Libya

Last night I found myself obsessively refreshing Google News, as if I expected the entire civil war to wrap up within the time frame of a motion picture. Looking again now, the battle for Tripoli is still unfinished; but it seems unlikely that the conclusion could take more than a few days, if that long. I don't care to predict whether the larger war will end with the capture of the city, but I certainly share much of the excitement which has taken hold of the politicians and commentators observing the situation. Even if Qadafi himself doesn't fall soon, or even if the war somehow continues without him, I doubt that the Council's opposition can sustain a fight on anything approaching the previous scale. The intensity of the conflict, at least, will surely diminish.

So it's time for me to reflect on my own judgments and analysis of the uprising, before I stake out my position on future policy towards Libya.

Soon after Mubarak's ouster in Egypt, back before the fighting had begun in earnest, I was just taking note of the first stirrings of revolt. Then, I did not believe that Libya would see any serious change, like Egypt and Tunisia. I believed that Qadafi would stay true to form and suppress any dissent swiftly and brutally, by machine-gunning angry crowds if necessary. I was correct about Qadafi; if anything, I underestimated the level of brutality he would resort to using against his own people. But I was wrong about the Libyan population. I was, quite frankly, astounded that they were willing to stand up to the snipers and machine guns and artillery and aerial bombardments. I did not believe that it was possible for a largely unarmed (or even lightly armed) citizenry to successfully withstand determined attack by a genuine military force with heavy weaponry. I was pleased to have been wrong about that.

I was revising my judgment again within a few weeks, as the rebellion's heady progress was reversed and Qadafi's military encroached on Benghazi. Maybe it was harder for heavily armed forces to massacre civilians within a city than I realized, or maybe Qadafi's thugs had initially shown more restraint than I had believed, but either way it seemed pretty conclusive that irregular fighters had no hope of winning a war or conquering a country when opposed by a reasonably well trained and equipped regular military.

At that point, the international community was frantically debating their response; and among the interventionists, the most prominent proposal was for a "no fly zone" to stop Qadafi's air forces from bombing civilians. I opposed a no fly zone. I'm very much an interventionist myself, but I believed that an NFZ would be a pointlessly weak response. For one thing, it seemed to draw a silly moral distinction between bombing civilians with warplanes and gunships, and shelling them with artillery or shooting them with small arms. Nor did I believe an NFZ would actually do any good. First, because the Colonel's aerial bombardments seemed of limited military consequence compared to his other means of killing his citizens. Second, at the time, air transport of military forces from southern Libya and mercenaries from other countries had seemed to be a significant component of Qadafi's strength, but had largely been effected by the time of the NFZ proposals. So I thought, essentially, that an NFZ would be a waste of effort, and perhaps even a somewhat insulting attempt to claim responsibility for a revolution to which we had made little meaningful contribution. In a choice between a no fly zone and doing nothing, I preferred we do nothing. What I would really have preferred would have been a serious military intervention in support of the rebels, followed up by massive material aid and professional advice to assist the country in a transition to a stable, representative government. But I thought there was no hope of any such thing occurring.

Then there was UNSC Resolution 1973, and once more I was surprised and impressed. This time by the Security Council itself, mostly for its speed in securing a vote once they actually realized the crisis merited some action (though I did and still do believe that there was too much dithering in reaching that initial conclusion). I was further impressed at the relatively permissive language of the Resolution, which I had expected would, if anything, be merely an authorization of a useless NFZ. I speculated that the British and French governments might exploit the language to bomb ground targets beyond those strictly necessary to achieve air superiority.

Well, obviously, the military intervention has far exceeded my expectations, and this has mostly been to my delight. I do have reservations about the way we've stretched interpretation the UNSC Resolution in order to justify the bombing campaign and, perhaps even more grievously, to arm the rebels. While I believe both of these were the right things to do, morally, I think it's poor policy to place so much emphasis on internationalizing the intervention with Security Council authorization, only to then largely ignore the limitations which result from that process. Strengthening the UN's resolve to confront evils like Qadafi and promoting international commitments to provide material support to those UN decisions is a goal worthy of emphatic support. But it requires long-term commitment and compromises along the way. If we're not willing to honor those compromises, even when it's because we want to pursue moral policies like the Libyan intervention, we risk undermining those objectives.

The most significant other quarrel I have with the affair has been the level of America's commitment to the intervention. I understand our government's reluctance to take a lead role in any stage of arranging or implementing the intervention for reasons of both foreign and domestic political perception. But I question the wisdom of trying to pass off much of the military responsibility (or even the appearance of such responsibility) to our allies. To be sure, I can construct an argument in favor of doing just that: I am gravely concerned about the deterioration of military capabilities among NATO's European members. The exhaustion of their forces which has been a result of the intervention may obviate the need for and spur actual reform among those states. However, I think I worry more about our policies encouraging complacency towards America's military capabilities and responsibilities. Western Europe in its present state doesn't seem capable of conducting more than one operation like this at a time, and even just this one will necessitate a period of down-time for their forces to recover, repair, and rearm. But in the US, we've provided ourselves an excuse for reducing our own capabilities and commitment to such interventions: because the Europeans can do it instead. So I am uncertain and uneasy about where this policy will lead. Perhaps it will work out for the best, and I will be grateful to have worried over nothing, but for now I have doubts.

Coming back around to the situation in Libya itself: I am seriously concerned for the future. The need for foreign military assistance may be ending, and I am happy that the rebels now seem guaranteed to prevail. But the temptation among outsiders to start congratulating themselves on a job well done worries me too much to truly celebrate. What we've done up to now has been the easy part, and we risk all of our accomplishments if we now begin to disengage.

In the realm of foreign policy, I regret few things more than the fact that "nation building" has become a scornful buzzword. Libya will need nation building. My original position on our choice in Libya—that our ideal response was a strong military intervention followed up by significant reconstruction assistance—has not changed. Libya will need vast sums of money in reconstruction and new investment. Libya will need clear-headed guidance and expert advice from the outside world. We can be grateful that the Transitional Council's leaders have demonstrated so much excellence and professionalism as they have, and we can be grateful that the country's oil wealth provides a good opportunity for quick economic growth. But these alone will not be enough to secure the sort of future for Libya that we ought be trying to achieve: a future where Libya is stable, prosperous, and governed by leaders accountable to their citizens. That will require even more assistance from the international community in the years to come; we need to be generous and we need to remain engaged. But because these things are harder to do than conducting a military campaign, because we have so many other worries of our own, economic malaise chief among them, I fear that we will shirk this responsibility.

So there is still much left to do, pleased as we might be about recent events. I wonder what plans have been made among western leaders to provide assistance and advisers to Libya. I wonder what preparations have been made to end international sanctions on the country quickly once the fighting has stopped. I wonder if we're really going to see this through to the end.

Because, if we're not, then what was the point?