Libya: was it worth it?

Further point of information about current conditions in Libya:

Detainees in the Libyan city of Misrata are being tortured and denied urgent medical care, leading Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) to suspend its operations in detention centres in Misrata.

Those who were most enthusiastic for intervention don’t seem to be saying much about these worrying recent developments.

Well, of course not. They’re much too concerned with Syria. But once they’ve dealt with Syria. And Iran. And Somalia. And, well, whatever other nations present themselves I’m sure they’ll go back and reflect on Libya again. After all, it’s not as if the people who were most enthusiastic for intervention in Iraq are completely ignoring the state of that poor country. What? Oh. Never mind.

To qualify for a proper Hegelian “irony of history”, the new post-revolutionary regime has to be much worse than the original one. Is it already clear that it’s headed that way?

Or indeed worse than the trajectory the original one was on, absent intervention.

That title raises an interesting question: Whose judgement are we talking about, when we ask if Libya was “worth it”?

From recent news, it looks a lot like many of the rebel factions are now experiencing some serious buyers’ remorse, from the way they’re battering down the doors at NTC headquarters. I imagine that most Libyans from outside the rebel east and west will have mixed feelings, and I know for a fact that most of Libya’s black population – what remains of it, after so many of them suffered months of ethnic cleansing, executions and expulsions – don’t think it was worth it at all.

Still, I imagine that the populations of the rebel cities and the leadership of the NTC think it was worth it. After all, not only are they not dead – many of them are now in charge, have all the cash and guns and are settling scores of their own! What’s not to like, from their perspective?

In the UK/US, nobody is going to raise a peep of protest. Hell, the Times ran an opinion column explicitly saying “Whatever happens now in Libya, absolutely none of it is our fault and the decision to intervene is 100% correct forever regardless of outcome” the day after the rebels took Tripoli i.e. before the big barbecue in Sirte. That is, before Nato helped to reduce an entire city to rubble around the ears of a large section of its civilian population.

Cameron and Sarkozy got their photo-ops – you’d have to have been deaf not to hear the frantic masturbation from Tory HQ when they visited Libya in the days after the war. The humanitarian bombardiers got their Good War, in which all the inconvenient casualties were kept safely off the front pages and the war crimes swept under the carpet, and are now circling Syria and Iran. The RAF – finally! – got a win in the 21st century. Nato proved it could destroy large tracts of north Africa if it wanted, thus proving its relevance in the modern era, or something.

All in all, a hell of a lot of people see it as “worth it” and will continue to do so. It was a huge win for war and warmongers, and it’ll stay one unless the Libyan bodycount edges up towards at least one million – I think it’ll take at least that before it acquires any political heat at all.

After all, who gives a shit about the politically inconvenient dead? Not Whitehall. Not the now-doomed Sarkozy, whose successor will be able to ignore the whole thing. Nobody on Pennsylvania Avenue, and certainly not the populations of Britain, the US and France. Hell, most of us barely noticed there was a war on in the first place.

” To qualify for a proper Hegelian “irony of history”, the new post-revolutionary regime has to be much worse than the original one. Is it already clear that it’s headed that way?

Or indeed worse than the trajectory the original one was on, absent intervention.”

I think these are both important questions. It is much too early to declare failure.

Absolutely – it’s far too early to declare failure but not at all too soon to call bullshit, I reckon.

before Nato helped to reduce an entire city to rubble around the ears of a large section of its civilian population.

This is a lie.

“Of course! The democratizing effect of the Thirty Years War in the long run is, as well, too often denied by the erstwhile Neo-Stalinist supporters of the Emperor.”

Very funny stuff. All stable democratic societies are all built over the course of 2 weeks right? I mean it has been 5 whole months since Gaddafi died. More than enough time to construct a modern state. Why I am sure you could organise a fair and efficient judicial system overnight given a white board, some erasable markers and a few textbooks on tort law.

ajay (14.): Indeed, I say! The city may be rubble now, and it may not have been rubble before – but surely concluding that is was “reduced to rubble” from this is outrageous. It could well have been a consequence of the normal ageing process.

More seriously, it is always amazing to see to what lengths supporters of imperial wars will go to keep inconvenient facts from undermining the tales of humanitarian heroism they tell themselves. It’s particularly absurd in this case when the main piece in the case for war was an event that was entirely fictional and had not actually happened yet – it was merely predicted to happen, by the same people who brought us the Gulf of Tonkin incident, WMD’s in Iraq, the “horse shoe plan” etc. You’d think that this would keep war supporters from simply denying things that actually did happen – but no.

“what’s funny is that war supporters will wait for a moment when things seem to be going well at some point in the future and declare “now is the time to judge the war a success!” Not to mention they already did judge it a success on day one, not waiting even 5 months.”

So if Libya is not turned into a peaceful, democratic nation immediately after the fall of a tyrant and if it does not stay this way forever the war is a failure? These seem like pretty unfair metrics.

For the love of Elvis, can we please base our judgments about particular interventions or policies on the actual conditions in the countries that were subjected to them? This should be about Libya, not about settling our own scores with pro- or anti-interventionists, neocons, &c..

Sirte reduced to rubble is not the same thing as Sirte having had heavy artillery fired at it for a period of time. That’s not the same as reducing a city to rubble.

The current Libyan govt holding 10,000 people in detention, and torturing them, is horrible, but it’s not by itself proof that things would have been better off with Qaddafi still in power. It’s completely unsurprising that rebels are now settling scores and committing abuses of their own. It doesn’t mean the country is descending into a long-term civil war like Iraq.

