Via Andrew, Avik Roy explains Mitch Daniels’ decision on the right-to-work legislation in Indiana and Daniels’ record on public-sector unions:

Second, as Katrina Trinko points out, Mitch Daniels decertified all public unions, entirely rescinding their collective-bargaining rights, on his first day in office in 2005. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, as a reminder, is seeking to limit collective-bargaining rights for most public-sector employees, with notable exceptions for public-safety workers: a reasonable, but much more modest, reform. In other words, Mitch Daniels has already done more on the issue of public-sector unions than Scott Walker is even attempting.

Put more bluntly, the latest round of hysteria over Daniels’ alleged failings is even more baseless than the last. Hardly any of the people excoriating Daniels as unfit today gave a second thought to public-sector unions six years ago when he was first addressing the issue. The right’s new cause celebre is old news to Daniels, and because he made a decision about legislative priorities that showed him to be insufficiently zealous in his desire to weaken private-sector unions he has supposedly failed a critical test of leadership. If anyone wanted a demonstration of why Daniels shouldn’t waste his time seeking the nomination of the Stupid Party, here it is.

One thing that can be said for Obama’s cautious response to the conflict in Libya so far is that it has annoyed all of the right people. The signatories to the letter Rogin cites is a Who’s Who of hawkish interventionists whose advice should be ignored as often as possible.

Of the five specific recommendations they make, three are unremarkable, and virtually everyone can support them because they are obvious and unobjectionable. Freezing assets, announcing that members of the regime will be held accountable for their crimes, and providing humanitarian assistance are all reasonable, fairly easy things to do. The recommendation of a no-fly zone is a mistake for all the reasons outlined before, and it also doesn’t seem as if it is very likely to be imposed. They want the U.S. to call on NATO to develop plans for a no-fly zone, but Rasmussen just said yesterday that the conflict in Libya “does not threaten NATO or any NATO allies.” For once, NATO leaders seem to understand that it is not the alliance’s role to police conflicts on other continents.

That leaves us with the hawks’ other recommendation, which is to consider cutting off importation of Libyan oil. This seems unusually daft even for this crowd. The vast majority of Libya’s oil pipelines and ports are in the eastern part of the country currently controlled by anti-regime forces, so cutting off importation of Libyan oil would deprive the anti-regime forces of the one reliable source of revenue that they have.

According to The Economist, the rebels may beat the interventionists to the punch with their threats to shoot themselves in the foot:

Libyan oil-industry operators are now threatening to destroy pipelines, and cut supplies to Europe, if European states fail to intervene to end Mr Qaddafi’s rule. Workers at Brega, one of Libya’s five ports used by tankers, stopped work on Monday, said Mansour Saleh, a manager at a Tobruk-based oil company who oversees the pumping of 300,000 barrels a day. “If that doesn’t make them act against the tyrant,” he added. “We’ll destroy the wells.”

According to this chart, the European countries that depend most heavily on Libyan oil are Ireland, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. Of these, the French government is the only to express a strong interest in a significant response to the Libyan conflict, and it is unlikely that Italy is going to be forced to take action that its government clearly doesn’t want to take, since it is treaty-bound not to intervene militarily in Libya. Should Libyan rebels sabotage the parts of the oil industry under their control, they may cause some temporary economic difficulty in a handful of European countries, but they will mainly be sabotaging their own cause.

Ian Birrell argues that Western nations should stop being chastened by the horrible decision to invade Iraq so that we can get on with the important business of invading Libya:

And if Nato can impose a no-fly zone then they should do so immediately – even if this means bombing the airports being used to send up planes to kill and maim innocent people. There is no time for hesitation.

But this may not be enough to stop the bloodshed.

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The international community may be forced to make a choice: does it sit back and prevaricate while people are massacred, as it has so often in the past. Or does it refuse to be scarred by the foolishness of the Iraq invasion and show that it can act when there is unacceptable barbarism.

