How do you convince the American people that it is in their interests to embroil American soldiers in yet another Muslim civil war? First, you find some retired general who thinks setting up a no-fly zone in Libya is a piece of cake. Then you quote him extensively, making comments like this:
“I can’t imagine an easier military problem,” he said. “If we can’t impose a no-fly zone over a not even third-rate military power like Libya, then we ought to take a hell of a lot of our military budget and spend it on something usable.”
Of course, the question isn’t whether we can create a no-fly zone over Libya, but whether we should. For Nicholas Kristof, the main reason we should is because we don’t want a repeat of history.
If the Obama administration has exaggerated the risks of a no-fly zone, it seems to have downplayed the risks of continued passivity. There is some risk that this ends up like the abortive uprisings in Hungary in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, or in southern Iraq in 1991.
Let’s set Iraq aside for the moment. While the crushed uprisings in Czechoslovakia and Hungary were unfortunate, especially for the people who had to live another thirty or forty years under communist rule, the American leaders didn’t do anything wrong during those conflicts. Anyone who sat around asking “who lost Hungary or Czechoslovakia?” for the next couple of decades was just playing politics. Direct military intervention would have risked nuclear annihilation. Sometimes, you have to be prudent rather than brave.
Iraq is a difficult example. We should have used our considerable influence to dissuade Saddam Hussein from obliterating Kuwait. We should have told Kuwait to quit dicking around with their more powerful neighbor. But once we failed to do those two things, we had to decide whether to allow Hussein’s aggression to stand. That was a question with no good answers, but once we decided that Kuwait should be liberated, we had to consider the end-game. Who would run Iraq? Another Sunni military man? Democratically-elected Shi’ites? Or, Saddam Hussein. We obviously did not want Hussein to remain in power, but unwilling to oust him from power ourselves, we tried to rely on a popular revolt from the Kurdish and Shi’ite populations. But did we want the Shi’ites to win? Was that in our interests in 1991? If it was, then why were we helping Iraq fight Iran three years earlier?
In my opinion, the Bush administration blundered catastrophically in the run-up to the invasion of Kuwait, and then they compounded the problem by having no vision or will-power to craft an alternative to Hussein in Baghdad. This left us with an unsustainable impasse…a decade of no-fly zones and self-defeating sanctions that hurt Iraq’s neighbors and people more than its leadership.
We wanted to invade Iraq just to end the clusterfuck we’d created twelve years earlier. But, of course, our impatience led us to trade a small clusterfuck for one of the biggest clusterfucks of all time.
But at least in Iraq we had rather clear national interests. For the duration of the Cold War it was contested territory. Iraq’s armed forces were built largely on the Soviet platforms, with some German and French stuff thrown in. The U.S. provided mostly technical assistance and intelligence, and this was mainly during the war with Iran in the 1980’s. With it’s vast oil reserves and strategic location, the U.S.’s energy/military interests dictated that we have an interest in Iraq’s affairs and their disposition towards Moscow and their neighbors.
Can we really say that about Libya? We have marginal corporate interests in the country, and we don’t want to see their oil off the market if that is going to lead to severe energy inflation in Europe. But that argues for stability, not for a sustained period of civil war and uncertainty. Getting Gaddafi to resign does nothing to assure stability. Who says that his opponents are unified? Who says they will agree to split the spoils equitably? Saddam ruled his country the way he did not only because he was a sadist but because the country would tear apart at the seams without some heavy-hand to keep things in order. The same may well be true about Gaddafi. I’m not opposed to the idea of democracy for Libyans, but we shouldn’t get too invested in the idea. There’s no evidence that Libya is ripe for parliamentary democracy. If it happens, great. If it doesn’t, let’s make sure we’re not to blame.
If someone wants to risk getting themselves into a decades-long commitment to “overseeing” Libyan affairs, let it not be NATO and the United States, but some coalition of regional players, including Arab ones, or let it be done by the United Nations if that is possible.
Kristof is too-willing to commit us without answering difficult questions. Gen. Merrill McPeak says, “Just flying a few jets across the top of the friendlies would probably be enough to ground the Libyan Air Force, which is the objective.” Well, who are the friendlies? Are we going to consider anyone who is fighting Gaddafi to be a friendly? Do we even know these people? What makes this tribe better than that one? Do we even care? And is grounding the Libyan Air Force really the objective? No, of course not. The objective of a no-fly zone is regime change. Once you commit to it, you are committed forever, or until there is a regime change. Unless the objective is to burn cash and gas flying planes over northern Africa, a decision to impose a no-fly zone is a decision to oust Gaddafi.
There are obviously costs and risks to our pilots, but as Iraq demonstrated, there are unintended consequences. There is blowback.
I keep saying this. Libya is not our problem. It’s not our responsibility to determine who will govern Libya. We can be prepared to intervene to prevent widescale slaughter of innocent civilians, but this isn’t a war between civilians and Gaddafi, but a war between armed groups representing different regions and tribes with different interests.
If someone wants to jump in with both feet and take ownership of the mess there, let it be Italy. Or France. We showed them how to ignore world opinion and the United Nations and invade an Arab country. We don’t need to do it again.
