I couldn’t sleep last night, haunted by a world gone crazy.

I dreamt that a purported Israeli, with the support of one hundred rich American Jews, pretended to make a feature length film aggressively mocking the Prophet Mohammed and Muslims in general – Islamophobia and anti-Semitism combined!

The faux film producer uploaded a mock trailer to YouTube. Along with thousands of other clips, it was ignored. But then when the film was dubbed into Arabic, the demagogues of the world all played their roles – the clash of civilizations as mediated performance art.

Radical Islamic clerics worked as film distributors (monstrous monstrators as my Daniel Dayan might put it), bringing the clip to the attention of the mass media and the masses. Islamist and anti-Islamist ideologues worked up their followers, happily supporting each other in their parts. Feckless diplomats in embassies tried to assure the public that hate-speech isn’t official American policy. Analysts identified root causes.

The clash of civilizations was confirmed. All the players needed each other, supported each other, depended on each other. A marvelous demonstration of social construction: W.I. Thomas would be proud of the power of his insight. Social actors defined the clash of civilizations as real, and it is real in its consequences.

A reality confirmed with a jolt when I awoke, knowing full well about the global attacks on American embassies and symbols, and the tragic death of a man who was determined to go beyond clashing clichés, the heroic American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. The American right, including the marvelous Mitt Romney and Fox News talking heads, denounced President Obama’s purported support of the attacks and failure to stand up for American values, including the freedom of speech — this from people who worry about the war on Christmas. It’s a surreal reality this morning.

And this morning, wide-awake, I am savoring Marvelous Mitt’s recent video performance: right-wing newspeak de-constructed. At last, class warfare in America has been given a full public airing. In pitching his candidacy with his fellow fat-cats, Romney revealed his definition of job producers, the nature of dependency and the work ethic. He also showed himself to be a true student of Ayn Rand. Really, all who depend on government vote for Obama and the Democrats? No wonder he selected Paul Ryan. Identifying those who don’t pay federal income taxes with votes for Democrats is amazingly poor sociology, bordering on comedy, a point made beautifully in a letter to the editor in today’s New York Times.

To the Editor:

I woke up early this morning and drove my daughter several miles on a government-built road, all the way to a government-operated school.

I came back to my home — for which I receive a government-sanctioned mortgage-interest deduction — and called my parents, who both receive Social Security and Medicare from the government. Then I signed on to the Internet, which was developed by government-sponsored researchers.

So Mitt Romney is right, on two counts. I am “dependent upon government.” And I’m not voting for him.

JONATHAN ZIMMERMAN
New York, Sept. 18, 2012

A third irremovable Arab president has fallen. Muammar Qaddafi’s final fate, like that of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh currently in Saudi, recovering from an attempted assassination, is still unknown. But one thing is pretty sure: like Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali and Husni Mubarak, Colonel Qaddafi is the third political victim of the Arab spring. Quite a deed, if one remembers the proliferation of de facto monarchical republics in the Arab Middle East in the very recent past.

While there is much to rejoice in this news, many questions arise concerning the political and military developments of these last months in Libya. In this post, I will focus on the media coverage in and around Tripoli. Next week, I will analyse the emerging Libyan leadership.

It is striking to see how the most recent military developments in Tripoli are mostly portrayed as a “rebel-driven campaign.” To be sure, we are told of how NATO allies coordinate aerial attacks in their support for this the apparently final offensive, but very little is said about the active role that Qatar, France and England have taken in arming, equipping and training the Libyan rebel forces (not to mention intelligence gathering and strategic planning). It is, in fact, probably as much a victory of the Transitional National Council (TNC) as it is of the countries which have thrown in their lots in the hope of securing a substantial share of the (oily) pie and to obtain a prominent role as future regional leaders. Yet, very little has been said about the active role of the U.S. in the unfolding events. “Leading from behind,” Obama’s unique strategy, is perhaps more of a media performance than a military reality. The U.S. has been very much involved.

One can find evidence that the USA is not waiting, arms crossed, to see what will happen in the Cyrenaica and Tripolitana. An article in yesterday’s New York Times reveals pro-active American involvement in planning the future of a post-Qaddafi Libya:

With the lessons of postwar Iraq very much in mind, the Obama administration and its allies oversaw the drafting of “a transition road map” that creates an interim governing authority to fill the vacuum created by the monolithic Qaddafi regime until elections are held.

