From Gadhafi to Benghazi
By George Friedman
September 18, 2012 | 0900 GMT
_____
Last week, four American diplomats were killed when
<
https://www.stratfor.com/node/191630> armed men attacked the U.S. Consulate
in Benghazi, Libya. The attackers' apparent motivation was that someone,
apparently American but with an uncertain identity, posted a video on
YouTube several months ago that deliberately
<
https://www.stratfor.com/node/191667> defamed the Prophet Mohammed. The
attack in Benghazi was portrayed as retribution for the defamation, with the
attackers holding all Americans equally guilty for the video, though it was
likely a pretext for deeper grievances. The riots spread to other countries,
including Egypt, <
https://www.stratfor.com/node/191675> Tunisia and Yemen,
although no American casualties were reported in the other riots. The unrest
appears to have subsided over the weekend.
Benghazi and the Fall of Gadhafi
In beginning to make sense of these attacks, one must observe that they took
place in Benghazi, the city that had been most opposed to Moammar Gadhafi.
Indeed, <
https://www.stratfor.com/node/182702> Gadhafi had promised to
slaughter his opponents in Benghazi, and it was that threat that triggered
the NATO intervention in Libya. Many conspiracy theories have been devised
to explain the intervention, but, like Haiti and Kosovo before it, none of
the theories holds up. The intervention occurred because it was believed
that Gadhafi would carry out his threats in Benghazi and because it was
assumed that he would quickly capitulate in the face of NATO air power,
opening the door to democracy.
That Gadhafi was capable of mass murder was certainly correct. The idea that
Gadhafi would quickly fall proved incorrect. That a
<
https://www.stratfor.com/node/154384> democracy would emerge as a result of
the intervention proved the most dubious assumption of them all. What
emerged in Libya is what you would expect when a foreign power overthrows an
existing government, however thuggish, and does not impose its own imperial
state: ongoing instability and chaos.
The <
https://www.stratfor.com/node/182627> Libyan opposition was a chaotic
collection of tribes, factions and ideologies sharing little beyond their
opposition to Gadhafi. A handful of people wanted to create a Western-style
democracy, but they were leaders only in the eyes of those who wanted to
intervene. The rest of the opposition was composed of traditionalists,
militarists in the Gadhafi tradition and Islamists. Gadhafi had held Libya
together by simultaneously forming coalitions with various factions and
brutally crushing any opposition.
Opponents of tyranny assume that deposing a tyrant will improve the lives of
his victims. This is sometimes true, but only occasionally. The czar of
Russia was clearly a tyrant, but it is difficult to argue that the
Leninist-Stalinist regime that ultimately replaced him was an improvement.
Similarly, the Shah of Iran was repressive and brutal. It is difficult to
argue that the regime that replaced him was an improvement.
There is no assurance that opponents of a tyrant will not abuse human rights
just like the tyrant did. There is even less assurance that an opposition
too weak and divided to overthrow a tyrant will coalesce into a government
when an outside power destroys the tyrant. The outcome is more likely to be
chaos, and the winner will likely be the most organized and well-armed
faction with the most ruthless clarity about the future. There is no promise
that it will constitute a majority or that it will be gentle with its
critics.
The intervention in Libya, which I discussed in
<
https://www.stratfor.com/node/154388> The Immaculate Intervention, was
built around an assumption that has little to do with reality -- namely,
that the elimination of tyranny will lead to liberty. It certainly can do
so, but there is no assurance that it will. There are many reasons for this
assumption, but the most important one is that Western advocates of human
rights believe that, when freed from tyranny, any reasonable person would
want to found a political order based on Western values. They might, but
there is no obvious reason to believe they would.
The alternative to one thug may simply be another thug. This is a matter of
power and will, not of political philosophy.
<
https://www.stratfor.com/node/188762> Utter chaos, an ongoing struggle that
leads nowhere but to misery, also could ensue. But the most important reason
Western human rights activists might see their hopes dashed is due to a
principled rejection of Western liberal democracy on the part of the newly
liberated. To be more precise, the opposition might embrace the doctrine of
national self-determination, and even of democracy, but go on to select a
regime that is in principle seriously opposed to Western notions of
individual rights and freedom.
While some tyrants simply seek power, other regimes that appear to
Westerners to be tyrannies actually are rather carefully considered moral
systems that see themselves as superior ways of life. There is a paradox in
the principle of respect for foreign cultures followed by demands that
foreigners adhere to basic Western principles. It is necessary to pick one
approach or the other. At the same time, it is necessary to understand that
someone can have very distinct moral principles, be respected, and yet be an
enemy of liberal democracy. Respecting another moral system does not mean
simply abdicating your own interests. The Japanese had a complex moral
system that was very different from Western principles. The two did not have
to be enemies, but circumstances caused them to collide.
The <
https://www.stratfor.com/node/154427> NATO approach to Libya assumed
that the removal of a tyrant would somehow inevitably lead to a liberal
democracy. Indeed, this was the assumption about the Arab Spring in the
West, where it was thought that that corrupt and tyrannical regimes would
fall and that regimes that embraced Western principles would sprout up in
their place. Implicit in this was a profound lack of understanding of the
strength of the regimes, of the diversity of the opposition and of the
likely forces that would emerge from it.
In Libya, NATO simply didn't understand or care about the
<
https://www.stratfor.com/node/1997> whirlwind that it was unleashing. What
took Gadhafi's place was ongoing warfare between clans, tribes and
ideologies. From this chaos, Libyan Islamists of various stripes have
emerged to exploit the power vacuum. Various Islamist groups have not become
strong enough to simply impose their will, but they are engaged in actions
that have resonated across the region.