I get the position supporting intervention on the basis that without it, there would have been massacres. I myself was sympathetic to this position when the possibility of intervention was first brought up. But how the hell do you get from there to support for an all-out campaign to overthrow Gaddhafi? It just doesn’t follow. And it was clear as soon as the latter happened that it wasn’t going to be “worth it”. Which really just goes back to flyingrodent’s point. The actual “intervention” wasn’t and couldn’t have been about human rights.

Is it indeed, Ajay. So Sirte isn’t wrecked

No. Badly damaged, yes. Reduced to rubble, no. City’s still there, people still living there, most buildings still standing.

and all those reports of civvies fleeing during the short ceasefires were made up and the photos faked?

No, those were probably real.

I mean, I saw some pretty big flak cannons and artillery batteries firing into Sirte on the news.

Good for you. Doesn’t mean that Sirte has been destroyed though. Lying and saying that it has just makes you look bad.

Hmm. A quick Google search would clear this “rubble” thing up, I reckon. Considering the results as if they related to your home town might quickly blur the line between “destroyed” and “hey look, the corner shop is still standing, thank you Nato you big humanitarians”.

FWIW, I think Cameron & Sarkozy were telling the truth about their humanitarian intent. Of course, they were delighted to take their chance to knock off Gadaffi, but they were serious.

The problem is, all the lies and bullshit they use to cover up all those very definitely non-humanitarian methods and inconvenient war crimes. I don’t remember a single journo asking “Hey Dave, what are you doing to prevent our new allies terrorizing black civilians because of the colour of their skin?”. I do well remember the breathless reports about Gadaffi’s thugs – all big, scary black men, did we mention – being issued Viagra to help them ravish decent Misratan women. It’s weird, since we know that the former is true and the latter invented.

Anyway. The problem here is our habit of hurling high explosives at problems, lying about our methods, ignoring the results and then moving on to bomb hell out of the next problem. To me, it seems wildly irresponsible, and the fact that the British people either unconditionally approve or ignore it entirely is really quite frightening. Especially when there’s a potential pagger with Iran in the post.

To make a comparison: France and Britain intervened in the German-Polish dispute in 1939, hoping to protect Poland. They failed; Poland in 1939-45 suffered atrociously; and for a long time after 1945 the successor regime ended up “presiding over persecutings, detainings, torturings and killings” which were very substantially worse than anything in Poland, 1939. The successor regimes post-1945 in parts of Finland, and all of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria had “severe human rights violations” worse or far worse than pre-1939; for the parts of 1939 Poland that had the misfortune to be incorporated into Belarus, they still do. It’s not even obvious that human rights in East Germany, post-1945, were an improvement on the 1939 situation.

Nevertheless …

If we had a time machine, I would love to see how this “was it worth it” debate played out in France in 1781 after their intervention in the American Revolution. I imagine pro-intervention French bloggers would be citing the potential massacre of American Revolutionaries and the cause of freedom, while anti-intervention French bloggers would note the reprisals against British Loyalists, that the military leaders of the ware are “now in charge, have all the cash and guns and are settling scores of their own!”, that Louis XVI got his (ironic?) photo-op, that it was all about the French flexing their muscle against the British Empire, that the colonies had failed to crate a unified government, etc.

It’s a nitpick, I know, but people still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: they never left. Carthage had a hiatus, maybe. Apparently it takes quite a lot to completely erase a city. Pompeii had to be buried for centuries.

If you intervene in a civilwar, and I would say that overthrowing a determined regime with plenty of firepower is effectively a civilwar, you can shoot for two options:

(1) Your favored side wins as quickly, and with the least loss of life and property as possible.

(2) You achieve a stalemate, and that achieves one of the following objectives:
(a) A negotiated settlement, which by your computations will have the best human rights outcome.
or
(b) A continuing stalemate, which you calculate is in your cynical interests (perhaps by removing the country as a viable threat).

If you intervene, but cut off the intervention short of (1), doesn’t that give the victorious side an argument that the losers were traitors, since they had foreign devils on their side, and reprisals likely will be very much worse?

To wit, #31-36 are a sustained discussion about the definition of “turned to rubble” and events in WWII and the US invasion of Vietnam, not even a mention of Libya!

Back to Sirte, was it damaged even as badly as Gaza City, nevermind Dresden?

http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1610&bih=878&q=sirte+destroyed&gbv=2&oq=sirte+&aq=1&aqi=g7g-S3&aql=&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=8240l8240l0l9367l1l1l0l0l0l0l82l82l1l1l0

“War is now a tool of policy as humdrum as traffic regulations or interest rates. ”

Has it ever been anything else?

Christian_h (35)

a) no, it’s an example of how a war with seriously suboptimal consequences might be worth supporting

b) yes, I know a fair bit about Linebacker I and II. Anyone who believes they “reduced Hanoi to rubble” is seriously misinformed.

flyingrodent (30) – I don’t remember a single journo asking “Hey Dave, what are you doing to prevent our new allies terrorizing black civilians because of the colour of their skin?”

Quite right: not one single one did.

Not certain, myself, what he could have done. If you had been UK PM, what would you have done?

Possibly relevant but of course not exculpatory factor: the rather messy Italian suppression of Libya, 1920s-30s, was largely done with the help of black African troops recruited in Eritrea and Somaliland. Response of Libyans a few generations later to being suppressed by black African mercenaries, or believing themselves to be so, unlikely to live up to enlightened liberal standards.

