The doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” has several requirements before international intervention becomes appropriate on R2P’s terms. This is supposed to guard against the abuse of humanitarian intervention for anything other than genuine humanitarian disasters. As we have seen over the last few weeks, humanitarian interventionists are nonetheless happy to invoke the authority to “protect” without demonstrating that the conflict in question qualifies. The criteria for intervention are similar in many respects to the requirements of just war theory: just cause, right intention, final resort, legitimate authority, proportional means, and reasonable prospect. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that intervening in Libya meets the first two criteria. What about the other four?

Intervening in Libya certainly isn’t a final resort at this point. Options other than military action have barely been considered, much less exhausted. The only legitimate authority that the “responsibility to protect” doctrine acknowledges is the Security Council, so that will certainly be lacking. Establishing a no-fly zone might be a proportionate response, but it doesn’t have a reasonable prospect of success, unless success is defined as the effective enforcement of a no-fly zone.

James Traub dispenses with all of this, and says that the U.S. should entangle itself in Libya’s civil war anyway:

So neither the strategic nor the humanitarian case for action is overwhelming. And to be effective, that action would require a serious commitment of military force. So again, why do it?

Because it would be the right thing, and because it would be good for the United States. It would be the right thing because U.S. and NATO force could stop a ruthless tyrant from killing his own people and bring his monstrous rule to an end. Western intervention in the Congo wouldn’t have solved the problem, while military action in Darfur might well have provoked a massive backlash in the Islamic world. But Libya is a case where force could work and where it will be deployed only after non-coercive methods have proved unavailing, as the doctrine of the responsibility to protect requires. And it would redound to America’s benefit because the United States would be placing its military power at the disposal of the Arab world in order to liberate Arab peoples.

I have to congratulate Traub on his demonstration of the complete bankruptcy and irrationality of the pro-war argument. If there is neither a humanitarian nor strategic case to be made for starting a war against Libya, and there isn’t, there is no case for U.S. involvement at all. Traub isn’t just calling for a no-fly zone. He wants an air campaign against Gaddafi’s forces:

There is no point in establishing a no-fly zone unless both the West and Arab leaders are prepared to take the next step. This would be the kind of airstrikes that finally brought Slobodan Milosevic to heel in 1995: strikes against troop concentrations, bunkers, air-defense systems, and the like. This would be an outright act of war, though one that did not put foreign boots on Libyan soil.

A no-fly zone would be an “outright act of war,” too, but why worry? Once again, Traub does us a service of pointing out where intervention in Libya must lead. Western governments aren’t prepared to take the next step. Many of them don’t even want to take the first step. I doubt there is much enthusiasm among Arab leaders for what Traub is proposing. The Arab League is apparently fine with a no-fly zone, perhaps because some of the governments in the League don’t fully appreciate what is involved in enforcing it, but will it support an ongoing air campaign against Gaddafi’s forces? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Traub’s argument is a good example of the unthinking, reflexive responses of interventionists in this debate. There is no particularly good or well-reasoned argument for what they want. It’s just the right thing to do. It could all go horribly wrong, and there’s no reason for America to be involved, but it makes us feel better, so let’s do it. The quality of debate in this country over a matter as grave and important as warfare is just appalling.

If Gadhafi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still rule territory in a month’s time, and if Hezbollah and Hamas continue to rely on their armed presence to back up the militant policies they impose, the promises of Middle Eastern democracy will look very hollow. And the incentive structure of the Middle East will acquire a sinister new look.

Gadhafi’s departure from power in other words is not just a requirement of humanity and decency. It’s not only justice to the people of Libya. It is also essential to American credibility and the stability of the Middle East region. ~David Frum