The road map did not specify dates or a timetable for the election. But the officials said the rebel leaders had consistently pledged to have an open, inclusive government. They have also pledged not to pursue vendettas or a “de-Baathification-style” purge of the political and security bureaucracy, something that fueled the insurgency in Iraq.

“We try to learn lessons,” a senior administration official said. “That’s why there was such as emphasis on post-Qaddafi planning. It wasn’t strictly because of April 2003, but that definitely was on people’s minds.”

A road map, as we know from the Palestinian context, is not just stale scenario mapping out different possible political outcomes. It can be a guide, at times even a semi-binding document for international actors. Even if the quote above does not clarify who exactly drafted this transition road map, the Obama Administration clearly is taking an active role in defining the next moves in Libya.

Thus, one has to recognize the sanitized media covering of the ongoing military campaign. Make no mistake: this has been the case throughout the six months of Libyan coverage. Now, the coverage is only about a rebel-driven campaign, obfuscating the active involvement of external actors. Then, in the first three or four weeks after the March UN Resolution installing a no-fly zone, the media hardly reported on civilian casualties, nor did they show pictures of dead people (the turning point seems to have been the deadlock over the Misrata siege when pictures and stories of the human drama unfolding in the Mediterranean city gave a different, more personalized account of the military operations).

We are thus confronted – again – with the politics of visibility. One can discern different scopic regimes granted to different sets of actors. The involvement of Libyans themselves needs to be seen on the front stage (or they need to be projected as being on the driver’s seat), while that of international actors should only be mentioned in the backstage. There is a logic to this, obviously, if we think of the American context. Politically, it is not a good idea for American politicians to be seen or perceived as having an active role in defining the future of Libya. Instead, one should only react, or act as far as possible away from the (media) spotlight.

There are many instances of this politics of (in)visibility. Last March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Mahmoud Jibril, the head of the TNC, beyond the public eye. The New York Times reported the meeting in these terms:

Mrs. Clinton met the opposition leader, Mahmoud Jibril, at her hotel here after attending a dinner with foreign ministers of the countries of the Group of 8, who discussed ways to increase pressure on Colonel Qaddafi’s government, including imposing a no-flight zone over Libyan territory. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Jibril met for 45 minutes but did not appear publicly out of concern for his security, an aide said.

Security was certainly an issue on that occasion, but there were also sophisticated political calculations of American officials to not be seen too openly with what was then an embryonic alternative leadership in Libya. The future will tell us how this new emerging leadership will manage to fulfil or betray the hopes of popular democratic openings.

A while ago, I read a frightening piece in The New York Times, on looted weapons in Libya. The hopeful side of the report is that the opposition to the brutal dictator (who has systematically attacked unarmed citizens) is militarily empowered, using the weapons of the dictatorial regime against the dictatorship. But the Times report emphasized the dangers. With arms now circulating outside the formal control of the state, there is a high likelihood that some of them will reach the black market and get into the hands of terrorists outside this zone of conflict. C.J. Chives, the Times reporter examines particularly this dangerous side of recent events there.

Indeed it’s scary. Nihilists of various sorts might obtain missiles that are capable of attacking commercial airliners. As someone who often flies abroad for professional and family purposes, I am particularly concerned. This security threat is very real, Chives reports, because in relatively recent past examples of state arsenals being looted by civilians, Uganda in 1979, Albania in 1997 and Iraq in 2003, the fear has been confirmed.

When I was reading this article, I thought about another circumstance when such fear in the end seems to have proven unfounded, and in which I was peripherally involved. The collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989 led many to worry that terrorists, who had been armed and supported by the Soviet bloc, would become rogue and free floating. Further, there was the fear that their preferred weapons, sophisticated plastic explosives, specifically semtex, might be used in new ways, not disciplined by the logic of the cold war. It was in this context that I became a suspected terrorist.

I was coming home from a two month trip around the old Soviet bloc in the late winter of 1990. This visit would later become the basis of my theoretical travelogue, After the Fall: The Pursuit of Democracy in Central Europe. I met colleagues in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, what would become the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Poland, and the Soviet Union, specifically Leningrad. I was on a mission to lend support to those who sought to develop new curricula in the social sciences, and meeting with democratic oppositionists of various sorts, some who were advancing the constitution of new democracies, others, who still had a long way to go. In Poland and Hungary, a new stability was already apparent, while in Leningrad there had been little change. In Sofia, a week before I arrived, the Communist Party headquarters across the street from my hotel had burned down. I spent part of my time with an opposition group in a demonstration for democratic change. In Bucharest, I saw the militia brutally beating people on Victory Square. I had no understanding of who was being brutalized and why they were being attacked. It was a tough trip.