Pity, for all concerned.

TheF79 (34) “I imagine pro-intervention French bloggers [in 1781] would be citing the potential massacre of American Revolutionaries and the cause of freedom.”

Wouldn’t bet on that. Cause of freedom, ancien regime, supported by some French writers but maybe most pro-intervention French citing cause of damaging, as far as possible, l’Albion perfide.

Hence dilemma of many English at the time: dubious or more than dubious about American war, but when that morphs into war against absolute monarchy …

John Quiggin (49)

Wise words. When you wrote “In most respects, the outcome of the revolution in Libya have been as good as could reasonably be expected” who could disagree? Likewise “While the fighting has been bloody, it has probably cost less lives than if Gaddafi had been allowed to carry out his threats to hunt down his opponents, ‘alley by alley’.”
Also “While there is no guarantee that Gaddafi’s departure will be followed by the emergence of a democratic, or even stable government, success or failure will be primarily up to Libyans themselves. ”

But, but: when you go on to write ” The $1 billion the US spent on the Libyan war is a derisory sum. But it is the same amount that the US gave last year to global efforts to fight malaria and TB, largely preventable diseases that kill millions of people every year and disable tens of millions more” your heart may be in the right place, but your mind seems (to me at least) out of alignment with the nature of that cold monster, the state.

Fighting wars against real external enemies is what states do and have always done and always must do, if they have to. Fighting wars against imaginary external enemies is what deluded states do, but diagnosing imagination of enemies is tricky without hindsight (infallible but unusable). Fighting wars against real internal enemies is a sign of a state in deep trouble, but sometimes (US, 1861; Ireland, 1922) unavoidable. Fighting imaginary internal enemies, no.

Ensuring public health at home is what enlightened states have being trying to do for some time, often successfully. Trying to do so for far distant peoples who were not able to help themselves has been one of the better aspects of imperialism, is desirable as an aspect of post-imperialism, but to expect any State to give it high priority …

John Quiggin (55)

When I wrote “your mind seems out of alignment with the nature of that cold monster, the state” I meant you seemed not to understand its necessarily cold and monstrous nature. That both your mind and heart lack sympathy with it is understandable. But would you consider a reasonably liberal (but still cold, etc) state as the least bad of all possible worlds?

@Stephen, not really. I see the warmaking propensities of states as atavistic hangovers, rather than an inherent characteristic. The alternative view of the state, sardonically imputed to Australians back in the 1920s, as ‘a vast public utility’ has no room for the waste of blood and treasure implied by wars for national greatness.

The particularly bellicose nature of the US reflects, among other things, the fact that the pre-modern (or maybe pre-postmodern) component of society is much stronger there, as evidenced, for example, by the current Republican primary campaign.

It does follow if you decide that there is no way to reach a good-faith settlement between the rebels and Qaddaffi. If you come to believe that, you have to pick a side, otherwise you’re just prolonging a bloody stalemate.

No, not in the relevant sense of “pick a side”. If you intervene in a civil war-like situation with the aim of preventing human rights abuses, you prevent those abuses, wherever they occur and whoever’s committing them. This is not what NATO did, nor is it what it ever seemed interested in doing.

After the “successful” Kosovo intervention, massacres and heavy ethnic cleansing followed, with NATO soldiers standing by. It didn’t matter, of course. Nobody cared shit.

I hesitate to disagree with John Quiggin, but my sense is that the pre-modern tradition in the US was largely hostile to a large military establishment. But then Calvin Coolidge would be out of place in today’s Republican party for other reasons than his desire to increase teacher pay.

It sure looked to me, at the time the decision was made, that Qaddafi was going to “go Roman” on those places that rebelled.Remember medical personell who had the effrontery to treat injured people, were being brutally killed. Once the decision was made to stop the advance on BenGhazi, was there any sort of exit strategy other than victory for the rebels, which wouldn’t result in mass reprisals? Often decisions have to be made quickly, and with very incomplete information. Sometimes the early decisions commit one to a future path.

There was some dicussion of concern about the treatment of black people found in Libya. I remember at least for the press cameras, the rebels were making the right sounds about humane treatment and rule of law.

Mainly I follow Juan Cole, and Al Jazeera. Neither of these would be considered to be pro-colonial sites. Yet both were strongly in favor of the intervention. The fact that most interventions are not done for the proper reasons, and don’t have good results, does not prove that all are bad. There is no substitute for careful case by case analysis. I’d give the reasons for the intervention as 65% avoidance of destabiling refuge flows, 15% desire to get rid of that pest Qaddafi, and 20% humanitarian.

d2

Do we? A lot of people in Misrata and Sarajevo were pleading for foreign bombing. I reckon Palestinians would welcome some Iranian bombs on their side. “Foreign” and “civil war” are not cut and dried categories – as Eric Hobsbawm observed, identities are not like hats – you can wear several at once. Parties to the conflict try to categorise things to suit their agendas.

Who’s the “we”? I agree that wars are almost always a bad idea, and one should not start them. But once someone does start one, (as, say, the Germans started World War I) you don’t get a full range of choices. Often, all you can do is weigh largely imponderable odds, and then wrestle the best result you can.

And, BTW, while war is almost always a bad idea for someone, it can pay off handsomely for others. Anyone of European descent in, say, the US or Australia is certainly much better off then they would have been if their ancestors had not winners in the various wars that acquired these places. It does not become us to enjoy the fruits while dismissing the way they were gained.

