Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A War With Libya?
The UN Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 1973 on March 17, authorizing “all necessary measures” against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the establishment of a no-fly zone, which includes the possible use of military force, against pro-Gaddafi forces. Ten UNSC members voted for the resolution, including the United States, Great Britain and France, while Russia, China, Germany, Brazil and India abstained. Is Russia right in tacitly accepting the use of force by not exercising its veto power in the UNSC? What does Russia gain by taking a position that opens the door for intervention without fully pledging its support for the West?
France and Great Britain have been most vocal in arguing for the use of force against Gaddafi, while the EU has officially recognized the opposition government in Benghazi as a partner in negotiations. The UNSC resolution allows for a wide range of military options, including strikes on air-defense systems and missile attacks from ships, as well as strikes at Libyan ground forces attacking the rebel positions.
Ostensibly the resolution was intended to force Gaddafi, under the threat of Western airstrikes and even ground invasion, to stop his attacks against the rebels who have seized the eastern parts of the country and even threatened Gaddafi’s stronghold of Tripoli. But over the past ten days Gaddafi has seized the initiative and has pushed back the rebel forces. Now, he is successfully beating back a large anti-government uprising, and is in the process of storming Benghazi, a city where the “interim Libyan government” was seated for a short time.
Gaddafi has all but crushed the rebellion and is now in the process of consolidating his grip on power after almost two months of popular uprising against his 40-year rule. It appears that while the UN resolution was authorized as a humanitarian intervention to protect the civilian population from Ghadaffi, it is likely to turn into the use of force with the specific goal of overthrowing his regime, still recognized as the legitimate government of Libya.
The West now seems determined to overthrow Gaddafi at all costs, despite his imminent victory over the rebels. Airpower alone is unlikely to achieve this objective and a ground invasion to destroy Gaddafi’s forces and remove him from power might be necessary.
Russia’s Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said the blame for “humanitarian consequences” following any military action will be on the shoulders of those involved in such operations. The Russian ambassador warned that some provisions of the resolution may result in a large-scale use of force. “They potentially open the door for a large-scale military intervention,” Churkin said. Russia did not veto the resolution as it was “guided by the necessity of protecting civilians and by general humanitarian values,” Churkin said.
“An attack against Libya would be a gift for all violators of the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” Aleksei Arbatov, a well known Russian defense and security analyst, told Interfax. “If Libya becomes a target of a military operation, it will lead some countries to believe that no one would think of threatening Gaddhafi with a military operation now if he had not voluntarily given up his nuclear program several years ago. This will lead Iran, Syria, and some other countries violating the non-proliferation regime to make a new powerful step toward obtaining nuclear weapons,” Arbatov said.
Russian analysts also noted that President Dmitry Medvedev did not want to upset his “reset” with Barack Obama, or the relationship with the EU, and chose to avoid confrontation by abstaining from the vote, rather than using Russia’s veto power. Russia’s position allowed the resolution to go through. Russia also took notice of the position of the Arab League, which called for a no-fly zone to be imposed over Libya.
Medvedev, however, has publicly voiced skepticism over the rush to war with Gaddafi, and Russia’s abstention from the UN vote allows Moscow to disavow any responsibility for the military operation, if it were to go wrong.
Is the use of force against Libya justified? In Kuwait in 1990 there was a clear violation of the international law and a blatant Iraqi attack on a sovereign country. In Libya, it is an intervention into the internal affairs of a sovereign nation and a show of partisanship in a civil war.
Is Russia right in tacitly accepting the use of force by not exercising its veto power in the UNSC? What does Russia gain with a position that opens the door for intervention, but allows Russia to distance itself from the West? Is Medvedev modeling himself after Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy in late 1990, when the Soviet Union joined the United States in voting for a UNSC resolution authorizing the use of force to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait? This garnered Gorbachev considerable support and admiration in Washington, but not much else.
Is there a parallel between this UNSC decision to use force to compel Gaddafi to halt the violence with Russia’s decision in August 2008 to use force to compel Georgia and its deranged leader to halt the attacks on South Ossetia? What does this UN sanctioned intervention in Libya mean for the future of international relations?