For it is possible the only solution is a rapid intervention led by perhaps Egypt or Tunisia, whose armies have won respect in recent weeks, to winkle Gaddafi out of his air base and end his appalling regime.

It is a standard interventionist tactic to try to rush a policy decision so that intervention seems to be the only appropriate choice. “There is no time to think through what we’re doing! We have to start doing it immediately!” This is all the more strange when it seems as if Gaddafi’s hold on the country seems to be getting weaker every day. To be blunt, the Tunisian and Egyptian armies have more pressing matters to attend to than to participate in an invasion of their neighbor, and it verges on fantasy to assume that the U.S. or any other significant military power in region will be in any position to launch an effective major operation in the next few weeks. Calls for intervention take for granted that NATO governments are all in agreement on what should be done, but neither Britain nor Italy seems eager to pursue military options.

There is also the problem that Britain may not be able to participate in enforcing such a no-fly zone now that its aircraft carrier is out of commission. France and Italy have some ability to do so, but Italy has several reasons for not intervening. Its economic and political ties to Libya are a large part of this. Some of the governments that have much more at stake are reluctant to get involved in the conflict, so how does it become the responsibility of the United States to intervene?

Quite a few Westerners are beside themselves that our governments aren’t doing enough to overthrow Gaddafi, but Libyan rebels have so far been doing an exceptional job of taking over most of the other major cities of the country without outside help. Gaddafi’s reliance on foreign mercenaries suggests that he knows he cannot count on very many people in his country to defend his rule. There is a growing chorus of voices that insist that the Libyan rebels need outside help, but all of this rests on the assumption that it is the rebels that will be facing destruction absent outside support. Westerners are preoccupied with what they think they should have done in Rwanda, and they remain badly misinformed about what they did in Kosovo, and both of these are clouding judgments on what to do now.

At least from what I can see, it is just as likely that Gaddafi and his remaining supporters are on the losing end of this fight, and outside support could easily pave the way for massacres of regime loyalists and those mistakenly believed to be regime loyalists by the rebels. Maybe no one is very concerned about this result, but it’s not something that can be entirely ignored when we’re talking about tying ourselves to the cause of the rebels. It goes without saying that almost all Western analysts and pundits know very little about Libyan rebels or what it is, besides Gaddafi’s overthrow, that they will want when the war is over. It would be typical if anti-regime forces have a lot of old scores to settle, and tipping the balance in their favor (which is what interventionists are arguing that we do) will make it easier for them to do that. That outcome might happen anyway without outside intervention, but I don’t see why Western governments would want to take an active part in it.

Update: It is no small matter that Italy is also prevented by a treaty of friendship from intervening militarily against the Libyan government. The WSJreports:

But the Treaty has some articles that lawmakers may not have read closely enough. It explicitly forbids Italy from using any military force or trying “directly or indirectly” to interfere with the Libyan government and, importantly, it forbids Italy from, “allowing the use of its territory in any hostile act against Libya.”

So a bilateral treaty prevents Italy from participating in an EU or NATO-backed mission involving Libya.
NATO is mulling possible participation in the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya, but Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed Friday that a United Nations mandate would be needed [bold mine-DL].

Presuming Italy—which has major economic exposure to Libya—intends to honor a law its Parliament approved with bipartisan support, then it means that it may require a UN-backed decision on humanitarian grounds to allow it to clarify its position and join EU partners in common action to bring Libya’s nascent civil war to an end.

U.N. authorization isn’t likely to be forthcoming, and evidently NATO isn’t going to act without that authorization.

