George Friedman
Last week, four American diplomats were killed when 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 defamed theProphet 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, Tunisia and Yemen, although no American casualties were reported in the other riots. The unrest appears to have subsided over the weekend.
Last week, four American diplomats were killed when 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 defamed theProphet 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, 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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. Gadhafi was ruthless in suppressin gradical 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 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 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.
George Friedman, Stratfor, sep. 18,
2012
"From Gadhafi to Benghazi is republished with permission of Stratfor."
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