Alexander Rahr, Director, Russia
and Eurasia Program, German
Council on Foreign Relations,
Berlin:
The West does not want to lose its influence in the world. The financial crisis had weakened the West and its liberal democratic model. Some were already talking about the end of the Western world, expecting China to take the lead.
Then came the democratic wave in the Arabic world. The West applauded the mass protests, which reminded everyone of the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe. But not everything in Eastern Europe had gone so smoothly. Slobodan Milosevic tried to suppress his people and had to be combated by NATO. The Tunisian and Egyptian leaders acted like the majority of former communist leaders back in 1989 – they stepped down.
Gaddafi, however, started to behave like Milosevic.
The West won the Kosovo War in 1999 without bearing any of the casualties, and gained experience in conducting airstrikes without risking the lives of its own soldiers. Tomahawk cruise missiles are able to do the job – destroy the entire military infrastructure of Libya, as happened in Yugoslavia and more recently in the war in Iraq.
The West sees that its has the ultimate power to remove dictators throughout the world. The West is armed with a simple ideology: promotion of freedom and democracy. The elites in the EU and the United States are fully in favor of wars for human rights. In Germany, 65 percent support the war against Gaddafi (though only 30 percent think that Germany should get involved).
In the short term, the West can make friends in the Islamic world. The West has already gained the sympathies of Albanians and some Iraqis. No doubt, the West will fight Gaddafi to the end, like it fought Milosevic. If Gaddafi survives, he will be arrested and sent to the Hague, or hanged like Saddam Hussein. His severe punishment will serve as a signal to other “dictators” of the world, and not only in the Middle East, that they cannot mistreat their people forever.
But what comes next? Humanitarian interventions in the Middle East, in Syria, Yemen, and then one day in Iran? Is the West going to win the Islamic world over after these crusades against the regimes in the Arabic countries? Will the West and the newly democratized Arab states become global allies in the 21 century? But where is Islamism – the powerful force which has threatened the West and the world for ten years after September 11? Has it vanished?
The West has entered a war with the Islamic world, with countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya – which did not pose any real threat to it. A lot depends on the appropriate next steps by the West. But has anyone prepared them?
Alexandre Strokanov, Professor of
History, Director of Institute of
Russian Language, History and
Culture, Lyndon State College,
Lyndonville, VT:
The UNSC Resolution 1973 is very vague, and will only lead to more bloodshed and intensify the suffering of the Libyan people, instead of protecting them. This resolution has about the same impact on the future of the international relations as the latest earthquake in Japan on their nuclear power industry. The resolution makes international relations even less predictable.
Terrorists around the world received a great gift and justification for their actions. The regimes that were thinking of acquiring weapons of mass destruction got a strong argument in favor of this thought. Only blind people do not see the real intentions of several Western governments in this conflict, which has nothing to do with protecting Libyan civilians, who are now killed not only as a result of the domestic conflict, but by Western bombs and missiles as well.
Russia’s decision to abstain in the vote for the resolution may be understood and explained. However, it is time to see more active diplomatic efforts from the Kremlin, and a clearer stance in respect to the developing war.
In the last few days, after the vote in the UNSC took place, it became evident that president Medvedev supports this new “Western crusade” in the Islamic world, while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has a much more realistic view of the situation. It is also quite obvious that in his desire to be liked by the West, president Medvedev has already gone too far and does not represent the view that the majority of Russians hold about the conflict.
The next week will make the picture even clearer, and any ground operations that the coalition will begin will require president Medvedev to chose between the desire to become another Nobel Prize winner (or to be a friend of one of those winners), or to be the president who can look into the eyes of his own people without shame.
Edward Lozansky, President,
American University in Moscow
and World Russia Forum in
Washington, DC:
You asked for it, you got it. This expression is the first thing that comes to mind when remembering Obama’s appeal to Congress and the public for a bipartisan approach to the nation’s most important problems.