My last stop was Leningrad, an odd stay where I went to explore the possibility of developing a cooperative relationship with a group purporting to be an independent institution of higher learning. Two representatives of the group had approached, through a State Department contact, the New School president, Jonathan Fanton. We had initial discussions in New York, which raised some doubts about the real standing of this endeavor. I went to Leningrad to check things out, quickly discovering that they were charlatans. But I had to hang around for two days, giving lectures that the two were using to enhance their local authority, meeting very interesting people at the Academy of Sciences under very strange circumstances. A number of them gave me letters and parcels to send to American colleagues, thus, avoiding the Soviet censors. As an old Soviet bloc veteran, this was completely normal, contrasting the continuation of Soviet ways with the rapid changes occurring in Central Europe.

My departure was on Aeroflot to Stockholm and from there on American Airlines to New York. U.S. carriers were then under a terrorist alert in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing, coupled with the fear of rogue terrorists. Because of this, there was an additional security review before entering the waiting room for American flights. When the security guards reviewed my passport, I was taken to another room and an interrogation began. I fit a profile. I look Jewish, but also vaguely Middle Eastern, Mediterranean. I was traveling over an eight week period around the region, saturated with suspected rogue terrorists. Over the past ten years I had been in and out of the region, particularly in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, actually as an observer and collaborator of the democratic oppositions, but the quick review of my passport, of course, didn’t reveal that. The questioning went on for about an hour. For forty-five minutes, I was a suspected terrorist. But my answers to their questions made sense and as the questioning proceeded the tone changed. They became more interested in who I met, whether I was inadvertently carrying a package that might be dangerous. Because I had the Russian letters and packages, the flight was delayed to do a thorough examination of my luggage.

That settled, the rest of my flight home was a pleasure. The security officials apologized for the inconvenience they caused me. My seat was upgraded from coach to business class. Even during the interrogation, I was at all points treated with courtesy. And I have often wondered since 9/11 why all profile searches couldn’t be conducted in this fashion. Search, verify, respect, and compensate for the inconvenience.

President Barack Obama gave a powerful speech today, one of his best. The president was again eloquent, but there is concern here in the U.S. and also abroad in the Arab world, that eloquence is not enough, that it may in fact be more of the problem than the solution. The fine words don’t seem to have substance in Egypt, according to a report in The Washington Post. There appears to be a global concern that Obama’s talk is cheap. Obama’s “Cairo Speech” all over again, one Egyptian declared. Now is the time for decisive action. Now is the time for the President of the United States to put up or shut up. (Of course, what exactly is to be put up is another matter.)

This reminds me of another powerful writer-speaker, President Vaclav Havel. Havel is the other president in my lifetime that I have deeply admired. Both he and Obama are wonderful writers and principled politicians, both have been criticized for the distance between their rhetorical talents and their effectiveness in realizing their principles.

Agreeing with the criticisms of Havel, I sometimes joke about my developing assessment of him. I first knew about Vaclav Havel as a bohemian, as a very interesting absurdist playwright. I wrote my dissertation about Polish theater when this was still his primary occupation, and I avidly read his work then as I tried to understand why theater played such an important role in the opposition to Communism in Central Europe.

I then came to know him as one of the greatest political essayists and dissidents of the twentieth century. At the theoretical core of two of my books, Beyond Glasnost: The Post Totalitarian Mind and The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times are the ideas to be found in Havel’s greatest essay, “The Power of the Powerless.”

However, as president, Havel was not so accomplished. He presided over the breakup of Czechoslovakia, a development he opposed passionately, but ineffectually. He sometimes seemed to think that he could right a political problem by writing a telling essay, often translated and published in The New York Review of Books. He expressed a moral high ground in these essays, but he did not address the tough and messy side of politics. This is a real weakness of the intellectual as politician, the temptation to think if one can put a solution into words, one has solved a problem.

Does this problem apply to Obama, specifically to his speech today? Many on both the left and the right have heard enough of his speeches. They want action.

I watched a PBS News Hour discussion last night in anticipation of the speech today, and this was the consensus of the expert observers. Therefore, I think it is significant how much of this speech pointed in the direction of specific policy developments. Yet, they were placed in a broader historical and moral context. And the words were important. They did politics. They acted. They were speech acts in Austin’s sense.