Ross has called Frum’s argument “one of the strongest” cases for military action in Libya, and he may be right, which says a lot about how horribly weak the argument for military action is. Consider that first paragraph in the quote. For the sake of the “promises of Middle Eastern democracy,” the U.S. must ensure that Gaddafi loses power (and within just the next few weeks). Apparently, the “promises of Middle Eastern democracy” also hinge on Ahmadinejad’s being driven from office, Hizbullah’s coalition losing power, and Hamas, well, ceasing to be Hamas. In a month’s time, Ahmadinejad will almost certainly still be in office, Lebanese PM Miqati will still be haggling with the other parties in organizing Lebanon’s government, and Hamas will remain in the same position it has been in for the last four years, which will tell us little or nothing about what we can expect from Tunisia and Egypt. For what it’s worth, Miqati is the duly appointed nominated prime minister of the coalition that represents a majority in the Lebanese parliament, and Hamas gained part of its hold on power through the brilliant democracy-promoting efforts of the Bush administration. If the “promises of Middle Eastern democracy” look hollow to Frum, it is because electorates in many parts of the region support political causes Frum rejects. None of these other countries has anything to do with Libya, and all of this is to make Gaddafi’s hold on power seem more significant for the region than it is.

It is “essential” to American credibility and the stability of the region that Gaddafi be overthrown? The last time that interventionists were warning about the de-stabilizing regional effects of a dictator, we ended up with the Iraq debacle in which millions of people were displaced or driven into exile, and hundreds of thousands were killed. Widening and escalating Libya’s civil war into an international one are more likely to contribute to regional destabilization than anything currently happening in Libya. When did Gaddafi’s downfall become “essential” to American credibility? When Obama said that he “must go”? It wasn’t a good idea to say that publicly if there was no intention of following through on it, but this is a bit like saying George Bush was required to attack Iran because he included them in the “axis of evil” or else undermine American “credibility.” Careless rhetoric is unfortunate, but that doesn’t mean that U.S. policymakers have to treat it as if it were an ultimatum.

Today, we can hear a chorus demanding intervention in Libya. Many of the reasons are those we’ve grown used to; we heard them all in the long lead-up to Iraq and we’ve been hearing them all over again since uprisings began to spread in the Arab world. But, added to the mix is something new: America must intervene in order to restore its reputation and moral standing. We are A Very Serious Nation, and Very Serious Nations that are not taken seriously, on a moral/military level, do not long retain their status. We must do something, somewhere, but soon—for the sake of our reputation. ~J.L. Wall

Wall makes an interesting and instructive comparison between arguments for intervention in Libya and those made in support of Cast Lead, the Israeli military operation against Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. Maintaining or restoring “credibility” is a common theme in all of these arguments, and as I have noted before it was a significant part of the argument for NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999. The trouble with this isn’t just that these campaigns all contributed to the additional loss of credibility for the states and institutions involved, but that this is an incredibly bad reason for taking military action. Short of complete success, any military action is going to do more to tarnish national reputation than bolster it.

The comparison with Kosovo may be the most instructive one for Libya, since NATO intervened in a conflict that was entirely internal, which is what interventionists propose that the U.S. and allies do again. Like Kosovo, all that interventionists are proposing right now is that the U.S. use air power to limit Gaddafi’s military advantage. Back then, McCain was one of the louder voices calling for at least the threat of using ground forces, but today not even McCain proposes something like this. Kerry made a point of rejecting the idea of sending in ground forces in his recent op-ed, because we all understand that it is politically a non-starter with so many American forces remaining in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interventionists aren’t willing to level with the public what their preferred policy goal would actually require, so they are pretending that the first part of a larger intervention is all that the U.S. should do. One reason that Kerry’s position is hard to take seriously is that the mission in Libya he describes would probably be a very long one with goals that U.S. and allied intervention alone couldn’t realize.

Instead of having a much more limited objective of compelling Gaddafi’s forces to leave a certain area within Libya, U.S. and allied forces would presumably continue their no-fly zone for as long as Gaddafi remained in power, and it wouldn’t stop until he stepped down or was overthrown. It took 78 days of bombing to compel Milosevic to order the evacuation of forces from Kosovo, and that was during a campaign in which Serbian forces rarely fought back in order to avoid being destroyed. We would have to be prepared for a possibly much longer commitment against a regime that now has every incentive to fight back and make intervention as dangerous and costly as possible. Once the war for the sake of “credibility” begins, it isn’t going to end until Gaddafi is no longer in power, but the relatively minimal nature of the intervention could allow Gaddafi to hang on for quite a while, which is why the no-fly zone will be just the first in a series of escalations leading to an air campaign and possibly invasion.