Now, both republicans and democrats, the left and right, are expressing their indignation with the U.S. military involvement in Libya. One prominent spokesman after another decries this operation, and some even call for Obama’s impeachment for violating the Constitution. “It is regrettable that no opportunity was afforded to consult with Congressional leaders, as was the custom of your predecessors, before your decision as commander in chief to deploy into combat the men and women of our armed forces,” said house speaker John Boehner, reiterating a bipartisan complaint raised by lawmakers.
The mood among Western governments and the public is souring and the consensus on the intervention achieved last week, when the UN resolution 1973 was purportedly imposed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe (the killing of “thousands of civilians” – as claimed by the insurgent side) is fragile. Now these large-scale U.S., British and French ground and air attacks are widely seen internationally as disproportionate, careless of civilian lives, and extending beyond the agreed upon plan to impose a defensive no-fly zone.
As far as this “rebel” anti-Libyan government side is concerned, a lack of any reliable information about it is particularly conspicuous. Just who are these people? Who are their leaders? Western media now calls them “freedom fighters,” but are they? What are their plans –apart from getting rid of Qaddafi? If they want “freedom and democracy” – what are their democratic credentials, excepting verbiage? Freedom for what, Sharia Law? Qaddafi, for one, calls them al-Qaeda stooges. He may be saying this just to scare his Western
opponents, but suppose that there is a grain of truth in this.
We just do not know, and that’s a fact. The “international community” is obviously giving the rebels the benefit of the doubt – or, more realistically, hoping to install, once that unpleasant character Qaddafi, is deposed through military intervention, a more acceptable regime like those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such a scenario is possible, and even probable.
Whether it will be best for the Libyan people and, for that matter, for the West, is another question. What we see in Iraq and Afghanistan – a terrorist war of attrition, the presence of foreign military forces on their soil, and a virtual disintegration of what used to be a single nation – are far from encouraging prospects. And Qaddafi – currently supported, we might remember, by the majority of the Libyan people and establishment structures – promises a “long war.”
However, even this is not the worst that may happen. If we go deeper into history – to, say, the 1980s in Afghanistan – we might discover there a lesson that obviously deserves to be remembered in the present crisis, but is clearly forgotten. There is talk now of Libyan anti-government forces being inadequately armed and trained, and of the need to supply both weapons and instructors for them. It should be recalled that in the past the West, and particularly the United States, financed, armed (with highly effective anti-aircraft weapons, the Stingers, among others), and trained mujahedin, of whom Osama bin Laden was one. All of which helped to spawn the most vicious worldwide terrorist network that turned on its godfathers. The same Afghans who received all kinds of U.S. aid became America’s worst enemies, providing bases for the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Now, is there any semblance of guarantee that exactly the same will not happen in Libya? There is not. On the contrary, there is already clear evidence of a link-up between Hezbollah and what they call the “revolutionists” in Libya.
Thus the coalition has found a very strange bedfellow indeed. This sort of alliance augurs very poorly for all concerned – Qaddafi, the insurgents, the Libyan people as a whole, and last but not least, for the coalition troops that will have found yet another theater of war in which to die, and go on dying.
The American military doctrine states that the country can handle only two simultaneous wars at a time. Now we have three wars plus close to 15 trillion dollars of national debt. God save America.
Vladimir Belaeff, Global Society
Institute, Inc., San Francisco, CA:
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to define our topic as “a war about Libya” – given that the anti-Gaddafi insurgents are Libyans also.
There are fundamental aspects about Libya and Gaddafi that must be borne in mind.
Firstly, Gaddafi took power in Libya in a coup d’etat, and there has been no legitimating event that would allow his rule to be considered “legitimate.” Monarchy is a recognized, historically determined form of state rule. Gaddafi is not a monarch – in fact, he deposed a monarchy. He is an illegitimate dictator who has ruled Libya de facto for 42 years. The popular uprising against Gaddafi is the first, evidently weak, but very brave attempt by Libyans to express their ideas about the governance of their country.