I enjoy the idea that it is unbecoming to dismiss the historical processess from which I’ve unjustly gained, this explains my support for chattel slavery and the prevention of women from owning property.

Hey,

I think it was ‘worth it’. Recall that the ‘it’ in question was few lost lives (Western, since we talk about ‘worth it’ from a western government perspective), and relatively little treasure. Yes, many Libyan lives were lost – but since the rebellion was ongoing, there would’ve been a slaughter in Misrata if we hadn’t intervened. It turned out that meant there was a slaughter in Sirte, but there was a chance, even a decent one, that there would not have been. Saving lives now – when we saved Misrata – was worth some risk of costing lives later, which unfortunately is what happened.

Is what’s going on now bad? Sure. But probably no worse than the ongoing (though more secret/ignored due to it being ‘business as usual’) excesses of the Gaddafi regime. Even though the NTC doesn’t seem to be working out quite as we’d hoped, it was probably ‘worth’ a punt on a better outcome.

Do we have an obligation to do more? Absolutely. But (as we see in Iraq) enforcing policy through ‘boots on the ground’ doesn’t always give the results you want, and may be counter-productive in the Libya environment. Besides, if the thesis is ‘we shouldn’t have taken military action against Gaddafi but rather used more peaceful levers against his regime’, then surely those same levers will be no less effective on the NTC (even ignoring the fact it ‘owes us one’ now).

I… hesitate to mention this in this environment, but this intervention should secure the Libyan oil industry. Other, better run African countries will be able to ship their oil through Libya, making profits that can improve the welfare of their people. The welfare of poor people in western countries may be improved – it seems like oil prices are a brake on at least the present economy of the USA. Security of supply in Africa will also free our hands somewhat with Iran (in this company, let’s say that nuclear weapons are welfare-retarding whoever has them and leave it at that), and allow us to stand back and let Saudi Arabia follow natural course towards democracy.

Yours,

JMH

And as JQ regularly points out, the historical record is not really “several successes or failures”; more or less every single war, with the possible exception of the Second World War and the American Civil War, has been a bd idea that shouldn’t have been started.

Why those exceptions? The American Civil War was an incredibly bad idea for the side that started it. So was the Second World War.

You really can predict these campaigns down to the last detail, can’t you?

The terrible humanitarian crisis pitched as the absolute worst it can potentially get – a brutal civil war isn’t merely a brutal civil war, it’s imminent genocide. A castrated and criminal regime isn’t just a castrated and criminal regime – it’s a dire threat to the world. Immediate action is required; whatever hyper-violent and highly dubious actions we take cannot possibly be worse than keeping our noses out and if you disagree, you are indifferent to/cheerleading for actual mass murder like a Nazi.

Jump to one year later.

Well, of course mistakes were made. Wars are terrible things. Yes, there’s now a lot of violence/torture/executions/racially-motivated terrorisation and mass exile etc. going on, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs and anyway, do you want to see This Year’s Hitler back in power?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya. It looks more like a pattern than a coincidence, doesn’t it?

BTW, the sole reason that this is in the public eye is because Medicins Sans Frontiers decided that the new regime’s torture programme was so obnoxious and blatant that they couldn’t continue to operate alongside it. If they’d decided to bite their tongues for now, there would still be total silence on the subject and the general public would be none the wiser.

And yet if you were watching closely, you’d have known exactly what the new government was doing to civilians and captured enemy fighters ten months ago. None of this is new or shocking. Every single one of the war’s public advocates has known this was going on throughout, and I haven’t seen a single one tackle it head-on. We won! Just rejoice in that.

Really, I recommend bearing this year-long silence/you-can’t-make-an-omelette-without-torturing-some-prisoners act in mind, the next time these jokers tell us about intolerable human rights enormity (x) that cannot be allowed to pass without a massive aerial assault on country (y). It’s at least the third time we’ve done it this decade, so it’s a good guide to how future wars will go.

I also like the idea that the “business as usual of the gadaffi regime”, is the equivalent of the ethnic cleansing of the black population, oh wait he didn’t do that, but maybe he did something jet as bad, in Peoples fantasies.

When you have a specific form of tyranny (Khadaffi, Kim Jong x, …) it invariably ends in chaos. Whether intervention is good or bad (and it is mostly bad), cannot be measure by how bad things are after the tyranny has collapsed. In the case of Libya the civil war was already ongoing (which is a marked difference with Iraq) before any real intervention so the current miseries can certainly not be put entirely on the airborne intervention.

I think we’ll all agree that there should be a way of ending tyrannies swiftly and most will agree that if Myanmar keeps going where it seems to be going that that is desirable to the way Libya went and Syria is going. But the key difference is that some countries (in the words of Rawls) have some aspects of decency and have some openness to the world constraining the actions whilst others have absolutely none. It is in these latter countries that I don’t think one can pre-emptively say military intervention is going to make things worse. In fact, the full absence of threat of intervention in the case of N. Korea seems to put the people there in a situation which is certainly not better than the one in Libya.

Civil war is an internal matter, internal power struggle, and once you intervene (militarily) from the outside, you become the one who started a war. An international criminal.

I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying here, or maybe I just don’t believe my eyes. The French are international criminals for “starting” the American Revolution?

