Debating Intervention

Strategic Dialogue: Libya War

By Robert Naiman and Ian Williams, April 5, 2011


In the second part of our strategic dialogue on the Libya War, Robert Naiman and Ian Williams respond to their initial essays. You can read the original essays here: Naiman’s anti-intervention essay Surprise War for Regime Change in Libya is the Wrong Path and Ian Williams’ pro-intervention essay Armchair Anti-Imperialists and Libya.
Ian Williams

Robert Naiman makes many excellent points, which tend however to prove my major point. Like many peers he looks at intervention in Libya from a narcissistic Americo-centric point of view, evading the key question. When a group of people who are about to be massacred ask for help, what do you do?

Instead, Naiman presents a survey of constitutional positions and American attitudes to the war which essentially replicates the lessons of 1939. The default American position is usually isolationist, and the Good Samaritan is not a popular parable in American political discourse.

It was not the White House that started the operation. The Libyan plea went to the Security Council of the United Nations – with the support of much of the Libyan diplomatic corps, one might point out. The UN resolution does not call for a no-fly zone. It called directly for military intervention to protect civilians – and to assuage those justifiably wary of US involvement in the region after Iraq, or indeed Susan Rice’s veto of the resolution against Israeli settlements, it precluded occupying forces.

It is not unilateral, or even mainly U.S. military intervention, and all the evidence is that Washington was chivvied into helping by its Middle Eastern and European allies. Washington, as we have seen, has been happily buying oil from Gaddafi and has a high tolerance for atrocities by its allies.

In fact, one would never guess that from news reports most of the close-up air sorties are being flown not by Americans but by French and other air forces, who, one hopes, would have proceeded regardless of the U.S,Congress.

Frankly, I wish the United States had stayed out of it and simply blessed and assisted the Europeans and Arabs. But having by far the world’s biggest military occasionally entails obligations as well opportunities for aggression.

It is indeed entirely possible that the respite awarded the rebels will result in regime change. And why is that a bad thing? This regime responded to peaceful demonstrations demanding popular power by gunning down its own people. This regime accepted the validity of the UN resolution and immediately declared a ceasefire, just before launching indiscriminate air and artillery attacks on its own cities.

If Hugo Chavez’s negotiations had delayed the attacks on Gaddafi’s tanks, Benghazi and its citizenry would today be a smoldering pile. The International Criminal Court referral was intended to send a message to Gaddafi that there would be consequences, that he had no impunity. He ignored that message. Is there a way to protect civilians that leaves intact a dictatorial regime that has pledged bloody vengeance against its own citizenry?

In the end, those who oppose the intervention would do so whether or not Congress approved it, just as those who opposed intervention in Iraq because it had no UN mandate, even though Congress shamefully approved, now oppose this one even though the UN voted for it – and Congress has not said anything either way.

When people cry for help you do what you can. And yes, what happened in Bahrain is shameful, even though the regime has yet to use airpower and artillery against its own city. So rather than opposing intervention in Libya, it would be much more constructive to call on the United States to cut off relations with Bahrain, or indeed Saudi Arabia, until the repression stops. But opposition is always easy, while calling for action involves taking responsibility for the results.
Robert Naiman

Ian Williams's initial tone is disturbing but perhaps revealing. He begins with an assault on progressive critics of the Western military intervention as "comfortable Western leftists" engaged in "cultural imperialism." The thrust of his argument here seems to be that if you criticize the Western military intervention, you must be a Gaddafi-lover.

Such insults are depressingly familiar. When we opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we were called Saddam lovers. When we questioned the indefinite U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, we were accused of supporting the Taliban.

Some may find such "arguments" convincing. On me, they have the opposite effect. If critics of military intervention are being accused of devotion to a foreign political force, probably the intervention is a rotten enterprise. After all, if supporters of military intervention had good arguments, presumably they would lead with those.

Williams suggests that "Libyans" support the current Western military intervention. Indeed, some Libyans do support it. Other Libyans do not. Clearly, many Libyans in Benghazi support the current Western military intervention. Just as clearly, many Libyans in Tripoli and Sirte don't support the current Western military intervention. If we care about the opinions of "Libyans," it's not obvious why the opinions of these Libyans in Tripoli and Sirte should count for zero.

Anytime the United States intervenes militarily on one side of a civil conflict there will be people in the country - and exiles - in favor. There were Iraqis who supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There are Afghans who would like U.S. troops to stay indefinitely. Is the fact that this is so the end of discussion? We have to support a foreign military intervention if a group of Libyans, Iraqis, Afghans support it? These views should certainly be considered, but are we not allowed to consider anything else? Should the fact that a group of people support a Western military intervention automatically trump all other concerns? This argument does not seem serious to me.