Secondly, violent suppression of popular dissent was initiated by Gaddafi’s forces, who escalated this suppression to full blown extensive military action. Libya’s government has effectively started the civil war in the country.
Thirdly, Gaddafi, despite his repeated promises and claims to the contrary, consciously and intentionally flaunts repeated resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, including direct orders to cease fire under penalty of military punishment. Gaddafi’s government claims many civilian casualties (without visible proof) caused by coalition air strikes – yet Gaddafi can remove all risks to Libyan civilians by simply ceasing his fire. He does not do that, demonstrating again his true intention to remain in power even at the price of his people’s lives.
If Gaddafi is permitted to ignore with impunity a very clear mandamus from the United Nations to cease military action against his own people, this will seriously degrade the authority of the international community. We are not talking here about some subtle resolution, which may be subject to interpretation, but a very straightforward order to stop shooting at people. It is not just Libya at stake here, but quite literally – the world order of our time.
There is definitely a parallel between the actions of Gaddafi in March 2011 and Mikheil Saakashvili in August 2008. In both cases rulers with probable mental instabilities initiated violence against civilians, despite all rational and legal considerations.
Abstention in the vote for Resolution 1973 was an appropriate choice for Russia. One should remember that Gaddafi and his war have cost Russia major economic losses. Starting with the forgiveness of a multi-billion dollar debt that Russia granted to the immensely wealthy Gaddafi and his not-less-wealthy government, and on to the unrealized revenue from various Russian projects in Libya, which have been postponed sine die and may not restart in any near future. Economically, Russia at present is a net loser in the Libyan upheaval.
Arbatov’s commentary about the impact of military action as a stimulus for nuclear proliferation is characteristically weak. Lust for nuclear weapons has existed in the region for decades prior to the current action against the Libyan dictator; the marginal increment in stimulation is negligible.
It is notable that the world communist movement unreservedly supports Gaddafi. This includes the real political opposition in Russia – the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
In the United Nations Russia intends to demand a cease-fire in Libya. A noble intention. A cease-fire requires the compliance of all participants. How does Russia propose the UN would enforce this demand on Gaddafi, considering that he has ignored all prior UN directives? A unilateral cease-fire is a capitulation. Is the world community ready to capitulate to a deranged war criminal?
Unless Russia has workable answers to the above, she should avoid being exposed to ridicule for unrealistic and simplistic proposals.
James George Jatras, Director,
Deputy Director, American
DC:
From an American perspective, almost as dismaying as the fact that president Obama has now mimicked his predecessors and blundered into his very own ill-advised foreign intervention, is puzzlement about the decision of Russia (and of China, which presumably followed the Russian lead) not to veto the Security Council resolution authoring force in Libya.
To address the Russian question first: it didn’t take a “Kristol ball” to guess that the Western powers would immediately exceed the UNSC’s mandate, in effect treating Resolution 1973 as a carte blanche to intervene in the Libyan civil war. Perhaps president Medvedev didn’t want to disappoint his “reset” partner, president Obama. Or perhaps Moscow was applying some geopolitical judo in facilitating America’s tumble into yet another sand-trap, and then criticizing us for it. (For all of Paris’ and London’s grandstanding and Riyadh’s and Abu Dhabi’s prodding, accusing fingers again will be pointed at the United States for lots of dead Muslims served up for Al-Jazeera’s cameras).
Evident disarray at the top militates against the likelihood that the Russian move was calculated. Prime Minister Putin castigated the Western campaign as reminiscent of a “medieval crusade” –an inapt characterization, first because the Libyan operation (as will be seen below), far from being anti-Islamic, instead is furthering the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and their ilk.
Secondly, Putin should appreciate that as a historical matter, the real Crusades were a legitimate if flawed Christian counterattack against centuries of jihad aggression, not an episode to be used as a term of opprobrium. Then, to further tangle things, Medvedev criticized him just for uttering the word “crusade,” the mere sound of which offends delicate Muslim ears and aggravates the “clash of civilizations.” In short, what the Russians really have in mind is not at all clear.
