduled to take place in June. 

Co-sponsored by Russia with a stake in maintaining the integrity of the Syrian state, the U.S. approach to the conference, however, gives the impression that the gathering is a charade meant to mollify those elements in the U.S. Congress and public still hesitant to support another expensive military adventure.  The U.S. demand that a peaceful solution to the conflict is predicated on a “transitional government” being established in which Assad should play no role, means effectively that there will be no serious attempt to resolve the conflict short of regime change and the surrendering of Syrian sovereignty. The U.S. position also confirms the real objective of the conference which is to justify more direct military intervention by the U.S. once the conference “fails” to bring peace.

While this is absolutely clear for many people around the world, the U.S. public, along with much of what used to be called the progressive and/or radical sectors, continue to be hoodwinked by some of the most crude and obvious manipulation I have ever witnessed. It was precisely the smooth efficiency with which the public was being manipulated that motivated me to write an earlier article on Syria that attempted to offer an explanation for the reasons why U.S. State propagandists, and I include the mainstream media in this category, have been so successful in confusing the general public and dividing the anti-war, anti-imperialist movement.

I believe part of their success has been due to the fact that they have used the concept of humanitarian intervention as one of their main tools. In my article, I made the argument that humanitarian intervention, along with the concept of the “right to protect” (R2P), has developed into the most effective ideological weapon the liberal human rights community provided Western imperialism since the fall of the Soviet State. Humanitarian intervention has proven to be an even more valuable propaganda tool than the “war on terror,” because as the situation in Libya and now Syria has demonstrated, it provides a moral justification for imperialist intervention that can also accommodate the presence of the same “terrorist” forces the U.S. pretends to be opposed to. And of course, in the eyes of the U.S. government, tyrannical and dictatorial governments that need to be deposed are only those that present an obstacle to the realization of U.S. geo/political interests—never those paragons of freedom and morality like Saudi Arabia and Israel.  

 As I said in my earlier article:                     

Humanitarian intervention provided the U.S. State the perfect ideological cover and internal rationalization to continue as the global “gendarme” of the capitalist order. By providing the human rights rationale for the assertion that the “international community” had a moral and legal responsibility to protect a threatened people, mainstream human rights activists effectuated a shift in the discourse on international human rights that moved the R2P assertion from a contested legal and moral augment to a common-sense assumption. And because of their limited perspective, it did not occur to any of these theoreticians that what they propagated was a thinly updated version of the “white man’s burden.” The NATO intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, the assault on Iraq to “save” the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein, and most recently the NATO attack on Libya that brought to power a rag-tag assortment of anti-African racists, have solidified the idea among many in the U.S. that humanitarian intervention to protect human rights through aggressive war is justifiable. The consequence of this for U.S. policy makers and for the likely targets of U.S. aggression in the global South is that if properly framed, war could be moved back to the center of strategic options without much fear of a backlash from the American people—a development especially important for a declining power that appears to have concluded that it will use military means to attempt to maintain its global empire.

The propagandists of the U.S. war strategy have been spectacularly successful in inculcating this shift in consciousness in the general population and the self-muting of the anti-war and anti-imperialist movements in the West, with the exception of a few organizations. The assertion of the right to unilaterally attack any state that it deems unfit for sovereignty is not a new articulation of white supremacist, imperialist ideology but in this current period where there are few constraints on the global exercise of “White power,” the internalization of this position by the European and U.S. publics, irrespective of ethnicity or race, has made the world a much more dangerous place for Black and Brown people: 50,000 killed in Libya, 80,000 in Syria, 1,000,000 in Iraq, and 30,000 in Afghanistan.

The normalization of war as a contemporary expression of the West’s responsibility to bring liberal democracy and capitalist freedom to the non-white hordes, and the fact that most of the people being killed in the process of “being saved” by the West are non-European, is a graphic confirmation of the white supremacist assumptions of humanitarian intervention. The people being “saved” by the West are framed as people who would embrace the Western way of life if given a choice. That is why Madeline Albright could say with a straight face that the “price was worth it” in response to the 500,000 children that died in Iraq as a result of U.S. sanctions.      

