The Obama administration may not care to admit it, but it did make a decision, and one of benefit to Gaddafi. Why? One factor was surely Obama’s preference for a less activist foreign policy in general.
But there were special considerations in Libya, and they were clearly stated in a piece by General Wesley Clark for the Washington Post last Friday. The former US commander in Kosovo and a 2004 Democratic presidential candidate wrote: “We don’t have a clearly stated objective, legal authority, committed international support or adequate on-the-scene military capabilities, and Libya’s politics hardly foreshadow a clear outcome.”
The key phrase here is “Libya’s politics”. For the past few days, Washington policy circles have been worrying over a piece of research circulated last week: “On a per capita basis ”¦ twice as many foreign fighters came to Iraq from Libya ”“ and specifically eastern Libya ”“ than from any other country in the Arabic-speaking world. Libyans were apparently more fired up to travel to Iraq to kill Americans than anyone else in the Middle East. And 84.1 per cent [74] of the 88 Libyan fighters ”¦ who listed their hometowns came from either Benghazi or Darnah in Libya’s east.”
The European Problem with Bush II was that he refused to submit American sovereignty to the notion of International control. European leaders are presently very exercised about the possibility of a humanitarian catastrophic in Libya, and yet they refuse to act on their own with the covering ‘authority’ of the UN. They consider t;he abstract principle that force never be applied without UN permission to be more important than the concrete reality of what they fear will happen. This is the instantiation of the idea that military power should be transformed into an enforcement mechanism of international law. In effect, it says that countries should maintain military forces only to selflessly defend the interests of other. Under such a standard, a military operation would be judged by the degree to which it did not enforce the interests of the nation that performed it. Hence European opposition to the 2003 war in Iraq. It was seen as a military operation to enforce American interests. No matter the humanitarian record of Iraq, the principle was considered more important.
So the Europeans are behaving somewhat consistently on Libya. But they are caught in their own trap. The UN is a morally despicable organization full of self-interested nations who will evaluate the use of force according to their own interests. Europe wants to act (for both reasons of humanitarian concern and because it is in its interest to do so) but they find themselves paralyzed by their own rules. In the end, they will not blame the asinine rule but the nations who refused to acquiesce in European understanding of the necessity to use force. They should blame their own refusal to act as sovereign nations.
carl
Carl–Obama said EXACTLY the same thing. It is now US foreign policy that we and NATO not only do not act without UN permission, but we also don’t do anything to request their permission; it is totally the UN’s preogative. They didn’t ask so we didn’t do anything. My suspicion is that we will be blamed a good bit more than the Europeans; and rightfully so. I can’t figure out if Obama is really stupid or really smart. The best case scenario for the US is that he is just stupid. If he is doing this stuff on purpose, we are in really big trouble.
1., Unless, of course, you see the reintegration of politically bankrupt states back into the global order as being within the US interests (and the new markets that open up in the newly reintegrated states). Obama had (has?) a chance to do with Libya what the US/UN/NATO did in the Balkans, and simultaneously re-cast American grand strategery in the 21st century. He’s not crossed that Rubicon, and his jaw-dropping lack of leadership on this is stunning.
3. Isaac
The Balkan Intervention had [i]nothing[/i] to do with the reintegration of politically bankrupt states back into the global order. It was all about:
1. Europe’s conceit that Europe had ‘evolved beyond war.’
2. The Balkan conflict’s brutal and humiliating demonstration of the contrary.
3. The inability of the European continental nations to project power even into the Balkans (since the European states [i]save only for Britain[/i] have turned their Armed Forces into glorified jobs programs.)
4. The desparate need for NATO (read that The United States) to ‘do something about it’ or suffer a devastating loss of credibility.
What we did was launch a compaign of random bombing, and then allow the Croats to end the war by effecting a separation of the populations. Ironic isn’t it. The ethnic cleansing that formed the motivation for intervention became the de facto tool employed to end the need for intervention. In a sentence, the whole of the Balkan intervention was about European national interest. Move that conflict to (say) Madagascar, and I am sure it would have rated thunderous denuciations in some EU chamber somewhere. But certainly no armed intervention.
carl
Validity aside, none of the remarks above are on point.
The nutgraph of this article is:
[blockquote] On a per capita basis … twice as many foreign fighters came to Iraq from Libya – and specifically eastern Libya – than from any other country in the Arabic-speaking world. Libyans were apparently more fired up to travel to Iraq to kill Americans than anyone else in the Middle East. And 84.1 per cent [74] of the 88 Libyan fighters … who listed their hometowns came from either Benghazi or Darnah in Libya’s east. [/blockquote]
The Obama Administration’s (in)action to date in Libya is entirely consistent with the strategy taken by Stalin during the Warsaw Uprising.
6., Even granting that the motivations of Europe in the Balkans weren’t necessarily to process a politically bankrupt state, that is precisely what has happened (setting aside the need to end brutality and ‘move beyond war’ is part and parcel of being a part of the global order… When was the last time the US and the UK shot at each other?). Croatia is a net exporter of security, a member of NATO (10 international operations currently), cooperated with the ICTY, and will accede to the European Union this year or the next, just like Slovenia (another Yugoslav piece). Montenegro and Macedonia are in the accession pipeline, and both Albania and Serbia have applied. That would make all but Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzogovenia the remaining ex-Yugoslav countries who are remain outside the complete integration into the European economy. In less than 15 years, the Balkans have gone from genocide to EU membership. That’s a success story as far as I can tell. The simple argument: Why not do the same for Libya?
“The simple argument: Why not do the same for Libya?”
The simple answer: I-S-L-A-M.