Williams appears to be unconcerned by, and indeed to welcome, the morphing of the military intervention from "protecting civilians" to "regime change." But indifference to or support of this transformation would make a mockery of any kind of accountability for Western military operations. You could sell public opinion on one thing, obtain a UN Security Council resolution, and then do something else entirely. This would mean that "Responsibility to Protect" would become "unlimited license to do anything." One might think those who support the principle of "Responsibility to Protect" would see this as a threat to the invocation of this principle in the future. I was more sympathetic to "Responsibility to Protect" before I saw how it was used in this case; if the conclusion of the current military operation is military regime change rather than a negotiated solution, I will hold that against future invocations of "Responsibility to Protect."

Williams dismisses concerns of critics of the military intervention as "ad hoc." But many of these concerns are longstanding. We are concerned about the exclusion of Congress and the pubic, as before. As I argued, this is not a side issue to those working against U.S. wars. Rather, it is crucial to future efforts. We are concerned about the expense of foreign military intervention at a time of domestic cuts, as before. We are concerned about proposals that the United States arm people who may have been involved in terrorism in the past and may be involved in terrorism in the future, as before. We are concerned about selective focus on abuses of a U.S. "enemy," while the abuses of U.S. "allies" are ignored and even encouraged, as before. And, as I argued in my piece, this is not merely a question of "hypocrisy" and "double-standards." In general, selective focus contributes to indifference and support of abuses by allies. In the present case, there is considerable evidence that the military intervention in Libya is directly related to effective U.S. support for the crackdown in Bahrain.

Williams does acknowledge problems going forward, when he suggests Russia (and presumably others) could be a better watchdog. Here we agree. But for this to happen, some things must change. It's hard to be an effective watchdog if those you're monitoring have carte blanche. This means we must insist that Security Council resolutions not give carte blanche in theory or practice and that sharp distinctions be maintained between "protecting civilians" and other measures undertaken and considered, such as supporting rebel military advances with air strikes, attacking military forces not engaged in attacking civilians or poised to do so, arming rebels, and military regime change.
Ian Williams

There is no doubt that some of the opposition to intervention does indeed come from Gaddafi lovers. As we saw with Saddam Hussein and see with Hugo Chavez now, an anti-U.S. posture seems to give sundry authoritarian thugs a lot of leeway in some sections of the left. But I did not once suggest that equation.

However the key issue is not affection for Gaddafi but rather indifference to suffering and injustice elsewhere. It is indeed possible that there was a cynical trade-off between Bahrain and Libya. But is anyone suggesting that if there had been no action in Libya, the United States would have swooped to the defense of Bahraini dissidents?

The issue is irrelevant to the core question. Did the intervention stop massacres of Libyans? The answer is, irrefutably, yes. The question now is: will it continue to improve their lot? The answer to that is probably yes, but naturally we cannot be entirely sure.

The simple test of Gaddafi’s popularity would of course be an election – which he refuses to allow, suggesting that whatever his eccentricities, deep down he is in touch with reality. I am all in favor of changing regimes that are oppressive and murderous, even though the principle, especially with foreign interference, is to make sure that the cure is not worse than the disease. That was certainly the case in Iraq, despite Blair’s attempt to mask it as a humanitarian intervention. It is not the case in Libya, as many living citizens of Tobruk and Benghazi can now testify.

As for the carte blanche, any reading of Resolution 1973 would show that far from carte blanche, it hemmed the operation in with many provisos, including a ban on occupying forces. Some of those restrictions actually increase the risk of civilian casualties but were understandable in the context of previous U.S. abuse of UN resolutions. But the apparatus for monitoring is clearly laid out in the resolution, more strongly than in previous Chapter VII resolutions. If the Russians had eschewed posturing for a domestic and international audience they could have refined those provisions and involved themselves more closely.
Robert Naiman

Again Ian Williams comes with the gratuitous insults: "narcissistic," "Americo-centric," etc. And again I say: among fair-minded people, those who engage in gratuitous ad hominem attacks weaken rather than strengthen their argument.

I see Williams’ argument as amounting to a classic bait-and-switch. On the one hand, all of us must declare whether we would support Western military intervention to block the Libyan government's assault on Benghazi, and we must answer this question in isolation. In answering this question, we are not allowed to consider anything outside of this. Most importantly, we are not allowed to consider where the Western military intervention would lead and what other consequences it would have.