@84: The anti-intervention team in this discussion seems to be operating purely out of first principles, ignoring any real-world considerations. There were two plausible outcomes of refusing to intervene: many people would have been massacred by the dictator, or the rebels would have won an even bloodier and longer civil war. I suppose there is some fantasy realm where there would have been fewer reprisals than there were with the intervention…but on what, precisely, is that wishful thinking based? People were also getting tortured in Libya before intervention – again, the cost of the continued dictatorship to the people there is not allowed to count.

It’s a comforting game to play make-believe, where any military force is always bad, any intervention evil. It’s also intellectually bankrupt. Many of the fears of the intervention opponents turned out to be unfounded (for example, about a western ground presence.) Intervention opponents here continue to evade the reality of choices – for example, that there are political situations where all options involve people getting killed, and your choice is how many and which ones.

Marc: I presume that you would then refuse to intervene against the Khmer Rouge and the Rwandan massacres?

Part of the problem with the whole Responsibility to Protect initiative is this idea that “we” can intervene. So let’s put that to one side and admit that Henri Vieuxtemps would not intervene against the Khmer Rouge and the Rwanda massacres, and neither would you and neither would I.

The question is whether we approve of our various national governments intervening, and whether we trust them to do so. In the case of the Khmer Rouge, of course, the US government created the conditions for their existence so the idea of them “intervening” is odd to say the least. Personally I lean towards the non-intervention side: I see no way to encourage western governments to intervene in Rwanda that does not also lead to more Iraqs.

JMH in 72:
Yes, many Libyan lives were lost – but since the rebellion was ongoing, there would’ve been a slaughter in Misrata if we hadn’t intervened.

That certainly wasn’t the argument at the time. It was about Benghazi.

For the record, confirmed Misrata fatalities were reported by Human Rights Watch in April as 257, after more than a month of fighting. Misrata has a population of over 300,000.

1. You don’t really provide any evidence or even argument at all to support the claim that “events” demonstrate that the revolution and the successor government aren’t seen as legitimate. The existence of squabbling among factions, the human rights abuses, and even the inability of the central government to resolve them (on your timeline) doesn’t demonstrate a broad vision that the government lacks legitimacy. It certainly doesn’t demonstrate that such a position is “increasing.” And it most certainly doesn’t demonstrate that the squabbling militias and/or rights abuses think that the NATO intervention caused the government to lack legitimacy.

2. Noting that there are human rights abuses is not the same thing as demonstrating that they are equivalent to those Gadhaffi carried out, or those he planned to carry out. The human rights situation in Libya would have to become quite a bit worse indeed to even begin to approach the level of what was expected in Benghazi.

3. Gadhaffi loyalists should make a comeback and be involved in Libyan politics, for both practical and principled reasons. In a democratic society, the views of every faction need to have a voice in the political process. Look at what happened in Iraq when the Baath Party, the most legitimate voice of most Sunni Arabs, was banned from the political process.

2.

Do these arguments against NATO protecting civilians and helping the rebels overthrow their country’s dictator and attempt to produce a democratic society – it might not work, people get killed in war, there have been some bad outcomes – also make it wrong for the rebels themselves to have attempted to overthrow their dictator and produce a democratic society?

Was it wrong for them to try to overthrow a tyrant and produce a democracy, because there are no guarantees in life?

Marc: The anti-intervention team in this discussion seems to be operating purely out of first principles, ignoring any real-world considerations. The anti-intervention side isn’t the one left defending a series of claims proven bogus, tyrannies replaced by other tyrannies + chaotic muddles, and other harm done, and saying, “But wait, next time it’ll work out!”

I could probably be persuaded to approve of an intervention that started out with enforceable, enforced measures in place to deal with the problems that keep coming up, just as I approve of parole for released felons and such. But since the offenders are the wardens, it seems very unlikely that there’ll be such constraints any time soon, and therefore no chance of my saying “Yes, this time it looks like it’ll work out.”

It occurs to me that I feel similarly about pro-intervention/invasion and anti-abortion crusades these days. Both want me to support their making a maximal effort of a specific sort, and then their going away to other things.

(that last para. is also from the AI report, still figuring out the block quote formatting here…)

Perhaps the fact that no state did intervene militarily in the Rwandan massacres should tell you something: namely, that states don’t invade other states for humanitarian reasons

Perhaps the fact that France did (Operation Turquoise; there was also an armed multilateral mission on the ground, UNAMIR), should tell you something. And indeed, the fact that Operation Turquoise turned out to be a badly planned, politically motivated and for the most part horribly counterproductive exercise (ie, completely typical of humanitarian operations) is also potentially quite informative.

I wrote a post entitled “Alice in Rwandaland” a while ago, specifically on this amazing tendency to rewrite history to erase the actual operations and retell Rwanda as a story where the world did nothing. I’ve never understood why.

Henri at what point does a rebel faction within a country start to count as a seperate state?

james 63: You may be right. NATO bombed and then they let the UN watch over the ethnic cleansing. I thought it was obvious, with respect to NATO and Kosovo, that the principle “you broke it – you own it” applied. But public opinion in NATO countries didn’t give a hoot about how many people died or were displaced after the “liberation” of Kosovo. If anybody had any illusion in that respect, they should have been cured of them long ago.

MPAVictoria: “at what point does a rebel faction within a country start to count as a separate state?”
I think the strict answer is “when the UN (i. e. the security council) recognize them as a separate state”. The practical answer nowadays however is “when Western powers decide to recognize”. Kosovo has never been formally recognized but in practice, as soon as UCK had the sympathy of the Western media and political establishment, it was treated as if it was representing a separate state.