Gaddafi has already lost control over eastern Libya, but neither the rebels nor the anti-Gaddafi brigades in the West appeared satisfied with this. Unlike Kosovo, a war against Libya would be waged with the purpose of hastening Gaddafi’s downfall rather than securing the separation of a part of Libya from Tripoli’s control. This is not only a much bigger undertaking than compelling Serb forces to leave Kosovo, but it makes the success of U.S. intervention dependent entirely on the ability of the rebels to defeat Gaddafi’s other forces and/or encourage Gaddafi’s supporters to turn against him. Even most advocates of a no-fly zone aren’t proposing a coordinated campaign together with the rebels, which would require U.S. or allied soldiers to coordinate operations with them, and it’s not clear how this would be accomplished practically if the rebels don’t want any foreign soldiers on Libyan soil. Were such coordination to happen, there’s also no way of knowing whether it would fragment the rebels into different camps:

But others disagree. “We’ll stop fighting the tyrant and shoot the Americans instead,” says a veteran of Libya’s war in Chad, who now mans an old anti-aircraft gun on Benghazi’s corniche. Some Islamist leaders say they may face pressure to fight American troops if they became involved.

If Muammar Qaddafi violently suppresses the Libya uprising while America stands by, will Arab and Muslim opinion really believe that we were “neutral”? Or will they believe that we tacitly support Qaddafi – as they believed through the 1990s that we tacitly supported Saddam Hussein? ~David Frum

Does anyone accept the idea that Arab and Muslim publics believe the U.S. tacitly supported Saddam Hussein in the 1990s? This is risible. The massacres of Shi’ites after Desert Storm followed President Bush’s decision to call for an uprising against Hussein, which created the expectation of U.S. support that Bush had no intention of providing. The mistake was to give people in Iraq false hope, which is effectively what a lot of advocates of intervention in Libya argue that the administration should be doing. Just as earlier proponents of rollback had given false hope to the Hungarians that the U.S. would aid their uprising, Bush encouraged people to launch a suicidal rebellion. The U.S. wasn’t perceived as tacitly supporting Hussein. The shame of the 1991 massacres was that the U.S. had stupidly implied that it would give support to rebels that it wasn’t prepared to deliver.

Frum has several more questions, but this one stood out for its absurdity:

If you are a Libyan insurgent and you are offered arms by international Islamist groups, do you say yes or no?

Libyan rebels would likely say yes and would have done so anyway, not least because many of the Libyan rebels are jihadists and sympathizers with those same “international Islamist groups.” As The Economistreported last week:

Libyans have a strong jihadist tradition, going back a century to Omar Mukhtar, who conducted a holy war for two decades against the colonising Italians; he lost but remains a heroic unifying symbol. Religious, tribal and nationalist feeling is still strong. More recently, Libyan jihadists have been prominent in Iraq, where, according to a study by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center in 2008, Libyans (nearly all from the eastern part of the country) made up a fifth of foreign jihadists, the second-largest group after the Saudis and the highest per person of any country. Sufian bin Qumu, a rebel leader in Darna, north-east of Benghazi, was once Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur.

If Frum is concerned about the growing power of Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, and the Muslim Brotherhood (some of which has been made possible by the Iraq war and U.S. democracy promotion), why does he want the U.S. to intervene in a conflict that will help put such people in positions of power? How does it weaken Iranian influence if the U.S. is pulled into a Libyan civil war? How can it be to America’s advantage in trying to contain Iranian influence if its attention and resources are diverted into yet another conflict that has nothing to do with American interests?

For sheer irrelevance, this question also caught my attention:

If you are the president of Venezuela and you lose an election, how will you react when President Obama tells you that you “must” honor the election results?

Does Hugo Chavez base his reactions to anything said by Obama or any other Western leader on anything other than his interest in consolidating power? Is Obama supposed to take military action in Libya so that he can more effectively scold Hugo Chavez for electoral fraud? This is supposed to be an example of how Obama will damage U.S. “credibility” by not intervening in Libya, and it is just as ridiculous as you would expect it to be.

If Muammar Qaddafi takes Benghazi, it will be Barack Obama’s responsibility. That is what it means to be the American president. ~Leon Wieseltier

In addition to not plunging needlessly into another country’s civil war, the Obama administration’s restraint on Libya so far has had another positive effect: it has revealed just how unhinged and fanatical many of the advocates of intervention are. Do these people really believe that every event in the world is the responsibility of the President of the United States, or is it just hyperbole to get the war they want? It seems that some of them really believe it. Laurent Gbagbo hasn’t given up his hold on power in Ivory Coast. Is the violence by Gbagbo supporters in Abidjan Obama’s responsibility, too?

