War Games

What would a world look like if an Empire – an unnamed, teetering superpower – could fly to war without cost and no loss of life to its soldiers or the civilians of its target? We may soon find out. Finally we discover the true meaning of a “war game.”

Our waltz through the North African skies provides the test. After a week of bombing of Libyan military targets, apparently not a single American or NATO soldier has been killed. And, despite the pathetic attempts of the Tripoli regime to demonstrate otherwise, there seems not to have been many (or any) civilian casualties. Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it’s off to war we go.

Add to this happy scenario the pressure to fund the battles not by taxing the burghers of Calais or the burgers of LA, but the suggestion that our military strikes be funded through the frozen assets of the Libyan regime. While President Obama denies that the money will be touched, honey pots are hard to resist. So just so long as we forget the families of Libyan soldiers, it’s all good. We feel noble about saving lives without costing ours. Bombers have the wings of a dove.

It is true that there is no endgame in sight, and it may be, as has been reported, that Al Qaeda militants are working with the rebels and, who knows, the oil ports may close, but everything is now a training mission. And, perhaps, as we roll the dice, the outcome will be sevens, not craps. Endgames are for Dr. Kissinger, not for Dr. Pangloss.

The charm of brutal dictators (think Mubarak, think Duvalier, think Saddam, think Charles Taylor) is that they have ravaged the wealth of their nation, secreting it away where we can get it. Their greed can fund our moral display.

Perhaps the mission in Libya, despite a wartime death toll that would make the citizens of Sendai weep with envy, may yet be judged unsatisfactory. Libya tomorrow might be anarchic, and, yes, the oil spigot might be turned off, but perhaps a new Libya state will be an Easter present for the West.

But I worry as much about success as about failure. Should the Libya adventure be judged a success, and let us be happy in our military imaginaries, what is next? What will be the lesson of Libya. President Obama has just instructed Laurent Gbagbo, the disputed leader of the Ivory Coast, that he must step down. And then there are the Congo and Korea, Belarus and Burma. Some think that Castro’s regime will need only to be jostled to topple.

We can establish our role as the world’s policeman on its dime. There is something appealing about this desire to spread Western values globally. A world absent Qaddafi is a world in which human rights have advanced, if only by a tiny step.

Still I can’t help but be concerned about this plan for the global future. Dangers lurk in Pax Obama. I reject the extreme claim that suggests that there are no standards for human rights. Nor do I believe that every nation deserves the leaders they have. And we should embrace a foreign policy that includes morality as one factor in determining our global commitments. However, I worry about the day that the most powerful actors in the international political system become persuaded that human rights abuses in other lands become the sine qua non for foreign intervention, separate from national defensive interests. This is a world in which weak armies are piñatas for those who are strong, a world in which a community of nations can go wilding. In such a world the justification for the nation state as an entity where the people can determine their own autonomous future is threatened.

When wars are without charge the world becomes a place in which sovereignty is provisional, preserved at the pleasure of global powers. To be sure modern history reveals that sovereignty was always provisional, but there was always a price to intervention. Without that, why should there be limits? Why not Darfur? Why not Guinea?

What are the unintended consequences of such a system? The states that are protected from Pax Obama are those that can exert a cost on attacking nations. But how can weak militaries do so? In the new world order, governments that can develop weapons of mass destruction that can be used against their mighty opponents will have a shield. North Korea is protected by their nuclear program. But not every state has the infrastructure to build atomic tonnage. Biological and chemical weapons are cheaper and more transportable. Suitcase anti-diplomacy. What is startling is that the Libyans have not – yet – fought back against those who are raining bombs. They are playing rope-a-dope. But what is to stop a chemical weapon in a subway or a biological weapon at a sports event? The great powers may think that they set the rules for warfare, rules that benefit them; their targets may have other ideas.

Are we prepared for these new rules of war? If not, the West may discover that the lessons of Libya are not those that have appeared in current military texts. Global hubris, while understandable, often has a heavy price.