So as the U.S. government prepares to wage war in Syria, the imperative for all of us who believe in peace and fundamental human rights is to attempt to persuade as many people as possible to choose peace instead of the war objectives of the 1%. The Syrian government has a significant social base that is made up of Alawites, Druze, Christians and significant numbers of Sunnis who fear the takeover of the country by Islamic fundamentalists. This is a fact that is being hidden from the public in the U.S. Those in the U.S. who would like to see an end to the bloodshed in Syria, and I believe that is the majority of people, should call on their representatives to support real initiatives for peace that respect the sovereignty of Syria and the desires of all of the people in that country. 

But really what the people of Syria and the world want and many have demanded, is for the U.S. and its Western allies – the minority who make up 10% of the world but pretend to be the world – to intervene into their own societies who are experiencing their own humanitarian crisis brought on by a moribund capitalism and leave the rest of the world alone.

Ajamu Baraka was the founding Director of the US Human Rights Network. Baraka is currently an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and is editing a new book on human rights in the U.S. entitled “The Struggle for a People-Centered Human Rights: Voices from the Field.” He can be reached at Ajamubaraka.com.

Gareth Evans, the former foreign minister of Australia, has carved a formidable post-government service career as, for instance, the head of the International Crisis Group and co-chair of the  International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. Perhaps most notably, as Foreign Policy in Focus's own Stephen Zunes writes at Alternet:

Gareth Evans is perhaps best known internationally as the world’s principal intellectual architect and proponent of the doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), which calls for Western military intervention in crisis areas to prevent massacres of civilians. He was particularly outspoken in his support for what he referred to as “the overwhelming moral case” for the controversial NATO military intervention in Libya, which went well beyond the original mandate to protect civilians to effectively become the air force of the rebel coalition. 

Whatever controversy -- if practice, if not in theory -- affixes itself to R2P is dwarfed by a blot on Evans's record while foreign minister. Professor Zunes's explanation begins:

In early 1991, despite reports by Amnesty International and other human rights groups documenting the contrary, Evans had stated that East Timor's “human rights situation has, in our judgment, conspicuously improved, particularly under the current military arrangements.” When Indonesian forces massacred 430 civilians at a funeral in the capital of Dili nine months later, Evans falsely described the mass killings as simply “an aberration, not an act of state policy.” In the face of international outrage at an Indonesian “investigation” of the tragedy which blamed the massacres on the nonviolent protesters, Evans claimed there was “no case to be supremely critical" of the regime. He insisted that the Indonesian dictatorship had “responded in a reasonable and credible way” and argued that “essentially punitive responses from the international community are not appropriate" (a very different perspective than he would later take toward non-ally Libya).

None too savory and it only gets worse. Professor Zunes brought his record up to Evans at a recent conference in Australia.

I thought it appropriate to ask an Egyptian speaker – who had expressed his disappointment at continued Western support for the military junta in Egypt – about perceptions in his country of Western double-standards. I prefaced my question by noting how the American and British governments were opposing the repressive regime in Syria while supporting the repressive regime in Bahrain, how Washington had called for greater democracy in Egypt while arming its autocratic military rulers, and how the principal advocate for Western intervention against the Libyan regime to stop repression under the doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” had, as foreign minister of Australia, supported far greater repression by the Indonesian regime against the East Timorese.

Before I could get to the actual question, Evans shouted out, “Are you referring to me?” I answered, “Yes, actually.” “That’s crap!” he yelled.

Echoes of Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver ("You talkin' to me?"). Read Professor Zunes's AlterNet article in its entirety to see how the drama played out. I guess Evans saw a need for the Responsibility to Protect … his own reputation, not to mention his fragile ego.

Re-posted from Dissent's Arguing the World blog.