What we could be seeing is the rise of a third paradigm – a more liberal paradigm embodied by Egypt that will diminish the influence of not just Saudi Arabia, but of Iran as well. While a democratic outcome in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya and elsewhere is far from certain, the popular revolts were clearly liberal revolts and have provided a new model for the region. Egypt is the largest Arab country and has long been a regional trend setter. With a new popularly elected government in Cairo, Egypt will likely be much more influential than the Mubarak regime in Middle East affairs. This combined with the fact that it is largely a Sunni-Arab country, while Iran is largely Shia-Persian, Iran will likely lose some influence to Egypt. ~Max Bergmann

As far as I can tell, Bergmann is the first one to attempt a serious counter-argument against the claim that popular uprisings in Arab states this year are working to Iran’s benefit. Bergmann’s scenario is possible, but a lot depends on what happens in Egypt. It seems to me that more than a few supporters of the “Iraq the model” theory believed that the fall of Hussein and democratization of Iraq would present an alternative and a rebuke to the Iranian system, and war supporters dismissed predictions of increased Iranian influence in Iraq in much the same way. As I recall, there was a lot of talk about Baghdad as the former seat of the caliphate, the power of Iraqi nationalism, and a belief that democratic government in Iraq wouldn’t just resist Iranian influence but would lead to the subversion of the Iranian government as well. When democratization empowered the Shi’ite majority and Iraq turned into a sectarian nightmare, the idea that the new Iraq would weaken Iranian influence proved to be flat wrong. Each “liberation” has resulted in an increase in Iranian influence, and it is difficult to see why the same isn’t going to happen in the future.

If Egypt ends up having a popularly elected government, it will be preoccupied with constitutional and political reform, attempting to address the deep economic grievances that fueled the uprising, and to repair the economic damage caused by the struggle to oust Mubarak. It may not have an interest in devoting much time and resources to containing Iranian influence in the region. At the very least, it is going to have less interest than the old regime did. The military may retain considerable control over setting foreign policy, but it is not going to be as free to ignore domestic politics as it was. Should the military have less control and Egypt pursues a more independent foreign policy, that will likely make it more inclined not to align itself against Iran on certain major issues. What was once a reliable opponent of Iranian influence and Iran’s proxies will probably become less hostile. Iran may also attempt to cultivate and support political factions inside Egypt as it has done in Iraq, and it could have some success. Iran’s support for Hamas suggests that Tehran has enough flexibility in its alliances that it is not limited to working with Shi’ite populations. If Egypt’s political transition does not go smoothly, but is instead wracked by turmoil and weak civilian governments, that could consume the attention of Egypt’s political leadership and leave little time for regional affairs.

Democracy promotion and the “freedom agenda” contributed to the strengthening and empowerment of Iranian proxies and Iran-backed political parties in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. No less important, obstacles to Iranian influence disappeared during the last decade thanks in part to these policies. It is possible that democratization in other Arab countries will have different results, but there aren’t very strong reasons for thinking so.

After plausibly arguing that democratization in the Near East could lead to “geostrategic disaster” for the United States, Ari Shavit concludes that the answer to all this is to embrace the most foolish courses of action available:

There is only one way out of this catch-22. Moving from defense to offense. Is Barack Obama the new George Bush? Is David Cameron the new Tony Blair? Is Hillary Clinton determined to implement the neoconservatives’ ideological platform? Good luck to them. But don’t do it only in the West’s backyard. Don’t do it only in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. Do it alongside forceful humanitarian intervention in Libya as well. Do it in Iran, too.

Oh, okay. Just “do it”! Who knew that it was this simple? The next line is quite amusing: “Take the spirit of freedom blowing through Cairo’s squares and bring it to Tehran’s squares.” If the spirit of freedom is abroad in the region, it is not something that can be directed or controlled. That’s why it’s the spirit of freedom. Like many other critics of the administration’s cautious responses, Shavit wildly overestimates the control Washington can have. He must assume that Washington will be able to mitigate the effects of weakened or collapsing allied governments by supporting uprisings in Libya and Iran, but that doesn’t follow at all. It certainly doesn’t follow that direct intervention on the side of Libyan rebels will help the U.S. On the contrary, intervening in Libya would bog the U.S. down in yet another conflict that is none of its concern.

Shavit also seems to be confused about what has been happening:

Topple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s tyranny as you toppled Hosni Mubarak’s. Fight the Shia’s religious fascism and Muammar Gadhafi’s madness with the same relentlessness you fought the pro-Western dictatorships.