Ask Lt.Gen Charles Bouchard.

On 25 March 2011, Bouchard was named Commander of the NATO military mission in Libya. For his actions he received the Meritorious Service Cross, an award presented “to recognize highly professional acts that are of considerable benefit to the Canadian Forces….”

He got it November 21st at a ceremony in Ottawa.

ajay @74 and chris @84 ridicule the idea that external intervention in a civil war is a crime, citing the American Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. But it’s only been a crime since the law against external military intervention was codified in the UN Charter. The Charter was and remains a potential watershed in human affairs. After the worst catastrophe in history, the human race sobered up for a moment and reflected together on how to prevent such catastrophes in future. Part of the answer they came up with was to bar unilateral military intervention. It was entirely obvious that great powers often could and would stir up political opposition in other nations, arm that opposition, and then intervene in support, whereupon other great powers might intervene in response, leading to war on a large scale. Instead, those seeking armed aid from outside against genocidal or other horrendous oppression would have to convince the international community, ie the Security Council, to intervene.

Of course this solution would (will) only work to the extent that the Security Council plausibly represents the international community, and can enforce its judgments even on the great powers. In other words, this solution depends on the good will and cooperation of the great powers. Since 1945 the great powers, particularly the US, have consistently subverted or disregarded the workings of the UN Charter. No one can make them, except the citizens of the great powers, ie, us. That’s an immense job: it means, in effect, creating a genuinely democratic polity, which has never yet existed in a great power. But if we don’t, the result will be just what the nations foresaw after World War II: a return to international anarchy, culminating sooner or later in a military cataclysm, vastly more destructive than WWII.

Think about it ajay, chris, marc, and other anti-anti-interventionists.

Several people seem to be saying that the motives for intervention in Libya were something other than humanitarian. (See the discussion between 91 and 92, where tomslee says that anti-interventionists think NATO was not sincere about wanting to protect civilians and help set up a democratic society.) But does anyone have any claims about what the motive was otherwise? If it was colonialism or imperialism, then surely NATO would be trying to assert some sort of authority over Libya now. Is the allegation that NATO motives were entirely internal and irrelevant to conditions in Libya? Or that there is some deeper, sinister motivation that just can’t be spoken in public? Because no one seems to have said what this motivation is, if not humanitarian.

@92 – christian_h, I derped and confused Benghazi with Mizrata. My bad, but I think the point still stands. JMH

“We” have killed several hundred thousand people in Iraq and “we” are still killing innocent and not-so-innocent people after more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Yet “we” continue to believe in our unquestionable moral authority to judge the rest of the world and to kill more people whenever we see fit – as long as they are brown and live in far away countries. “We” should shut up and do some serious soul-searching.

Kenny Easwaran: But does anyone have any claims about what the motive was otherwise? If it was colonialism or imperialism, then surely NATO would be trying to assert some sort of authority over Libya now. Is the allegation that NATO motives were entirely internal and irrelevant to conditions in Libya?

The conditions in Libya and elsewhere in North Africa were relevant, for sure. But my guess as to motives: a pinch of taking the opportunity to get rid of a long-time irritant, a teaspoon of getting on the right side of North African history, and a shake of making sure oil is owned by our friends?

The fact that NATO took the Arab League’s call for civilian protection and immediately escalated it to regime overthrow does suggest a prior agenda that could suddenly be put into action.

I’d be nervous if I was Assad in Syria. Saddam Hussein: gone. Mubarak: gone. Gadaffi: gone.

He should negotiate a way out but looks like he’ll go down fighting. Egypt is pushing back against Western imperialism but so what, they’re broke. Moderate Muslims are doing well in their new democratic politics and hopefully they’ll be more like Turkey.

Kenny: Basic politics. A desire for a reasonable, moral-free balance of interests, including not too much chaos, not too little ability for prominent associates to do business, and so on. No grand vision needed, and often none wanted.

So then Britain and France would have had justifiable grounds for military intervention for our genocide against Native American peoples throughout the 19th century? Would justice have been served if they had blockaded our ports during the era of segregation?Or are these examples of the “unrealistic” exemption, and therefore not applicable?

I grant, it is not an easy choice. However, I am appalled at the easy glibness exhibited by many interventionists. I also recall George Bush employed similar logic wrt Iraq.

Kenny (at 110), tomslee (at 116) and Bruce (at 117) maybe it was control of oil revenues via the central bank. That would be “Petrodollar Warfare”.

http://www.examiner.com/finance-examiner-in-national/american-policy-looks-to-take-down-iran-s-central-bank-as-they-did-libya

http://news.yahoo.com/us-seeking-close-down-iran-central-bank-205529742.html

I think the main fact about Libya is that the ruling coalition there (call it ‘Qaddafi’ if you wish, but it probably had a base of a million+ people) got beat up and another one (whose base isn’t necessarily larger) took over. The hope is that the new one will be more pro western/less anti zionist, which may or may not turn out to be the case. If it does turn out to be the case, its base will probably shrink, and repression intensify.

> The anti-intervention team in this discussion seems to be operating purely out of first principles, ignoring any real-world considerations.

The anti-intervention side isn’t the one left defending a series of claims proven bogus, tyrannies replaced by other tyrannies + chaotic muddles, and other harm done, and saying, “But wait, next time it’ll work out!”