Such people are are thrilled by Sarkozy’s recognition of the Benghazi transitional government, because this is the sort of diplomatic mistake that obliges Western governments to become more involved, but it is telling that many other European governments see Sarkozy acting recklessly and foolishly. Fresh off the embarrassment that was the exceedingly cozy relationship with Ben Ali and his cronies, and on the heels of dumping the foreign minister responsible for a sizeable part of that embarrassment, Sarkozy is trying to re-invent himself as the zealous supporter of Libyan rebels. Naturally, interventionists here in the U.S. don’t see this as a desperate attempt by Sarkozy to change the subject, but instead treat it as serious moral leadership, which tells us a lot of what we need to know about what they think morality and leadership mean.

The only thing that bothers them about what Sarkozy is doing is that the French beat America to the punch in engaging in dangerous grandstanding. Of course, Sarkozy can afford making these statements, because no one, not even his American cheerleaders, expect him to follow through on it. France meddles in its former colonies’ affairs quite often, but meddling in Libya would be something different.

Western military intervention in Libya’s civil war doesn’t make much sense, no matter which government is calling for it or leading it, but if any Western governments should be taking the lead in responding to a civil war in North Africa it should be European governments. Some European governments have something at stake in the Libyan civil war, and the U.S. has nothing at stake, so if there had to be outside intervention it would make a lot more sense if Europeans and other states from around the Mediterranean and North Africa were bearing most of the burden.

Greater allied burden-sharing is something that ought to be appealing to Americans regardless of what one believes the U.S. role in the world should be. It can relieve the U.S. of outdated or unnecessary commitments, but it also helps keep the U.S. military from being spread too thin. Letting regional powers and organizations take the lead in these situations isn’t just a good way to keep the U.S. from getting bogged down in conflicts in which America has no interest, but it is also a good way to begin the process of offloading some of the responsibility for regional security that the U.S. has had for much longer than necessary.

Huntsman is expected to make his perceived electability a centerpiece of his platform.
The Huntsman campaign-in-waiting is already at work making this case, seizing on the White House’s apparent concern with the charismatic former governor whom they may have incorrectly assumed to have successfully exiled to the other side of the world when President Obama appointed him ambassador to China in 2009.

On Wednesday, Obama seemed particularly intent on drowning Huntsman with praise, calling him “an outstanding advocate for this administration” as the ambassador prepares to head home next month to mull a political future that could set him against his current boss.

“Despite the fact that Huntsman’s still virtually unknown, the president and his advisors have enough political sense to recognize that he would be the most formidable opponent in the general election,” said a strategist likely to be involved in a Huntsman campaign. “The only reason they are meddling in the GOP primary at this early stage is because they know Huntsman can win.” ~Scott Conroy

Huntsman supporters are very entertaining, and I’m looking forward to several more months of this sort of comedy. They understand that Huntsman is pretty much doomed in the primaries by his association with Obama, but for whatever reason they want to repeat as often as possible Obama‘s assessments of Huntsman’s electability, Obama‘s decision to appoint him as ambassador, and Obama‘s supposed fear of a Huntsman nomination. This is rather odd reverse psychology. It’s as if they’re saying, “The only way to beat Obama is to take Obama’s advice on choosing the candidate he thinks would be most effective against him, so trust Obama when he says that Huntsman is electable! Obama wouldn’t lie about a thing like that!” I submit that this is a losing message.

Republican voters don’t trust Obama. Even if they were inclined to believe Huntsman’s electability, Obama’s supposed roundabout endorsement of Huntsman’s electability (by praising him effusively) gives them reason not to believe it. If Obama were right and Huntsman is the most electable Republican in the 2012 field, Republican voters wouldn’t care because they would conclude that serving as ambassador under Obama makes him unacceptable no matter how electable he is. The rallying cry against Huntsman will be, “We want an echo, not a copy!” This will be unfair and inaccurate as far as most of Huntsman’s record is concerned, but that is what comes from putting such a high premium on political team loyalty.

