President Obama explained himself and his administration’s policies last night. He was precise about means and ends in Libya: use force to stop a massacre, use politics to support regime change. He reminded me of a revolution past. In Central Europe in the 80’s, there was a self-limiting revolution. Now, in North Africa and the Middle East, we have the self-limiting revolutionary solidarity by a superpower, as strange as that may seem.
Obama did imply a doctrine in the address. Use necessary and unilateral force to defend the safety of Americans, develop multilateral engagements whenever possible in pursuing American interests abroad, turn to the appropriate international organizations, try to form as wide an alliance as possible. If there is an opportunity to use force to stop a humanitarian disaster, there is a moral imperative to do so. On the other hand, diplomacy and political pressure are understood to be the most useful instruments to foster desirable political results, including regime change and fostering democracy.
I know that for many of my friends on the left, this summary seems naïve or worse. E. Colin R. commented on my last post, the “US intervention within Libya is not linked, IN ANY WAY, with an interest in promoting ‘democracy.’” There are of course much harsher judgments in the press and the blogosphere. They think that the Americans and their European allies are enforcing the no fly zone, protecting Libyan civilians and supporting the rebel forces of Libya, and not in Bahrain, because of oil and corporate interests, without any concern for democratic ideals. This is roughly speaking the position of the Noam Chomsky wing of the American political spectrum.
But what would the same people have said if we did not get involved in Libya? If we allowed a brutal dictator (whose high quality oil fuels Europe) to massacre innocents? “Obviously,” it would have been because we are not willing to upset the status quo, which provides for Europe the oil that it needs, We would have been revealed to be unwilling to support the democratic aspirations of the people of North Africa and the Middle East, because of our dependence on oil from the region, especially from Saudi Arabia. For the no blood for oil crowd, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
The speech last night reminded me of the opposition strategies of Central Europe in the eighties, because of fundamental insights about human capacity and the need to balance aspiration with capacity, and to formulate ideals as they are realistic. Back then, the democratic opponents of the totalitarian order in Poland understood that they couldn’t overpower the regime. The Communist authorities had a monopoly over the means of violence and the distribution of scarce goods, and the Soviet’s and the might of an empire stood behind the Polish authorities. By seceding from the system as much as they could, by openly pursuing workers’ rights as workers understood these rights in a workers state, and by developing a free public life, the regime was transformed one step at a time, and finally its end was negotiated at a roundtable.
World attention focused on the most dramatic, the most televisual moments, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and before that, Lech Walesa announcing the Gdansk Agreements at the Lenin Shipyards. But the profound change was actually quite gradual, brilliantly rendered metaphorically by Vaclav Havel, then a dissident, later a President, with his notion of a shop keeper deciding not to put a sign declaring “workers of the world unite,” along with the fruits and vegetables. Action and aspiration were limited and focused.
There was a combination of modesty and forcefulness, directed toward a goal, greater self-determination, with an understanding of means and their consequences. I heard such a combination in Obama’s speech. In terms of my last post, Obama knows that the defense of innocent citizens required a military response. While he also understands that for regime change a limited international force may be necessary, he also understands it’s not, indeed, cannot be sufficient. Libyans themselves must overthrow the dictator, and for a successful transition, this is more a political project than a military one. An opening has been presented to the Libyan people, thanks to the international military engagement. Now they must meet with each other in their differences and work at a way to change their political reality without mirroring the oppression of the past. Before the brutal crackdown, Libyans revealed that they were capable of taking the first steps, as have many people are now showing throughout the region. The intervention provides an opportunity to take the next steps. Last night by explaining the limited nature of American involvement, President Obama expressed our support.
Richard Cohen of The Washington Post writes today in an Op Ed entitled “No more indifference”: ” . . . Arguments – good arguments – can be made in opposition to the Libyan intervention. Maybe it will make things worse. Maybe we’ll get bogged down and have to stay for years. Maybe the rebels are the really bad guys. On the other hand, lives were clearly at stake and something had to be done. The world could not simply shove its hands in its pockets and stand by as some madman had his way with people in his grip – in spirit, a reprise of the Evian conference*. The Libyan intervention established a precedent: There is such a thing as the international community and, as inchoate as it may be, it will insist on certain minimum standards even for dictators: Your people are not yours to kill.”
* International conference of 1938 at Evian-les-Bains, France, to deal with Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.
I am fascinated by the implications of a couple of “what if” questions. How should the international community, including the United States, react if the forces that NATO is backing against Qaddafi inflicts significant casualties on civilians as they try to take cities controlled by Qaddafi’s forces, and may be supported by a different faction of Libyan citizens loyal to Qaddafi? If necessary would NATO, including the United States, use military force to protect citizens either supporting Qaddafi or who oppose the revolutionary leadership, assuming there are any?
I agree with the sentiment of this post. There is certainly a moral imperative to intervene. However, as I hoped to express in my comment on yesterday’s post, I am upset with US leaders’ inconsistent reading of what constitues a ‘moral imperative.’ What I am concerned about is the future. I am concerned about the application of expansive rhetoric about democracy in what is a very unique and limited moment in the history of US involvement in the region.
I am glad for intervention, but it seems a rare moment in American foreign policy, that is, a sudden and rare acknowledgement of the USA’s moral imperative to act.
I hope that this is only the beginning and that we may look back in 20 years and see this as the beginning of a new era. However, I am doubtful. I feel that America’s involvement in Libya has been largely determined by interests that lie outside any concern for supporting the Libyan people’s ability to determine the future of their nation.
It would seem answers to these questions over American involvement in Libya lie in US leaders’ future actions, and American’s ability to hold their leaders accountable.
Military humanitarian interventions; peace keeping operations; policing actions, nation building and a variety of different types of wars — these all describe at risk operations in which the United States military has been asked to participate. More recently, members of the military have been asked to serve tour, after tour after tour in dangerous operations. They and their families are being asked to bear hardships, which many other citizens either ignore or oppose. Is it time to consider putting military age males and females at risk? If more average citizens were at risk would our citizens and policy makers consider policy alternatives more deliberately? It is far too easy to pass this burden on to an all volunteer military. Being in at risk situations year after year is fundamentally changing those who are directly involved, their families and friends and their communities.
I agree that the imbalance of the burden of war and a militarized American foreign policy on those in the volunteer military, and the lack of impact on other Americans does present profound problems. On the other hand, we still have to make distinctions and judgments about specific policies. There was practically no justification for the War in Iraq. The way the Afghan War has been prosecuted raised serious problems. It seems to me that the present policy in Libya, on balance, has clear justification, as Obama presented in his speech. Judging the soundness of the mission will depend on how we proceed. I think Michael is, though, right: we would take such decisions more seriously if the burdens of war were more justly shared.