Before making the jump from academia to the world of policy making and punditry, Anne-Marie Slaughter compiled an impressive body of scholarship on law and international society. Her early work linking the common threads of international relations theory and legal research was nothing short of groundbreaking, and contributed meaningful insights to both fields of study. Later, Slaughter’s A New World Order revolutionized intellectual understandings of global governance by introducing network analysis and her anatomy of “disaggregated states” to mainstream academic circles.

When Slaughter has recently offered her ideas in public, however, they have been less impressive. This has been especially pointed with regard to the unfolding horrors in Syria. In an extended meditation for the Atlantic, Slaughter forcefully advocates for the application of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) doctrine, arguing that the minimum requirements for triggering intervention have been met. On top of that, she claims, failure to act would expose R2P “as a convenient fiction for power politics or oil politics, feeding precisely the cynicism and conspiracy theories in the Middle East and elsewhere that the U.S. spends its public diplomacy budget and countless diplomatic hours trying to debunk.”

That Gareth Evans—the godfather of R2P—and others have argued that the minimum threshold for action in Syria has in fact not been met seems of little consequence to Slaughter, nor the fact that she is ready to suspend the writ of international law by acting without a Security Council mandate for the purpose of saving international law. As David Rieff points out, “Slaughter seems to be willing to undermine the structural foundations of international order, which, for better or worse, is based in large measure on the Security Council, in order to further it. Peace is war; war is peace. George Orwell, call your office.”

In Sunday’s New York Times, Slaughter returns with a condensed version of the same argument, this time sprinkled with some new ideas for resolving the crisis in Syria, though curiously not explicitly within the R2P framework. Which might be just as well: her opening statement is enough to make R2P advocates shudder. “The mantra of those opposed to intervention is ‘Syria is not Libya,’” Slaughter writes. “In fact, Syria is far more strategically located than Libya, and a lengthy civil war there would be much more dangerous to our interests. America has a major stake in helping Syria’s neighbors stop the killing.” Slaughter’s emphasis on American national interest rather than human rights is all the more curious given her awareness that humanitarian intervention is frequently seen, especially in the Global South, as a Trojan Horse designed to smuggle imperial intent past the gates of state sovereignty.

Slaughter’s argument quickly descends from there into self-contradiction. She warns against “simply arming the opposition,” which “will bring about exactly the scenario the world should fear most: a proxy war that would spill into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan and fracture Syria along sectarian lines.” But then just a few sentences later, she boldly asserts that her plan “would require nations like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to arm opposition soldiers with anti-tank, countersniper and portable antiaircraft weapons.” Slaughter also calls for special ops and spooks to enter the fray. Presumably, these regional and European “advisers” would keep the tinder box of sectarianism from exploding and, without a hint of irony from Slaughter, help opposition fighters expand so-called “peace zones” by killing and capturing government forces.

“Although keeping intervention limited is always hard,” Slaughter admits, “international assistance could be curtailed if the Free Syrian Army took the offensive. The absolute priority within no-kill zones would be public safety and humanitarian aid; revenge attacks would not be tolerated.” And if they happened anyway? Slaughter does not entertain worst-case scenarios of this sort, and thus excuses herself from having to confront the very real possibility that flooding Syria with more guns might actually make matters worse, not better, if things got out of hand.

Instead, Slaughter suggests that “Turkey and the Arab League should also help opposition forces inside Syria more actively through the use of remotely piloted helicopters, either for delivery of cargo and weapons—as America has used them in Afghanistan—or to attack Syrian air defenses and mortars in order to protect the no-kill zones.” This drones-for-peace approach is dubious on its face and, more startling, opens the door for what sounds like direct interstate conflict of the sort that could ignite the very regional confrontation Slaughter fears most.

Absent in Slaughter’s comments, and in the comments of the majority of pundits pressing for intervention, is the third pillar bolstering R2P: the responsibility to rebuild. Discussion of a potential long-term commitment requiring investments of blood and money—especially in the wake of a global economic crisis and the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan—would likely dampen enthusiasm for the rush to war. Slaughter, a skilled ideational entrepreneur, is undoubtedly aware of the public opinion pitfalls a warts-and-all assessment might present, which makes her argument doubly problematic and dishonest. One has to look no further than post-intervention Libya to understand just how prone previous efforts in the name of “responsibility” are to failure, not to mention abandonment by the “international community.”