This sums up the odd view held by many hawks that Obama is choosing not to try to undermine the Iranian government, but that he did choose to undermine the Egyptian government. In fact, what we have seen so far is that the administration pushed the Egyptian military in the direction it was already leaning, which was to remove Mubarak for their own reasons, and only after all other alternatives had been exhausted. That doesn’t seem very much like relentless fighting. The hawks’ view is especially odd because it assumes that whatever has happened in allied Arab authoritarian states can happen in Iran. Shavit insists that this is the only way to go:

Only in this way will you be able to implement the West’s democratic values along with its strategic interests. Only in this way will you be able to empower freedom without sparking zealotry and igniting war.

By Shavit’s own reckoning, democratization is directly at odds with Western strategic interests. Taking sides in Libya’s civil war isn’t going to “empower freedom without sparking zealotry and igniting war”–it will be a case of Western powers openly joining one side in an ongoing war, which could intensify zealotry and cause unexpected blowback as Western governments once again try to dictate the political future of an Arab country through the use of force. Supposing that something like Libya’s rebellion could be encouraged in Iran, which is very doubtful, this would be an instigation of warfare rather than the prevention of it.

Not only does Washington have no way of toppling Ahmadinejad or the people who wield most of the real power in Iran, but everything that Washington does to contribute to regional instability ultimately works to the advantage of Iran.

Suzanne Maloney makes this point in The Financial Times today:

Though it has neither inspired the Arab unrest nor conspired to advance it, Iran will be the main beneficiary of regional instability, just as it was in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq.

The Leveretts concur that the regional balance of power has been shifting in Iran’s favor for the last decade and is likely to continue doing so. If Westerners believe that Iranian influence is something that needs to be contained, they should stop enthusing about “the Arab spring.” If Westerners don’t believe that the U.S. and its allies have any strategic interests in the region and growing Iranian influence makes no difference, “the Arab spring” shouldn’t concern them very much. What makes no sense is to argue that the U.S. has strategic interests that democratization undermines and then conclude that the “solution” is more democratization.

Interventionists routinely assume that the U.S. should insert itself into other nations’ internal conflicts, but something that has an even more distorting effect on the debate is the assumption shared by almost all Americans that the U.S. can effectively insert itself in a foreign conflict very quickly. Stephen Hayes spoke with Secretary Gates about the U.S. ability to establish a no-fly zone in Libya. This is what Gates said:

Although the United States has limited capabilities in the region which would make it difficult to set up a no-fly zone quickly, others might be in a better position to help. “The French – I don’t know what the British have in the area – but the French and the Italians potentially, I suppose, could have some assets they could put in there quicker.”

The debate over what the U.S. should be doing in Libya hasn’t really taken into account that the U.S. may not be in a position to do that much in the near term. French military intervention is common enough in former French colonies, but despite some of Sarkozy’s harsh public statements it isn’t clear that France would or could take a leading role in enforcing a no-fly zone in Libya. For several obvious reasons, Italy is not going to take the lead in acting against Libya, and Italy’s close ties with Libya make it hard to believe that there could be an effective NATO response. In addition to being a bad idea, imposing a no-fly zone in Libya may not even be possible given the current political and military realities.

Update: Ted Galen Carpenter and Dan McCarthy have more.

What does it say about us that the Obama administration has such trouble even finding the words to describe the horrors that Muammar Qaddafi is now inflicting on his people? ~Matt Continetti

Perhaps it says that the U.S. government still regards its responsibility for its own citizens as more important than it does issuing satisfying, but practically irrelevant condemnations of another government’s crimes. Perhaps for once it says that the U.S. government is unwilling to undertake ill-considered military action when there is no American interest at stake and nothing like a national consensus in favor of intervention. Continetti is right that the doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” is meaningless because there is no willingness to enforce it. One reason why there is no desire to enforce it is that all of those democratic national governments Continetti mentions have a responsibility to protect their citizens and interests first, and it is not their responsibility to aid Libyan rebels against their despicable government.