So there’s two sides, the one that believes all interventions are bad, and the one that believes all interventions including Iraq are good?

False dichotomy? That’s all you got? Of course it’s easy to ridicule the pro-all-interventions side, just like it’s easy to ridicule pro-all-government liberal “statists”, for the same reason: they’re crude strawmen.

“Sometimes intervention is better than non-intervention” is not refuted by individual cases where intervention proved to be (a) imperfect, or even (b) worse than non-intervention. (b) does of course allow you to narrow the circumstances under which intervention might plausibly be claimed to be better.

Of course, since it isn’t a sweeping universal principle, you can always argue “sure, sometimes, but not this time”. And people who believe in intervening sometimes will engage you on the details and everything! Threads like this might come in handy in that sort of discussion. But only if you actually have a thread and don’t just say “it was an intervention, therefore it must have sucked”.

Sure, counterfactuals are hard, but you really can’t do consequentialism without them. And a term like “worth it” presumes a consequentialist frame.

Chris, the first acts of the Nazi genocide precede the Wannsee conference. What happened during the 1930’s was definitely aimed at expelling the Jews, and gave rise to the events in Lithuania and Latvia, which then became the model for the rest of the Reich. The dehumanization of German Jews was intensifying over this period and proved an important part of the actual killings: I think it’s reasonable (although you disagree) to consider the intensified persecution of German Jews from the 1933 election onwards as part of the Shoah because of this continuity. Certainly people were prosecuted at Nuremberg for crimes committed during these years.

Tomslee, why does it matter that it’s NATO doing the intervening? Dictators can never be legitimate rulers. The new Libyan government, unless it’s another dictatorship, will have the legitimation of deriving its authority ultimately from the consent of the governed. NATO can only achieve its goals through intervening to establish a democracy if those goals agree with the will of the people. If NATO was intervening to establish another dictatorship, that would be bad, but not because it’s NATO doing it.

If NATO was intervening to establish another dictatorship, that would be bad, but not because it’s NATO doing it.

Pure. Goebbelstygook. I think a major rewrite is in order here.

119: I would far rather that we err in killing dictators [than] that we accidentally let them rule.

Can you please provide a list of the dictators whom the US/UK/NATO has “accidentally” let rule? Could you also provide a comparison of that list to the list of dictators that the US/UK/NATO has actively supported?

Consequentialism only works if there are sufficient similarity between cases. Iraq is not Libya and neither is Afghanistan. Iran is vastly different again. None of these are Chad (where the French intervened), or Somalia, or Bosnia. There are too many variables. The policy-makers can’t say “it worked last time, so it should this” (or “it didn’t work last time, so it won’t this”). They have to operate in extreme uncertainty. I think they can reasonably be blamed when they do not take steps to minimise that uncertainty as far as possible, and blamed when they simplistically apply the lessons of the last time, and blamed when they don’t watch the situation closely and adjust quickly and with an open mind to developments. That leaves plenty of blame to go round, but it doesn’t make the job easier.

Watson – check out William Rubinstein’s The Myth of Rescue. By 1939. almost all those German Jews who would leave had – unfortunately in large part to France, Belgium and the Netherlands. You might also check Adam Tooze’s Wages of Death on the pressures exerted on Germany as Nazi policy towards Jews became clearer.

bobbyp, do you think that actions should be judged independently from the identity of actors? If so, then dictatorships are bad wether imposed by NATO or anyone else. Of course it’s bloody obvious when a state has no written constitutions, no independent judiciary, and no elections.

Natilo, your dog analogy is off. A dictator is an illegitimate ruler, where legitimate means “consent of the governed”. One doesn’t have affection for a dictator, but fear, the kind of fear that people who live in households with abusers develop. Furthermore, NATO doesn’t impose a democratic regime but permits the country to develop one. The second half is an interesting question, but I’ll disagree: even if the original founding of the state involves disenfranchisement (think US circa 1865) that doesn’t reflect on the legitimacy of the state’s rule later. It certainly doesn’t seem to apply to the Libya situation or many civil wars.

Active support of dictators is a red herring: I’m against it. As for the neo-Imperialism argument capitalism is reconstituted on the periphery as well: it doesn’t take military force for Qaddafi to sell his oil on the market to the highest bidder.

The OP question is general and vague in so many ways, yet such a compelling starting point. There have been plenty of comments already answering “worth what to whom?” That’s a pretty fun question to explore, but the second half of CB’s post brings hindsight and realism into play. Before committing to intervene, a government has lists of projected costs and contingencies in order to target an acceptable outcome considered “worth” the investment and intervention.

The upshot is that even with the best intentions (as if there was such a thing) and a high degree of probability, you still might not get the outcome you wanted. I would be interested in historical instances of applicable situations where dictators were deposed and everyone was then magically happy. (I see some commenters have already tried to find comparisons). As it stands, intestine chaos and local fighting factions are easier to exploit without blame. The VSL of foreign lives versus the the VSL of your own homeland is a hugely inequitable exchange. Moral arguments at this point are also dogmatic: dictators are always bad so all options are on the table except our kid-gloves that we lost because it was economically un-profitable for warmongers to use them–besides, god likes democracy or whatever.

I’m not going to delve into the reasoning behind either “yes it was worth it” or “no it was wasn’t!” aside from what I’d find typical responses . If the answer was yes, we could respond, “well you foreign interventionists don’t really care about the plight of the Libyan people even though you use human rights as an excuse to intervene, and therefore you are exploitative assholes and cannot claim any moral high ground. If the answer is no, then you’d have to admit that intervention was both a failure (human rights still abused, people dying, etc) or else simply a poorly thought out plan to begin with, in which case intervention is still a failure both in execution and judgement.