And that’s the rub. Popular sentiment—if not always political will—in support of intervention can be quickly mobilized by the outrage of human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. As a result, there’s no shortage of ideas offering moral justification for a call to arms. But this abundance of ideas actually represents the poverty of discourse surrounding schemes to coercively defend human rights in Syria, a set of arguments that paper over very real, and often morally hazardous, dangers that can result when the dogs of war are let off the chain.

Protecting civilians from murderous regimes does not end with military action. Nor can it be an a la carte process of selective response with no thought given to the long-term responsibilities that attend coercive engagement across borders. Instead of offering a half-baked defense of skirting international law for the purposes of maintaining it, Slaughter might want to consider sketching out possible roadmaps of action for the moment hostilities cease. That way, in Syria at least, solemn pledges of “never again” might need never again be pledged. A serious outline by prominent intellectuals of what the rebuilding process might entail (and how it can be driven by widely supported local actors) could assuage concerns that R2P is nothing more than an elaborate excuse for invasion.

To be sure, comprehensive post-conflict plans would do little to quell concerns that humanitarian intervention serves as an invitation to violence and control in the colonial dominions of western power. Nevertheless, without due diligence and thorough consideration of all three pillars of protection—the responsibility to prevent, react, and rebuild—prospects for truly ethical humanitarian intervention will be doomed to a holding pattern of half-measures and hand-wringing that offers no escape from the suspicion and realpolitik that mark our current debate.

Cross-posted from the Arabist.

Libya, in the words of the Obama Administration, was a “time-limited, scope-limited” engagement enacted under the responsibility to protect doctrine. After decades of dealing with Qadhafi’s nepotism and secret police, I hope that Libyans will be able to move towards a participatory democracy (and, I hope, we will see a continued airing out of all the zenga-zenga-ing the late Colonel engaged in with US lobbyists, oil majors and European defense contractors).

NATO went in hard by air, and then left the NTC (National Transitional Council of Libya) in charge to ensure democratization and guarantee a semblance of unity in the country. Some felt that the US had proven the efficacy of the “time-limited, scope-limited” interventionist model, even though some earlier incidents in Libya – such as reports of extrajudicial killings and the racially-motivated targeting of migrant workers – did emerge to sour the warm welcome that the NTC was enjoying in Western capitals. Further comments of this nature, Jadaliyya notes, have barely registered in the media, or, it seems, in the capitals of the states who helped put the NTC in power.

The New York Times reports that Libyan militias are defying the government’s calls to lay down their arms. “Much about the scene on Wednesday was lamentable, perhaps because the discord was so commonplace,” the Times intones, but it’s also lamentable because this outcome should have been anticipated by more observers. After Iraq, it should be clear that removing the central authority from a country with extensive weapons stockpiles is a cause for concern for the new regime’s security (and therefore, its legitimacy). Without a military force to guard these depots, anyone and everyone can raid them for profit or to augment their militias. Given the animosities among rival militias – who to trust when everyone’s armed, and why give up the power you’ve gained by arms? – it is no wonder these militias don’t want to turn in their guns to the NTC and rely on the “new” Libyan Army to maintain order: “rival militias, most of them deriving from particular tribes,” Joshua Hammer reported, “withdrew their pledge to disarm [in November 2011], declaring that they would preserve their autonomy and shape political decisions as ‘guardians of the revolution’.”

This mistrust and opportunism, in turn, makes it that much harder for the NTC to guarantee security throughout the country, encouraging militias to continue augmenting their forces. The Arabist’s own Abu Rohan was in Libya this past August, and he hoped then that because of the popularity of NATO intervention, “proposals like bringing in the UN to help with the transitional process, as some Libyan politicians have proposed, [were] probably going to be broadly acceptable.” Political will within Libya – and the international community – has unfortunately not yet manifested towards this end.

