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.

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.

There are serious arguments for and against military intervention in Libya.  Michael Walzer, who is often wise about such things, makes a strong case against. Yet, on balance I am convinced by Conor Foley’s minimalist position for intervention, presented at Crooked Timber. Colonel  Muammar el-Qaddafi’s decision to defend his power by any means necessary led Foley to conclude: “I think that the situation in Libya immediately prior to the intervention passed the threshold test … the UN is fulfilling its responsibility to protect the lives of civilians in this case.” Of course, there are many other situations where such intervention on these grounds should be called for, perhaps too many, but in Libya it became possible and has been immediately successful in the stated goal of reducing civilian deaths.

But there is also a greater hope that as their lives are being defended, Libyans will contribute to the democratic transformation of 2011. If Qaddafi would be defeated, a new democratic force may emerge, what Benoit Challand calls, “the counter-power of civil society.” My heart hopes it will be so. My head suggests extreme caution. Looking closely at the way the big political issues are enacted in everyday interactions, what I call “the politics of small things,” suggests why the caution is called for, but also where there may be hopeful signs.

There is a dilemma. For a successful democratic transition, the Libyans must develop a capacity to say more than no or yes to the dictator, as I put it while speculating about the Egyptians and when studying the Central Europeans. Yet, war generally doesn’t provide the time or place for this to happen. Opposition to the perceived evil source requires resolute action, disciplined unity of purpose. Democratic life is based upon diverse opinions and judgments and civil contestation. War generally does not support such civility and diversity. Significantly, Qaddafi’s regime worked against this throughout its history.

In politics the means are the ends. Leninist vanguard conspiracy was a successful way to oppose the Czarist autocracy, but the same vanguardism provided the infrastructure of the Soviet dictatorship. The mode of conspiracy became the mode of rule. With a history of conspiratorial resistance and with militant military action now as the possible mode of transformation in Libya, military rule seems likely.

Imams from the Al-Azhar University joined the protests. Coptic priests and Muslim clerics were seen protesting together in unity, Egypt, Jan. 30, 2011 © yamaha_gangsta | Creative Commons

Libya’s neighbors present a challenging contrast. In Egypt and Tunisia, we saw how the way the opposition was founded and acted led to the constitution of a new political power, revealed not only in the proclaimed commitment to principles, but as well in the way people acted. When members of the Muslim Brotherhood defended members of the Coptic Churches, and vice versa, the commitment to ideals of diversity were not only professed, but enacted, creating a significant force in Egyptian society. But even then, its fate is far from certain. Without that kind of personal experience, the Libyan opposition’s professed commitment to democracy is much less solid.

That said, there are possibilities, related to the power of 2011. It is possible that there will be a democratic domino effect. This is not an issue of magic, but of practical action. If the Tunisians and the Egyptians are successful, the Libyans after Qaddafi are more likely to be successful. Attractive models for action, easily understandable and acted upon, will be readily available. Such a dynamic clearly was at work in post Soviet East and Central Europe. Further, we actually don’t know exactly what is going on in Benghazi and elsewhere in liberated Libya off the center stage. Discipline in the military resistance is certainly necessary. But people with different worldviews and principles may be respectfully responsive to each other and acting together as they politically support the resistance. Reports suggest an ambiguous situation. But there clearly are those in the governing council who profess open views, with some signs that they may be laying the foundation for a democratic transformation.  It’s possible that the hopes for democracy are being knitted into the social fabric through such everyday interactions. From here in New York, that is a matter of speculative hope. In Libya, it’s a matter of practical action.