The desire to overthrow Gadhafi came from two impulses. The first was to rid
the world of a tyrant, and the second was to give the Libyans the right to
national self-determination. Not carefully considered were two other issues:
whether simply overthrowing Gadhafi would yield the conditions for
determining the national will, and whether the national will actually would
mirror NATO's values and, one should add, interests.
Unintended Consequences
The events of last week represent unintended and indirect consequences of
the removal of Gadhafi. <
https://www.stratfor.com/node/154377> Gadhafi was
ruthless in suppressing radical Islamism, as he was in other matters. In the
absence of his suppression, the radical Islamist faction appears to have
carefully planned the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. The attack
was timed for when the U.S. ambassador would be present. The mob was armed
with a variety of weapons. The public justification was a little-known video
on YouTube that sparked anti-American unrest throughout the Arab world.
For the Libyan jihadists, tapping into anger over the video was a brilliant
stroke. Having been in decline, they reasserted themselves well beyond the
boundaries of Libya. In Libya itself, they showed themselves as a force to
be reckoned with -- at least to the extent that they could organize a
successful attack on the Americans. The four Americans who were killed might
have been killed in other circumstances, but they died in this one: Gadhafi
was eliminated, no coherent regime took his place, no one suppressed the
radical Islamists, and the Islamists could therefore act. How far their
power will grow is not known, but certainly they acted effectively to
achieve their ends. It is not clear what force there is to suppress them. It
is also not clear what momentum this has created for jihadists in the
region, but it will put NATO, and more precisely the United States, in the
position either of engaging in another war in the Arab world at a time and
place not of its choosing, or allowing the process to go forward and hoping
for the best.
As I have written, a distinction is frequently drawn between the
<
https://www.stratfor.com/node/860> idealist and realist position. Libya is
a case in which the incoherence of the distinction can be seen. If the
idealist position is concerned with outcomes that are moral from its point
of view, then simply advocating the death of a tyrant is insufficient. To
guarantee the outcome requires that the country be occupied and pacified, as
was Germany or Japan. But the idealist would regard this act of imperialism
as impermissible, violating the doctrine of national sovereignty. More to
the point, the United States is not militarily in a position to occupy or
pacify Libya, nor would this be a national priority justifying war. The
unwillingness of the idealist to draw the logical conclusion from their
position, which is that simply removing the tyrant is not the end but only
the beginning, is compounded by the realist's willingness to undertake
military action insufficient for the political end. Moral ends and military
means must mesh.
Removing Gadhafi was morally defensible but not by itself. Having removed
him, NATO had now adopted a responsibility that it shifted to a Libyan
public unequipped to manage it. But more to the point, no allowance had been
made for the possibility that what might emerge as the national will of
Libya would be a movement that represented a threat to the principles and
interests of the NATO members. The problem of Libya was not that it did not
understand Western values, but that a significant part of its population
rejected those values on moral grounds and a segment of the population with
battle-hardened fighters regarded them as inferior to its own Islamic
values. Somewhere between hatred of tyranny and national self-determination,
NATO's commitment to liberty as it understood it became lost.
This is not a matter simply confined to Libya. In many ways it played out
throughout the Arab world as Western powers sought to come to terms with
what was happening. There is a more immediate case: Syria. The assumption
there is that the removal of another tyrant, in this case Bashar al Assad,
will lead to an <
https://www.stratfor.com/node/189471> evolution that will
transform Syria. It is said that the West must intervene to protect the
Syrian opposition from the butchery of the al Assad regime. A case can be
made for this, but not the simplistic case that absent al Assad, Syria would
become democratic. For that to happen, much more must occur than the
elimination of al Assad.
Wishful Thinking vs. Managing the Consequences
In 1958, a book called The Ugly American was published about a Southeast
Asian country that had a brutal, pro-American dictator and a brutal,
communist revolution. The novel had a character who was a nationalist in the
true sense of the word and was committed to human rights. As a leader, he
was not going to be simply an American tool, but he was the best hope the
United States had. An actual case of such an ideal regime replacement was
seen in 1963 in Vietnam, when Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam was killed in a coup.
He had been a brutal pro-American dictator. The hope after his death was
that a decent, nationalist liberal would replace him. There was a long
search for such a figure; he never was found.
Getting rid of a tyrant when you are as powerful as the United States and
NATO are, by contrast, is the easy part. Saddam Hussein is as dead as
Gadhafi. The problem is what comes next. Having a liberal democratic
nationalist simply appear to take the helm may happen, but it is not the
most likely outcome unless you are prepared for an occupation. And if you
are prepared to occupy, you had better be prepared to fight against a nation
that doesn't want you determining its future, no matter what your intentions
are.
I don't know what will come of Libya's jihadist movement, which has showed
itself to be motivated and capable and whose actions resonated in the Arab
world. I do know that Gadhafi was an evil brute who is better off dead. But
it is simply not clear to me that removing a dictator automatically improves
matters. What is clear to me is that if you wage war for moral ends, you are
morally bound to manage the consequences.
Read more: <
http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/gadhafi-benghazi#ixzz26rQ6B6QJ>
From Gadhafi to Benghazi | Stratfor
------------[ Sent via the dehai-wn mailing list by dehai.org]--------------
Received on Tue Sep 18 2012 - 17:53:17 EDT