Racially motivated violence and extrajudicial political murders remain a serious problem in Libya – largely because of the impunity that tormentors can exercise towards refugees and former members of the Qadhafi regime. The continued detention of some 1,500 people, who had fled reprisals from anti-regime militias, in Tripoli remains a major source of concern because some of these militias continue to try and raid the camp to exact revenge against a community they blame for assisting Qadhafi’s crackdowns. It is left to the goodwill and guns of those militias actually protecting the camp’s inhabitants to keep things from escalating.

In addition to concerns about missing weapons stockpiles, STRATFOR reports on the nagging concern that

. . . thousands of armed Tuareg tribesmen who previously served in Gadhafi’s military have returned home to Mali. The influx of this large number of well-armed and well-trained fighters, led by a former Libyan army colonel, has re-energized the long-simmering Tuareg insurgency against the Malian government.

The analysis of the situation notes that the danger remains that these rebels could “re-establish Libyan lines of supply through a new relationship with the black and gray arms market there,” a market that radiates throughout the Sahel and offers good opportunities for those who possess stocks of Libyan arms (and very few scruples). It is clear that the NTC cannot secure Libya’s borders due to its own incapacitation in Tripoli. So where is the international response to the problem? Where is Doha (training pliant Islamist officers for the Libyan Army)? Where are Geneva and Brussels? Where are Paris, London, and Washington?^*

It should now be clear the rosy optimism and “fire and forget” mentality the international community displayed over Libya has been gravely misplaced, to the detriment of the country, its neighbors and to the West’s ostensible interests in regional security and stopping human rights abuses. Of course, had Colonel Qadhafi remained in power, these problems would have been present in different ways, particularly in the form of human rights abuses (the NTC’s current difficulties do not posthumously absolve the man of his actions). Yet the way Libya has been handled does not offer a good precedent for those arguing that we can intervene in Syria by arming opposition groups, hitting the regime hard by air, and then hoping that things will work themselves out on the ground in favor of the people we’ve intervened on behalf of.

If Western countries are truly interested in seeing a democratic transition in Libya (or Syria), and not just determined to remove a brutal dictator who has outlived his welcome, then these countries have to accept the fact that their “responsibility to protect” (R2P) cannot end when the last bomber drops its payload and heads for home. This does not necessarily mean putting a foreign army on the ground, or full-scale subsidization of reconstruction efforts. But it does mean more international aid (especially from those who helped Qadhafi dig Libya into a hole despite its oil wealth) and assistance that will focus on getting militias to lay down their arms and commit to a political process, instead of pretending they don’t exist as stumbling blocks to that process, or worse, deciding to resort to drone warfare to “suppress” the “insurgents” on the peripheries.

I don’t think we’ll be flying armed Predators over the Libya-Chad border anytime soon, but I brought in drones for a reason, and that reason is to note that such military responses from other countries become more likely to occur when a government fails to secure the country and be seen as being “responsive” to US interests. When a government is divided and unable to control its own people – whether through explicit violence or by gaining their trust – it enters a danger zone that can ultimately lead to outside military intervention. And then the cycle repeats itself. If “R2P” really does end – not just militarily, but diplomatically – when the last bomber heads for home, then we may be arguing in a few years over whether or not the bombers ought to go back.

*Rome, for its part, is back in the game. 

Just two days before the assassination of Osama bin Laden by U.S. special forces eclipsed all other newsworthy issues, another targeted assassination was carried out by NATO forces in Tripoli, except there, the target was missed. That target was Libyan leader Muamar Gaddafi, and the missile that struck the home of his youngest son didn't take the life it sought. Instead, the bombing of the home, located in a residential neighborhood of the Libyan capital, killed the 29-year old German-educated Saif al-Arab al-Gaddafi and three of his nieces and nephews, all under the age of 12. Apparently, Gaddafi was inside the house with his wife at the time, but both escaped unharmed. Several critics have spoken out against the targeted assassination of the Libyan head of state, but NATO officials have offered little response. They claim that the attack in the middle of an upscale neighborhood around 8 in the evening on Saturday April 30 was carried out against "a military command and control building with a precision strike." Military paraphernalia recovered from the rubble included the video game Modern Warfare 2 for the Playstation console, and children's books.