I think the most heartless analysis in the “yes it was worth it” camp is fairly accurate: the Libyans are perfectly capable of making more Libyans, and if we have more influence over their future generations, fantastic. It’s also a good excuse for a Martyr Memorial Day or a Deposed Dictator Day 40 years hence if foreigners can convince the Libyans, or at least the winning faction, that “it was worth it.” Pretty depressing while we’re in the midst of it all though.

Dear Watson: the first acts of the Nazi genocide precede the Wannsee conference. What happened during the 1930’s was definitely aimed at expelling the Jews

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=41051&Cr=palestin&Cr1=

26 January 2012 –

Almost 1,100 Palestinians, over half of them children, were displaced due to home demolitions in the West Bank by Israeli forces in 2011 – over 80 per cent more than in the previous year – according to a United Nations report released today.

“Demolitions and Forced Displacement in the Occupied West Bank,” prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), adds that an additional 4,200 people were affected by the demolition of structures related to their livelihoods.

The report states that Israeli forces destroyed 622 structures owned by Palestinians including homes, animal shelters, classrooms and mosques – a 42 per cent increase compared to 2010.

Suggestions?

After the worst catastrophe in history, the human race sobered up for a moment and reflected together on how to prevent such catastrophes in future. Part of the answer they came up with was to bar unilateral military intervention.

The problem with the non-interventionist idea is that, in practice, no one is prepared to to carry it through to its logical conclusion; namely, that no one else should intervene in the affairs of other nations, even in the event of “unilateral military intervention”.

I’m not even convinced that people really support such a thing with respect to civil wars. E.g., I suspect that, had the US not intervened in Egypt, but rather turned a blind eye as Mubarak crushed the rebellion, few would be trumpeting the results as the consequence of wise policy.

There was never any real evidence that Gaddafi was “massacring” his own people. The heavy bombing of Misrata didn’t happen until after Western military intervention. There was nothing like the videos we see from Syria. The civil war would have ended with far less bloodshed if the West had simply helped to evacuate refugees and supported the peacemaking efforts of the African Union.

Libyans are already missing the stability, education, and health care of the Gaddafi era, as this post from an anti-Gaddafi blogger (you can search her blog’s post history to see she is anti-Gaddafi) describes: http://lonehighlander.blogspot.com/2012/01/harsh-realities-make-some-libyans-evoke.html

…you know, there’s actually a fair amount of political science theory on this stuff. It’s a little surprising that, on an academic blog, nobody has brought any of it up. (Or maybe not.)

Anyway: available evidence suggests that a country with no civil society and no previous experience with working democracy is never — as in, not ever — going to become a functioning liberal democracy at one go. Best case scenario, you can get there in a generation or so if you’re patient and are willing to accept an interim regime that, while not itself very democratic or liberal, is willing and able to allow political liberalization and the growth of civil society.

The literature also suggests that the most likely outcome in Libya — over the short to medium term; next couple of years, say — is some sort of competitive authoritarian regime. (Oh, look it up.) The second most likely outcome is another round or two of civil war — but any civil war in Libya is likely to be quite short if one side controls oil revenue and the other doesn’t. So, you probably end up at competitive authoritarianism that way too, just after killing a bunch of people first. The interesting long-term question then becomes whether you get a CA regime that allows additional political evolution, or not.

Doug M.

I thought 1789 led to Robespierre (and a few friends) presiding over something conspicuously named “the Reign of Terror”. Some freedom loving government should’ve interfered and put an end to it. Ditto the American revolution, genocide of Indians being a part of it.

News from today could make for an interesting comparison of the worthiness of foreign endeavors. From http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/28/us-syria-idUSTRE8041A820120128

“Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow wanted a Syrian-led political process, not “an Arab League-imposed outcome of a political process that has not yet taken place” or Libyan-style “regime change.”

“Turkey, which spent years rebuilding relations with Syria, turned against Assad after he ignored its advice to enact reforms to calm protests inspired by the “Arab Spring” revolts around the region.”

Watson Ladd @ 150
As Peter T@136 said, go read The Myth of Rescue.

You will discover that (1) most of the Jews in Germany, 1933, had got out to what they thought were safe countries by 1939 (2) some of these, France and the Netherlands particularly, turned out not to be safe at all (3) once France,the Netherlands, Poland etc had been overrun by German armies there was sweet damn all that democratic countries outside German control could do about admitting Jewish refugees from those countries, unless they first defeated the German armies, a non-trivial problem.

Watson Ladd@150
You wrote “1789: the deposal of the dictator in favor of an actual democracy. Once people have accepted bourgeois legitimation norms, there is no turning back. The question then is why supporting such efforts becomes controversial: some people have even tried to special plead the American and French revolutions.”

Well, one might point out that

1) Supposing that 1789 saw a dictator deposed in favour of a democracy is, um, non-obvious: a far more gradual process, beginning with a transition from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy?

2) If you believe there was no turning back, you may not have heard of the First Empire, the Bourbon restoration, the Second Empire …

3) Some people have doubts about the French Revolution on account of the rather, shall we say undemocratic, number of innocent people who ended up hanged, shot, drowned, beheaded and so on because of the Revolution, by revolutionaries. Your view may of course differ.