There’s something else genuinely odd about what Huntsman supporters are saying. Electability is going to be the centerpiece of Huntsman’s campaign, and one of the reasons his supporters believe he is electable is that he has foreign policy credentials, which he has been building during his time in Beijing. At the same time, they want to suggest that Obama has been speaking out so enthusiastically about Huntsman’s service in order to cripple him politically. That implies that Obama is deliberately exaggerating the quality of Huntsman’s work to make it seem as if he is closely aligned with Obama and therefore less viable in a Republican primary. It seems to me that this is a serious disservice to Huntsman, as Huntsman has been widely praised for actually being a very competent and effective ambassador who deserves praise for his work. In other words, whenever Obama credits Huntsman for doing a good job, he is supposedly “meddling” in the Republican primary rather than commenting on Huntsman’s work, which will lead Republican voters to question his foreign policy credentials as well. This is what Huntsman’s supporters are saying. Just imagine what his enemies will do.

When I saw the article outlining that Huntsman’s would-be campaign was going to focus heavily on New Hamsphire, I was thinking that it could create an annoyance for Romney, since Romney needs to dominate in New Hampshire and Huntsman could peel off some moderate and independent votes that Romney might otherwise win. On second thought, Romney doesn’t need to worry. Once Huntsman goes “all-in” in New Hampshire and fails, Romney won’t have to fight with him over moderate Republican voters.

P.S. As this New Hampshire Journalstory reports, Huntsman’s growing campaign organization leans heavily on McCain 2000 staffers, and the strategy seems to be a warmed-over version of McCain’s 2000 pursuit of undeclared voters. Leaving aside Romney’s presence in the race, it wouldn’t be enough anyway:

Reports have been surfacing about an early May Huntsman visit to Wayne Jennings’ group, the New Hampshire Cultural Awareness Diversity Council. Given Jennings’ remarks in Real Clear Politics earlier this week, the strategy for a Huntsman candidacy thus far seems clear: focus on undeclared voters. While on the surface some may think this is a winning strategy, even John McCain tied George W. Bush among Republicans in his stunning 2000 primary upset. Statistics show that only between 25 and 30 percent of undeclared voters will make up the total 2012 Republican primary electorate, and it is highly unlikely that Huntsman can win more than 50 percent of those voters in a crowded Republican field. Huntsman will need a big chunk of Republicans to have a shot of pulling off a McCain 2000-type victory in hopes of throwing the nomination fight on its head as the calendar turns to the more conservative South Carolina.

The war between an all-powerful dictator and a ragtag group of rebels, whose motives range from tribal loyalties and religious fervor to dreams of democracy, is fast becoming the Mideast’s equivalent of last century’s civil war in Spain.

Remember that? There were good reasons for America to stay out of the Spanish conflict, including the fear that if Gen. Francisco Franco lost, the communists would take over Spain. In hindsight, Franco’s victory clearly emboldened his allies, Hitler and Mussolini, and helped to usher in the bloodiest decade in human history, which ended only with the defeat of Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan — and with half of Europe in Communist hands. ~Benny Avni

Ah, yes, the old Emboldening Effect. If it hadn’t been for Franco’s victory, apparently Hitler and Mussolini would have retired to lives of peaceful contemplation. It is somewhat fair to describe the Spanish Civil War as being a “dress rehearsal” for WWII in Europe in that it provided a testing ground for some Axis weapons, and it has been conventional (and largely mistaken) to identify Franco’s regime with contemporary fascism, but it isn’t true that an internal Spanish war “helped usher in the bloodiest decade in human history.” None of the causes of WWII can be found in the Spanish Civil War. What is striking about the Spanish Civil War with the advantage of seventy-five years of hindsight is how significant some contemporaries thought it was and how largely unimportant (for everyone outside Spain) it proved to be.

It isn’t true that “the future of the whole region is increasingly tied to the Libyan crisis.” All the states with the most at stake in Libya are not eager for military intervention. Indeed, it is mostly those states that have no reason to take an interest in the conflict that are calling for action or have been called upon (as the U.S. has been) to lead the intervention. If there is a major regional conflict in the future, it won’t be because of what is happening in Libya, and it certainly won’t be because the U.S. is too reluctant to take military action in the region.