But the muddle in Moscow pales beside the latest outbreak of imbecility along the Potomac. The report is that Samantha Power, National Security Council special advisor to Obama on human rights and one of Obama’s campaign advisors on foreign affairs, was primarily responsible for convincing her dithering boss to proceed, with support from U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and, of course, from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Power became an obsessive advocate of “humanitarian intervention” during her stint as a journalist in Bosnia and advocates a philosophy called “responsibility to protect” (RTP), with military intervention ostensibly to protect human rights raised to a cardinal principle of American foreign policy. She outlined RTP in her 2003 book “A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide,” that Richard Holbrooke of Balkan infamy commanded his underlings to read. Power’s militarism is boundless. For instance, at the height of the Second Intifada in 2002, she advocated military action against Israel to create and protect a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On the other hand, nobody’s holding his breath waiting for Power to demand we bomb Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates over Saudi and Emirati abuses against Bahraini Shia protesters).
In any case, the Power-Clinton-Rice triumfeminate was sufficiently potent to squelch cautionary advice from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough.
The U.S.-led action follows calls by the international Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir, whose members have long been suppressed and killed in Libya, for Gaddafi to be overthrown by the Egyptian army, and for his assassination by a leading figure of the Muslim Brotherhood active in the successful Egyptian revolt. As an indication of the likely beneficiaries of Western help in overthrowing Gaddafi, a 2008 West Point analysis of a cache of al-Qaeda records discovered that nearly 20 percent of foreign fighters (actually, mainly suicide bombers) in Iraq were Libyans, and that on a per-capita basis Libya was nearly double Saudi Arabia as the jihadis’ top country of origin. Almost all of them were from the eastern region of Cyrenaica (Benghazi, and especially Derna), a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda and, not coincidentally, of the anti-Gaddafi insurgency.
While the spectacle of the Western powers and Islamic militants, including al-Qaeda, acting effectively as allies, may come as a surprise to some, it shouldn’t to observers of U.S.-led interventions since America supported Afghan mujahidin against the Soviet Union. Not only did Washington help create al-Qaeda itself during the anti-Soviet war, the pattern was set for subsequent “pro-Muslim” interventions: in Iraq (twice, under George H.W. Bush in 1991 and George W. Bush in 2003), in Afghanistan (Bush in 2001), Bosnia (Bill Clinton in 1995), and Kosovo (Clinton in 1999). In each case, an armed intervention justified as “rescuing” or “liberating” Muslims paradoxically resulted in greater Islamic rage against the United States. In each case, the hoped-for “democracy” – at least recognizable to Western eyes – eluded us. And in each case the resulting social order was more oppressively Islamic, as measured by treatment of women and non-Muslims.
For example, in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Islamic militancy was suppressed (along with other opposition forces) and women went unveiled. Now, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, half of Iraq’s Christian population has fled in terror from Muslim militants and women had better cover up if they know what’s good for them. Similar patterns can be discerned in the venues of other interventions, notably the near-eradication of Orthodox Christian Serbs in areas of Kosovo under the control of Muslim Albanian drug, slave, and organ-traffickers. Already in post-Mubarak Egypt constitutional “reforms” favored by the Muslim Brotherhood have been approved by referendum, and fears are rising for the future of Coptic Christians – the largest remaining Christian population in the Middle East. Aside from the serendipitous fact that Libya has few Christians to persecute, prospects for a post-Gaddafi “democracy” in that country are decidedly slim.
However, in Western thinking, the repeated failure of a policy evidently is considered insufficient grounds to abandon it. With respect to Libya, perhaps policy-makers in Washington, London, and Paris calculate that this time for sure the Muslims will love us, no matter how many of them get killed along the way. This time for sure, when Gaddafi is gone, Islamic “democracy” will look a lot like Switzerland. (Just as it has in Gaza, where “democracy” has empowered Hamas, or in purple-fingered Lebanon, now under a Hizballah-led coalition). Each time we are surprised and disappointed, but we never learn. When the Muslim Brotherhood takes power in Egypt – and in Libya, in Yemen – Power and company will also be very surprised and disappointed.
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