But once we say yes to this hypothetical - hypothetical because the event does not exist in isolation - then it's made clear that what we have agreed to is not something that we can purchase a la carte. Rather, it is part of a package deal, "terms subject to change without notice," which may, among other things, include: bombing Libyan soldiers who are not attacking or menacing civilians, arming rebels, overthrowing the Libyan government with foreign military power; and increased likelihood of U.S. military interventions in the future.

Let's sharpen the hypothetical. Suppose that on the Saturday morning that the United States began bombing, President Obama called me on the phone and said, "Now, I realize that until now I haven't allowed you to have any effective input into this decision. But now I'm letting you decide. If you say yes, I go forward. If you say no, the military operation is called off. It's all up to you. But let me make one thing clear: this is the last time I will ever consider your opinion. If you say yes, you agree to everything that happens afterwards, in which you will have no say whatsoever."

At its root, this is the question I understand Williams to be asking.

And my answer is that I emphatically reject the premise. The central organizing principle of my political work on this front since 1983 is to reject the premise that I and my fellow members of the general U.S. public have no say in U.S. foreign policy, except perhaps to ratify wars that other people have already decided to embrace. If that will be called "narcissistic" and "Americo-centric," so be it. I take responsibility for living in the United States. Others should too.

Robert Naiman is the policy director at Just Foreign Policy and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. Ian Williams, senior analyst and long time contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, is a New York-based author and journalist. He is currently working on a new edition of his book, The UN For Beginners.

Libya's UN circus

The choice of Libya to provide the next president of the general assembly does little for the reputation of the United Nations


o Ian Williams
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 June 2009 21.00 BST


In international affairs, Libya's Colonel Gaddafi makes Don Quixote seem like a Machiavellian intriguer, so at first sight, the almost certain impending "election" of Libya to provide the president of the UN general assembly for 2009-10 could be the occasion for some wry humour. In fact, it is a bad thing.

According to protocol, the president of the GA counts as a head of state, while the humble scribe who is the secretary general only ranks with foreign ministers. Officially, the Libyan nominee for the position is Ali Triki, an engaging former envoy to the UN. But there have been precedents for capitals supplanting their nominee before, as in the early 90s when the Maltese ambassador had it in the bag only to be bounced in a memorable double cross by his foreign minister, who then spent his term flying round the world getting 21-gun salutes in all the member states. It does raise the intriguing possibility of Muammar Gaddafi pitching his tent on the UN lawn and bringing his corps of Amazonian bodyguards so that he can take advantage of one of the world's most prominent pulpits – the podium of the general assembly.

Of course, since SG's tend to hang around while the presidency changes every year, there is no doubt who pulls the strings. Some previous presidents, such as the former Czech foreign minister Jan Kavan, were bluntly instructed to do as they were told by the secretariat. It may have been counterproductive to tell that to a stubborn former dissident such as Kavan, but it usually works, although the current occupant, Nicaraguan Miguel D'Escoto, has bucked the trend with forthright statements on the Middle East that contrasted sharply with the more anodyne line from the secretariat.

Most envoys want the job for the five minutes of glory, and go to great lengths to get the position, which rotates around the regional groups. This year it is the Africans' turn and they have decided to nominate Libya. It is possible that there was some vigorous canvassing. Certainly when Saudi Arabia won a contested election some years ago, many of the hands that were raised in its favour seemed to have gold Rolexes discernible on the wrists. It is exactly this type of value-blind "voting" that bedevils both the security council's temporary membership elections and the human rights council.

Interestingly, since Gaddafi paid blood money for Lockerbie, helped shop the IRA, renounced nuclear weapons, quietened down about Israel, and opened up the oil wells even more to western involvement, Washington and London seem to have overcome the visceral horror that once had them fighting to keep Libya off the security council. It is arguable that Libya got a raw deal over the Lockerbie bombing, albeit not as raw as its citizen Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrah who is dying of cancer in a Scottish prison while his appeal against a 27-year sentence is heard. The case against him and Libya was circumstantial and politically motivated.

London and Washington may have been attacking Libya for the wrong reasons in the past – but there were plenty of substantial reasons for holding the regime up for scrutiny and despite its more accommodating foreign policy, little has changed inside the country. Admittedly, the position of women in the colonel's idiosyncratic version of Islam is much better than staunch western ally Saudi Arabia, but there are serious grounds to question whether Libya should get a free ride into such a position in an organisation pledged to global human rights.