Support for freedom fighters is self-defense. ~Ronald Reagan

Since we’re hearing some talk about arming Libyan rebels in connection with the Reagan Doctrine, it’s worth revisiting what the Reagan administration said about this policy and the flaws that this policy had. As the Reagan quote shows, Reagan argued that this policy of arming anti-communist insurgents was a form of defense against the Soviets. Whether one agrees with that “self-defense” assessment or not, Reagan articulated this policy in the context of opposing the influence of another superpower. Obviously, the Libyan case has absolutely nothing to do with American self-defense or undermining the influence of another major power.

Secretary of State George Shultz defended the policy as a response to Soviet-sponsored insurgencies and subversion:

So long as communist dictatorships feel free to aid and abet insurgencies in the name of ‘socialist internationalism,'” Shultz asked, “why must the democracies, the target of this threat, be inhibited from defending their own interests and the cause of democracy itself?

Advocates of the Reagan Doctrine portrayed the policy as a retaliatory move against Soviet support for revolutions. Of course, the U.S. would not be striking back at a rival exporter of revolution by arming Libyan rebels. On the contrary, the U.S. would be trying to facilitate a change of regime in Libya that America’s actual jihadist enemies would welcome. Comparisons with Cold War-era policies are often unhelpful, because the nature of security threats and the existing international order are significantly different from what they were when the Reagan Doctrine might have made sense, but this is the precedent some of the interventionists have chosen. Even if the Reagan Doctrine was appropriate to the late Cold War period, it doesn’t follow that doing something similar today makes any sense.

Did the Reagan Doctrine make sense as a policy? Back in 1986, Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute wrote a paper questioning the Reagan Doctrine’s assumptions and its importance for U.S. security interests. Carpenter concluded that with the possible exception of one case, the Reagan Doctrine was not supporting causes that mattered to American security interests:

Although the degree of Soviet-bloc interference, the ideological composition of the rebel movements, the danger of a clash with the USSR, and the risk of entanglement all represent important considerations, the principal factor governing U.S. foreign policy with respect to the five rebel movements should be U.S. security. Assessed in this light, there is only one arena for which a respectable case can be made for providing material aid–Nicaragua–and even that is less than compelling. The other four conflicts are essentially irrelevant to the legitimate security concerns of the United States.

Carpenter went on to criticize the Reagan Doctrine as a basically flawed policy:

It is difficult to see how the Reagan Doctrine would bolster U.S. security; indeed, the opposite result is far more likely. Most Third World struggles take place in arenas and involve issues far removed from legitimate American security needs. U.S. involvement in such conflicts expands the republic’s already overextended commitments without achieving any significant prospective gains.

He also rejected arguments for the Reagan Doctrine as a vehicle of democracy promotion:

The prospects for the Reagan Doctrine promoting democracy in the Third World are no more promising; again, an intrusive U.S. military policy is likely to produce the opposite result. The Reagan Doctrine threatens to become a corollary to America’s longstanding policy of supporting “friendly” autocratic regimes. Administration leaders exhibit a willingness to endorse and assist any insurgent movement that professes to be anti-Soviet, without reference to its attitude toward political or economic rights [bold mine-DL]. The United States has already antagonized Third World populations by sponsoring repressive governments and may incur even more enmity as the patron of authoritarian, albeit anti-Marxist, insurgencies. Such a strategy is hardly an effective way to promote the popularity of democratic capitalism.

It seems to me that proponents of arming the Libyan rebels are blissfully unaware of the rebels’ attitude toward political or economic rights, and they seem eager to take the word of rebel leaders that they are democrats. Calls for U.S. intervention in Libya or arms shipments to Libyan rebels have many of the same flaws that arguments for the Reagan Doctrine had. It isn’t a model for what the U.S. should do now, but an example of what the U.S. should try to avoid, namely wasting American resources on conflicts that have nothing to do with American security.