I was particularly moved by the way the president told the story of the Arab Spring. He gave it great significance. He alluded to the killing of bin Laden, but didn’t dwell on it. He started with the politics of small things and pointed to civilizational transformation.

“On December 17th, a young vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi was devastated when a police officer confiscated his cart. This was not unique. It’s the same kind of humiliation that takes place every day in many parts of the world -– the relentless tyranny of governments that deny their citizens dignity. Only this time, something different happened. After local officials refused to hear his complaints, this young man, who had never been particularly active in politics, went to the headquarters of the provincial government, doused himself in fuel, and lit himself on fire.

There are times in the course of history when the actions of ordinary citizens spark movements for change because they speak to a longing for freedom that has been building up for years. In America, think of the defiance of those patriots in Boston who refused to pay taxes to a King, or the dignity of Rosa Parks as she sat courageously in her seat. So it was in Tunisia, as that vendor’s act of desperation tapped into the frustration felt throughout the country. Hundreds of protesters took to the streets, then thousands. And in the face of batons and sometimes bullets, they refused to go home –- day after day, week after week — until a dictator of more than two decades finally left power.

The story of this revolution, and the ones that followed, should not have come as a surprise. The nations of the Middle East and North Africa won their independence long ago, but in too many places their people did not. In too many countries, power has been concentrated in the hands of a few. In too many countries, a citizen like that young vendor had nowhere to turn -– no honest judiciary to hear his case; no independent media to give him voice; no credible political party to represent his views; no free and fair election where he could choose his leader.”

The president maintained that this power as it spread throughout the Arab world can no longer be easily repressed, and he expressed a conviction that given the media world we now live in the protestors’ “voices tell us that change cannot be denied.”

But that was it for the moving rhetoric. Obama then turned sober and practical. “The question before us is what role America will play as this story unfolds.” And he described what might very well become known as the Obama Doctrine.

“The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region. (Applause.)

The U.S. supports a set of universal rights. These rights include free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders – whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus, Sanaa or Tehran.

And we support political and economic reform in the Middle East and North Africa that can meet the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people throughout the region.”

This all sounds quite good, but perhaps empty, as some have maintained. However, the substance of the matter is in the details. It is noteworthy that when the president referred to the importance of universal rights he mentioned not only easy targets, but also Sanaa, increasing the pressure on Ali Abdullah Saleh, our ally in “the war on terrorism” to resign. And later when he criticized regimes that violently repress their citizenry for engaging in peaceful protests, he included not only Libya, Syria and Iran, but also the important American ally Bahrain.

“Bahrain is a longstanding partner, and we are committed to its security. We recognize that Iran has tried to take advantage of the turmoil there, and that the Bahraini government has a legitimate interest in the rule of law.

Nevertheless, we have insisted both publicly and privately that mass arrests and brute force are at odds with the universal rights of Bahrain’s citizens, and we will – and such steps will not make legitimate calls for reform go away. The only way forward is for the government and opposition to engage in a dialogue, and you can’t have a real dialogue when parts of the peaceful opposition are in jail.”

He spoke to the people and not only to the rulers of the region. He understood that the problem was not only political, but also economic, offering assistance and engagement in economic development as it addresses the needs of ordinary people. Moreover, he promised to listen to diverse voices coming from the region.

“We will continue to make good on the commitments that I made in Cairo – to build networks of entrepreneurs and expand exchanges in education, to foster cooperation in science and technology, and combat disease. Across the region, we intend to provide assistance to civil society, including those that may not be officially sanctioned, and who speak uncomfortable truths. And we will use the technology to connect with – and listen to – the voices of the people.”

He gave a forceful commitment to support religious minorities and strong support to the centrality of women’s rights.

“History shows that countries are more prosperous and more peaceful when women are empowered. And that’s why we will continue to insist that universal rights apply to women as well as men – by focusing assistance on child and maternal health; by helping women to teach, or start a business; by standing up for the right of women to have their voices heard, and to run for office. The region will never reach its full potential when more than half of its population is prevented from achieving their full potential.”

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama was careful but took a strong position. There was a little to warm the heart of those on both sides, but also much that would concern both.