But the mainstream media largely ignored the "accidental" killings of four innocent civilians by NATO forces on April 30 in their mission to protect civilians, as it erupted on May 2 in a chorus of praise for president Obama. The fact that targeted assassination 'worked' to put an end to the life of alleged 9/11 mastermind bin Laden conveniently eases the public into acquiescence with the plainly illegal strategy, drawing praise from even self-proclaimed 'critics' like Jon Stewart, whose 'Daily Show' featured a positively nauseating celebration of the supposed terrorist's death. The piece ends with Stewart whooping, "we're back baby!" as the map behind him shows an animated map in which the state of Florida inflates into the Atlantic to resemble a fully engorged penis, "and," he adds as a scrotal-shaped landmass appears in the Gulf of Mexico, "our testicles have descended."

Indeed, the macho rhetoric employed by Stewart, by the college students seen cheering 'USA' in the streets the night of bin Laden's death, and by the entire lexicon of the so-call Global War on Terror, like any form of phallo-centric chauvinism, betrays a deeper insecurity. The paternalistic messaging that was used to sell the invasion of Libya to the American people (as well as to the French, British, Spanish, Italian and other NATO-member states' populations) -- that NATO was enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1973 and taking up the 'responsibility to protect' -- painted a rather thin veneer over the geopolitical motives that laid behind. As NATO unsuccessfully denies that its air-strikes are seeking to murder Gaddafi, one must wonder how far Western governments will go to set up a puppet regime under the auspices of neoliberal opportunist Mahmoud Jibril's National Transitional Council. It now appears that the British will overtly fund the rebel forces, and it seems likely that the rest of the allies will follow suit. Meanwhile, the civilian death toll of NATO strikes on Tripoli had exceeded 40 by the end of March.

And as if the 'accidental' killing of so many of the civilians NATO is supposed to be protecting were not enough to show that the multinational cold-war military alliance isn't in Libya for humanitarian reasons, its response to the humanitarian refugee crisis that is filling the Mediterranean with bodies certainly is. The Guardian has reported that in the last month alone, some 800 migrant workers who left the Libyan mainland never arrived at their European destinations and are presumed dead. Now, the participating armies have on their hands the blood of 61 African migrant workers whose escape boat ran out of fuel about 60 miles off the Libyan coast.

The boat's passengers managed to reach an Eritrean priest in Rome via satellite phone, who relayed their call to the Italian Coast Guard. The Coast Guard told the priest that the boat's location had been pinpointed and that the alarm had been raised to help the refugees. Soon a military helicopter of unknown origin lowered water bottles and biscuits to the wayward boat, and informed them that help was on the way. But help never came. Days later, a French aircraft carrier came into view. So close was the Charles de Gaulle to the drifting boat that it would have been impossible for such a well-equipped vessel not to have taken notice of the refugees. It sent out two sorties of fighter jets, but no rescue boats, despite passengers' frantic attempts to contact the sailors on board. After 16 days at sea, 61 of the 72 passengers had starved to death, and one of the 11 survivors dropped dead shortly after stepping foot on land as the boat washed ashore near the Libyan city of Zeitan.

NATO could have prevented these deaths, and more, if only it would spend a bit less time and effort trying to effect a favorable regime change in Libya, and a bit more on its “responsibility to protect.” But perhaps the best thing NATO could do now is follow the Hippocratic oath – if you can do no good, at least do no harm – and cease the bombing of Libya. From there a ceasefire could be negotiated between rebel forces and the government, with regional bodies such as the Arab League and the African Union playing mediating roles, and the Libyan people could resolve their own political issues without foreign intervention. NATO hasn't had any real reason to exist for the last twenty years, and it is about time for what has become an openly imperialist force to disband once and for all.

Noah Gimbel is an intern with Foreign Policy in Focus. He is currently working on a book on universities and empire and can be reached at ngimbel@ips-dc.org.