The “responsibility to protect” was a doctrine that had some of its origins in Blair’s “doctrine of the international community.” This was one of the earliest efforts to concoct a defense of the Kosovo war, since there was absolutely no legal justification for what NATO had done. The other people Continetti mentions were also prominent supporters of the Kosovo war. Intervening in Kosovo was unwise and illegal, and it has resulted in putting Kosovo in the hands of terrorists and criminals. If we reflect on that, it might not be such a bad thing that the “responsibility to protect” doctrine has started fading into irrelevance.

Speaking of public opinion and foreign policy, Scoblete cites a new Rasmussen poll that casts more doubt on Mead’s tendentious interpretation of “the commonsense reasoning of the American people”:

However, as with the recent turmoil in Egypt, most Americans (67%) say the United States should leave the situation in the Arab countries alone. Just 17% say the United States should get more directly involved in the political situation there, but another 17% are not sure.

Americans are skeptical about the political changes that are likely to come from the growing – and, in Libya’s case, violent – protests. Thirty percent (30%) believe it is at least somewhat likely that most of these Arab countries will become free, democratic and peaceful over the next few years, but that includes just four percent (4%) who say it is Very Likely. Sixty-one percent (61%) view a democratic and peaceful outcome as unlikely, with 14% who say it is Not At All Likely.

As Greg says:

If we’re talking about common sense, not plunging the United States and NATO into an incipient civil war in a Middle Eastern country with strong tribal factions seems to qualify.

Quite so. As skeptical as I was of Mead’s claim about what “the American people” want, I am impressed by how much support there is for a relatively hands-off U.S. response to these events. The prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have deepened public skepticism about the wisdom of U.S. interventions in general, but I’m a bit surprised that the skepticism is this great.

Of course, the public debate doesn’t include very many advocates for the majority view. This speaks volumes about the relationship between actual policy debates and public opinion. It seems unimaginable to most of the participants in foreign policy debate that a minimal or neutral role could be the appropriate and best answer to the question of how the U.S. should respond. However, if ever there were a occasion to exercise caution and restraint in using U.S. power and influence, responding to an internal conflict in a country where the U.S. has little influence and no reservoir of goodwill would seem to be it.

Hawkish interventionists always want to plunge the U.S. into conflicts in which Americans have no stake and no part, and we have been paying the price for repeatedly giving into that impulse over the last twenty years. The U.S. cannot be completely uninvolved when political crises affect allied governments, but there isn’t an argument for inserting the U.S. into an internal Libyan conflict. It is appropriate to provide humanitarian aid to the population where possible, and imposing or rather re-imposing sanctions on the Libyan regime might make sense in this case, but beyond that there is no obvious U.S. role in this conflict.

As of Tuesday, the State Department had been unable to get Libya’s permission to fly American citizens out of the country, officials said, prompting the U.S. government to temper its response to the Libyan crackdown.

——

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated her “alarm” Tuesday about the loss of protesters’ lives in Libya but added that “the safety and well-being of Americans has to be our highest priority.”

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About 5,000 U.S. citizens live in Libya, most of them dual nationals. Roughly 600 American residents don’t have Libyan citizenship, Crowley said. The State Department on Sunday ordered the departure of 35 U.S. diplomats and their families. ~The Washington Post

That puts the administration‘s “deafening silence” in perspective, doesn’t it? It’s almost as if the U.S. government has a greater responsibility to its citizens than it does to condemning the activities of a foreign government. In fact, it would be a remarkable display of arrogance and folly to start denouncing Gaddafi’s crimes when U.S. citizens could immediately be exposed to violent reprisals or arrest. It doesn’t seem to cross the minds of interventionists in this case that our government could imperil fellow Americans by following their advice. If official condemnations have to wait a few days or weeks until U.S. citizens in Libya are safely out of the country, that is what a responsible government should do.