Obama made news and earned the wrath of his domestic opposition by declaring, “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” This earned him an immediate protest by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But he also expressed concerns about the recent Hamas – Fatah agreement and about “symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state.” Thus, the Hamas spokesman, Sami Abu Zuhri denounced the speech completely.

To my mind, Obama was not tough enough on Netanyahu, but he did move forward. Clearly, something other than complete support for the Israeli right’s position is necessary, contrary to Obama’s hysterical Republican critics. Obama advanced the U.S. position a bit. He said the obvious. The future border between Palestine and Israel will be based on the ’67 borders with negotiated adjustments. That has been the implicit assumption of the peace process for decades. Saying it bluntly, as President Obama did, provides some grounds for progress, suggesting a real response to the Arab Spring.

In his speech this morning, the president gave an account of a rapidly changing political landscape, showing an appreciation of the dynamics driving it and presenting a role for the U.S. to play. It was a broad and impressive depiction of our changing political world. He revealed an understanding of the role of the U.S. in this changing world, and he started playing the role when he turned to the all-important details. He staked out a position.

We will get a sense of how full or empty his rhetoric was today, when he meets Prime Minister Netanyahu tomorrow.

In a post submitted before Osama Bin Laden was eliminated, Gary Alan Fine poses a question that is especially pressing after this latest development in the ongoing global wars. –Jeff

Coming out of a bar late one night, a patron finds his friend on his hands and knees searching desperately beneath a streetlamp. “I lost my keys under my car and I must find them,” moans his friend. “But why, if the keys are under a car, are you searching under this lamp?” “Well, the light is much better here.”

This is an old chestnut, none too clever, but one that has powerful political resonance, helping to explain flawed policy decisions. Why, if we worry about the menace of Al Qaeda, have we gone to war against two states – Iraq and Libya – that have distant, even hostile, relations with our terrorist foes. The light is better there.

A student of mine, Michaela DeSoucey, currently at Princeton, wrote her doctoral dissertation about the battles to ban foie gras. She asked the question why is it that animal rights activists chose to make the banning of foie gras a central issue, despite the small amount of foie gras consumed by Americans, as opposed to veal, much more common on American tables – or chicken. Neither baby cows nor poultry sleep under 300-thread count sheets. Her argument is that battling foie gras producers is a far easier task than the cattle or poultry industry. Yet, each battle provides a rich vein of publicity. Foie gras is what DeSoucey labels an easy target: it is, if one can pardon the culinary-mixed metaphor “low-hanging fruit.” Activists hope, but do not expect, that such targets can provide a wedge for other bigger enemies. Not yet.

But my concern is not with the pantry, but with the atlas. Here we are battling in Libya, while Syria falls into chaos. Americans and our NATO allies have determined that it is crucial that we overthrow the Qaddafi regime, even though that regime is opposed to Al Qaeda as are we. And, frankly, it is becoming a vexing pattern. We are only slowly retracing our steps from the mess that we made in Iraq, another Arab state, largely secular, that had little truck with our enemies.

It is surely true that few Americans have any love for either Saddam Hussein or Muammar Qaddafi; even The Donald could trump them in a free and fair election in our blue precincts. But this does not explain our involvement. Why do we give those Islamic leaders who are sympathetic to our enemies a pass, while we go all in to destroy secular Arab dictators? Why are we passive – even at times generous – toward governments in Syria and Pakistan?

The answer is that we feel the need to do something, and some somethings are easier than others. The brutality that we are seeing daily from Damascus and throughout the Syrian countryside reveals this clearly. It is true that Qaddafi bluffed that he would kill his opponents, but Assad has shown that actions talk louder than words. Following Teddy Roosevelt, the Syrian regime, supported by the Iranians, speaks softly and carries rapid-fire machine guns.

The danger is that by going after easy targets we undercut our policy goals, no matter how many “mission accomplished” banners we produce or how few allied military are killed. Can anyone claim that the invasion of Iraq benefited American interests in the Middle East? Can anyone claim that the NATO attacks on Libya, while ignoring Syria, will make the Middle East more stable? The outcome in Egypt and the plausible outcome in Libya seems most of all to provide a foothold for a kind of radical Islam that we despise. Perhaps the Muslim Brotherhood will not come to power in either Egypt or in Libya, but it is easy to understand the anxiety in Jerusalem.

Perhaps we are wise to be very cautious in selecting hard targets, but that doesn’t mean that we should be any less diligent in our choice of easy targets. Sometimes those easy targets have unintended consequences that make them very difficult after all.