For a start, there is the democracy thing. Dissident Fathi al-Jahmi has just died after years of imprisonment for trying to put truth in the rumours about Libyan democracy. There are many more who have disappeared without trace into the regime's prisons, although there were substantial reports that 1,200 of them were killed in one incident in a prison. And of course the standard pseudo-left apology for dictatorial regimes is "look at the health service". Indeed. It took immense pressure, and effectively ransom money, to get Bulgarian and Palestinian medical staff out of Libyan dungeons where they had been locked up on spurious charges of spreading AIDS. But on the rule of law front, the killer of London WPC Yvonne Fletcher, shot from the Libyan embassy, which she was protecting against demonstrators, is still at large.

It does make sense to engage with Libya. Negotiations have produced some international satisfactory results – such as the colonel's realisation that he did not have the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But whether Triki or Gaddafi, the "election" of Libya will do little for the reputation of either Africa or the United Nations.

Colonel Buggin's Turn

So hail then Libya, a temporary member of the UN security council from next January - and elected with no opposition from the US, thus signalling its demotion from the axis of evil.

In the early 1990s the Libyan mission to the UN was a dozen or so stories of mausoleum. The foyer had a huge equestrian oil painting of Colonel Muammar Gadafy, and the first 10 stories were empty. The mission was caught between the city and the US state department: one was denying it the right to let off the floors for commercial tenants, while the other was trying to tax them because they wanted to do just that. How many companies would brave the prancing colonel was another question, which the ambassador of the time sidestepped, well, diplomatically, when I asked him.

In 1995, and again in 2003, the US bitterly and successfully opposed the election of Libya to the security council. Libya's previous two failures are perhaps more a tribute to the isolation brought about by Gadafy's undiplomatic eccentricities than adroit US diplomacy, since the Africans and the Arabs at the UN are pathologically averse to contested elections.

The cycle for determining which countries from Africa will take a two-year stint on the security council is plotted out decades ahead with a complicated almost Ptolemaic formula that ensures the Arab group always has a representative on the council.

Every UN diplomat wants to be on the security council: it is where the influence is, although it can be a dangerous eminence, almost guaranteeing the untender attentions of the state department heavies when Washington wants something dubiously legal in the council.

The ambassador for Mauritius was recalled after Washington called home to complain about his over-principled opposition to the first Iraq war. Another African diplomat during the first Gulf war told me how he had to leave his phone off the hook to avoid getting instructions that he did not want, but which the US delegates importunately assured him were on the way from his capital. But there are compensations: one study suggested that it was worth millions a year extra in aid for a developing country to be on the council.

So how has Libya changed since its previous attempts? Well fall guy Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi is serving his country sitting in a Scottish gaol, and Libya paid compensation for Lockerbie without admitting responsibility and for a bombing in German nightclub.

Indeed the evidence is at best inconclusive and al-Megrahi's case is under review. It is still an open question whether Libya carried out the bombing because it was an enemy of the US, or whether it was fingered for the same reason. It is not as if we set a fine example. Reagan sent bombers in an attempt to assassinate Gadafy and succeeded in killing his daughter and a hundred other "collateral" civilians. Neither the outcome nor the intention were exactly in the best traditions of international law, but one can note that Margaret Thatcher, who allowed British bases to be used for the attack, cited the current neocon legal formula that it was an act of self defence for alleged terrorist bombings.

On the other hand, unlike the US, which withdrew from the international criminal court when it didn't like its verdicts, the colonel accepted its decision in his border dispute with Chad.

So the Libyans promised not to help the IRA, and handed over information, which sweetened up London. They splashed cash around in compensation for terrorist incidents they were accused of, without admitting liability. Gadafy has abandoned, or suspended his wilder global ambitions. With his eccentric version of Islam, women have the same, but equally minimal, human rights as men, but opponents disappear. And of course there was the travesty of the doctors and nurses accused of spreading HIV.

Perhaps significantly, Israel's UN ambassador only regards Libya's election as "problematic," rather than the more intemperate adjectives one would have expected a few years ago, before rumours began to spread of a Libyan-Israeli deal. In summary, Libya has stopped active opposition to foreign policy, so who cares about some disappeared Arab democrats.

On balance, Libya is not the worst country to serve on the security council, but the developing world really should stop bleating about reforming the council when it sends by Buggins' turn countries like Rwanda during the genocide, or Mobutu's Zaire. In the recent past relatively small temporary members, such as Chile, Jamaica, Ireland and New Zealand, to name but a few, have been principled upholders of international law and human rights in the face of bludgeoning from the big powers. The most practical way to reform the council would be to send more like them. And fewer like Libya.

Colonel Buggin's Turn

Libya's New Face - not so different from the old