It is not that American diplomats are blind when it comes to our self-interest; it is simply that they search for the key to global politics where the mission appears effortless, and not where that key might actually be found.

I probably got carried away describing President Obama’s Libya policy as a “self-limiting revolutionary solidarity approach.” I know I should be careful in applying my formative political experience to unrelated circumstances. False analogies are often foolish. They can even be dangerous. But, I drew upon my experience to express my admiration for the precision and cogency of Obama’s approach, concerned that many observers, especially my friends on the left, didn’t understand the significance of what the President is trying to accomplish. Things are very different now, and we should face these differences. But even so, the combination of realism and idealism, balancing insights into capacity and aspiration, reminded me of things past, from Gdansk, not Baghdad.

The President sought to highlight the humanitarian justification of our military involvement in Libya. He also emphasized that the involvement had to be limited. Surely, this had something to do with cold calculation about the overextension of the American military, but principle was also involved. For Libyans, Obama attempted to express support for the principle that it was for them and not for us to determine their future. And for Americans and for the rest of the world, Obama tried to make clear that in order for an international military effort to be truly international, it can’t have an American face. The U.S. not only cannot afford to be the world’s policeman. It should not be. If the world needs policing, then the world should do it, or more precisely a coalition of countries, not led by the United States. Yet what seemed clear to me was not clear to everyone, despite the President’s widely recognized eloquence. And this wasn’t only true on the left, as was demonstrated here by Gary Alan Fine in his post on Friday.

I agree with Felipe Pait’s reply to Fine’s post. I too think that Fine exaggerates. “From observing the fact that the Obama administration has cautiously decided to use limited military force in Libya to worrying about the danger of invading a dozen countries is a long jump,” Pait wrote.

Nonetheless, Fine poses interesting questions as he carefully doesn’t present answers. Is there a danger that what Fine takes to be a war on the cheap may make war and international intervention hard to resist? And could that lead to unintended, indeed deadly consequences, as those attacked strike back on the globalized political arena, i.e. through terrorist attacks addressed to our homeland? I am a New Yorker who travels through Grand Central Station and the subways on a daily basis. For me, these are not simply theoretical questions.

Yet, I think that Fine lets his imagination carry him away. As a distanced observer of the human comedy with his commitment to pungent politics, he mistakes his own imagination for a developing reality. It’s amusing to imagine a “teetering superpower” engaging in a war without cost and then thinking about Libya based on that premise, provocatively speculating about ubiquitous worldwide humanitarian wars and dangerous implications at home. But what Fine defines as cost free war is not actually about costs, but about a new kind of limited commitment, including a willful decision by the superpower to act, not as such, but as a nation among others. I even think that it involves a move to de-militarize American foreign policy and to withdraw from the role of global hegemon.  Use military power along with others to stop a massacre. Let politics depose the dictator.

Indeed, on the political front, not on the military front, there is good news. High ranking Libyan officials are distancing themselves from Qadaffi, resigning from their posts, and defecting.

Obama’s speech about American actions in Libya was impressive for its intellectual subtlety, for its sharp reasonableness. He made an argument, fulfilling his obligation, critics note belatedly, to inform the public about the nature of his decisions, and he did so cogently. Congruent with the message, the speech was coolly presented. He wasn’t rallying support of the American citizenry and military to fight the just fight, but explaining a policy decision. This made sense, but the dispassionate nature of the policy formation does have political dangers if the war and political situation in Libya go poorly. The dispassion makes sense this week, but in the long run there are the sorts of dangers that James Jasper explores in his two posts. The hateful response to Obama’s speech from the left and the right are challenging and potentially significant.

Clearly, emotions are an important part of political persuasion and action. Clearly, there are times when mobilizing fear and even hate serve political purpose. But just as clearly, as Jasper emphasizes, a responsible politics requires balance.

The stink of pungent politics may sometimes be quite normal, but at others it indicates that there is something rotting at the core of the political culture, in general, or in a specific segment of the polity. I, with Jasper, worry about the partisan imbalance these days, brought to us by Fox News and company, and many of the leaders of the Republican Party. Perhaps this is a function of the partisan position we share, but I don’t think so as I look at and listen to how Obama explains his policy positions in approaching a major international crisis and our continuing economic crisis, and how many of his critics approach them and him.

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.

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.

While the military intervention of Libya is both important and controversial, I am convinced that the importance and the controversy will be decided less by arms, more by speech. Talk, there and now, is decidedly not cheap, and this applies both to Libya and to the region. I have theoretical preferences that lead me to such an assertion. I admit. I am guided by a book by Jonathan Schell on this issue in general. But I think the specific evidence in Libya and among its neighbors is overwhelming.

The battles in Libya will yield one of three possible military outcomes. The Libyan resistance, with the aid of outside firepower, will overthrow the regime of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Alternatively, Qaddafi and company will prevail. Or, there will be a stalemate. Of these three logically possible outcomes, I think it’s pretty clear that a regime victory with a return to the status quo ante is nearly impossible, given the level of internal resistance and external armaments. The best the regime can hope for is a military stalemate, which it would define as a victory. Yet, both in that case and the case of the victory of the resistance, the door will be opened for political change. The form of the change, then, will be decided politically not militarily, by the word, not by the sword.

And the direction of politics will depend on what people are doing in Libya and among its neighbors in the region off the center stage, as I explored last week. The young modern forces that played such an important role in the transformation in Tunisia and Egypt may very well be outmaneuvered by Islamists or by those privileged in the old regime cunningly maintaining their interests. (A New York Times report suggests that this is the unfolding case). These are the three main actors: those who are trying to maintain their privileges, the Islamists of one sort or another, and the young protesters who played a key role in initiating the present course of events. A democratic outcome would accommodate each of these actors.  How they are interacting now will shape the way they will interact in the near term, which will determine the course of history. Alarmists interpret the reports of collaboration of the military with the Muslim Brotherhood as a sign of democratic defeat. Yet there is an alternative way to look at it. It is something normal, typical of democratic life. As Matt Yglesias observes  a “political coalition between religious conservatives, the military, and economic elites is the bedrock of center-right politics in most democracies.” It is somewhat surprising that it is emerging in Egypt right now, but it is also to be expected.

Roundtable Talks in Warsaw, Poland, from February 6 to April 4, 1989 | Wikimedia Commons

Back in Libya, either a victory by the rebels or a stalemate leads to the necessity of the competing forces to negotiate. As Andrew Arato and Elzbieta Matynia suggested in their posts focused on Egypt, this will require a framework which will promote the possibility of compromise between groups that have fundamentally opposing views and interests, such as the roundtable, an old form developed in the late twentieth century for modern democratic purposes. There is great need for this in Egypt and Libya, and among their neighbors.

The time for mutually respectful talk and the democratic confrontation of competing interests is upon us. The mission creep that I hope for is primarily political not military. There is much about Libya and the region which suggests that a democratic transition is unlikely. Sectarianism, tribalism, authoritarian histories or no history at all are being invoked to explain what a horrible mess we have gotten into. But words can matter and have. Charles Hirschkind, in an important post at The Immanent Frame, shows how “The Road to Tahir,” was constructed with such words over a long time, facilitated by the new social media. There was nothing sudden or magical about Mubarak’s downfall. How powerful such experience will be in paving the road from Tahir is the question. I saw in East and Central Europe how such words overwhelmed authoritarian tendencies in some places, but not in others. I suspect the mixed results of 1989 will be mirrored in the results of 2011. As Arato highlighted in his post, intelligent political action will be decisive.

Over the past week, I have been reviewing postings on other blogs which consider how things are going in the struggle in Libya.  Particularly helpful were a series of posts by Juan Cole.

He developed a compelling account of why the war was necessary, i.e. to stop massacres , and to support popular sovereignty, and how the war was proceeding with international, including Arab and Turkish, support, achieving  its goal of stopping a regime’s systematic murder of its own citizens.

He wisely warns against undo optimism and pessimism, “Pundits who want this whole thing to be over within 7 days are being frankly silly. Those who worry about it going on forever are being unrealistic. Those who forget or cannot see the humanitarian achievements already accomplished are being willfully blind.”

And he forcefully argued with critics on the left that they must learn “to chew gum and walk at the same time,” to support an intervention that saves lives and supports the developing autonomous democratic developments in the Arab world, and be critical of unwarranted international exploits of the great powers of Europe and America. “It is possible to reason our way through, on a case-by-case basis…”

As I have already conceded, there are reasonable grounds to oppose this American and international involvement in Libya. The principled support for involvement is cogently presented by Cole. I’m convinced.

Later today, I will present my own judgment that the conflict in Libya will in the end be decided by words and not arms.