Those who argue that we have no national-security interests in Libya are correct in the narrow sense. But the Libyan case represents a much larger issue. The Arab world is experiencing a genuine awakening. People in the region have lost faith in the old order. Whether they can actually overthrow the government, as they did in Egypt and Tunisia, or merely demand real reform, as in Jordan and the Gulf states, they are searching for a new political identity. ~Fareed Zakaria

Well, count me among the people with a “narrow” vision, because I still don’t see how the regional search for a new political identity merits the U.S. taking sides in someone else’s civil war. Advocates of a no-fly zone and/or arming the rebels keep falling back on a few lines of argument, and Zakaria (in favor of arming the rebels) rehearses a couple of these:

For the U.S., this presents a powerful opportunity. For decades, Arabs have regarded Washington as the enemy because it has been the principal supporter of the old order — creating a bizarre series of alliances in which the world’s leading democracy has been yoked to the most reactionary forces on the planet. It has also produced a real national-security problem: the rise of Islamic terrorism. Al Qaeda’s first argument against the U.S. is that it supports the tyrannies of the Arab world as they oppress their people.

There are some countries where it might make sense for the U.S. to align quickly with emerging political forces, but Libya is probably the worst case available. Of all the authoritarian regimes in the region, Libya’s is among those with which the U.S. has had the weakest relationship. The U.S. normalized relations with Libya after it suspended its weapons programs, and American companies were doing business there, but the U.S. has not become Gaddafi’s patron in the same way that it was Mubarak’s. Working to secure Gaddafi’s downfall isn’t going to win the U.S. that much goodwill, especially since Washington isn’t giving up very much in the process. Zakaria underestimates the degree to which the history of U.S. policies in the region has created so much distrust that any U.S. policy of subverting an Arab government by force will be perceived badly.

As far as American security interests have been concerned, Gaddafi has been more accommodating in the last decade than he had ever been before. Many Libyans have been radicalized over the decades of Gaddafi’s rule, but this was also going on before the U.S. restored ties with Libya, and at least some of these radicalized figures are among the rebels fighting against Gaddafi right now. No doubt there are those who maintain undue confidence in the government’s ability to discern “good guys” from “bad guys” as they would say, but what is striking is how little this matters to some of the people arguing for arming the rebels. Here’s Marc Thiessen:

Applying the Reagan Doctrine in Libya is not without risks. While most Libyans want to replace Gaddafi’s tyranny with democracy, there are also jihadists and al-Qaeda sympathizers in eastern Libya, where the rebellion is based. Look at any list of al-Qaeda leaders killed in drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions, and you will see many names ending with “al-Libi” (“the Libyan”). How do we distinguish between the Islamic radicals and those who share our aspirations for a free Libya?

America faced a similar challenge in Afghanistan in the 1980s, where we struggled initially to distinguish between moderates in the anti-Soviet resistance like Ahmad Shah Massoud and radicals like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Today, we have little intelligence to help us determine who the Massouds and Hekmatyars are in eastern Libya – and there is a danger that we could end up arming the wrong people. But our intelligence won’t improve unless we get advisers on the ground to start linking up with anti-Gaddafi forces. And if we can figure out who the good guys are, American support could help determine who leads the rebel column that takes Tripoli.

If there is even a remote chance that the U.S. could end up arming “jihadists and al-Qaeda sympathizers,” which Thiessen admits to be quite possible, I’m not sure why the debate is still continuing. For the sake of a triple-bank-shot effort at public diplomacy with other Arab publics, we’re contemplating sending weapons to rebels whose cause we don’t fully understand and some of whom are obviously hostile to the U.S.? Arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan was a questionable decision when it was made, but at least it had the merit of being part of a larger strategy of resisting Soviet power. Arming Libyan rebels against Gaddafi doesn’t have any similar strategic purpose.

Supporting rebels against Gaddafi isn’t going to make other authoritarian rulers more reluctant to use force against opposition. It’s going to give them an incentive to do as much damage as quickly as possible to the opposition before foreign support is forthcoming. If the U.S. arms the rebels in Libya, and Libya becomes the model of what other governments can expect from the U.S., the U.S. has committed itself not only to supporting rebels in this case but also to doing the same in each civil war that follows the same pattern. After all, we wouldn’t want to signal to other governments that “the way to stay in office is to engage in mass slaughter.” Backing Libyan rebels won’t serve as a deterrent against brutal crackdowns elsewhere unless other governments believe that the U.S. is willing to keep doing this each time it happens, and no one believes this.

Zakaria’s column makes an excellent case that Obama should not have said that he thought Gaddafi should go. Saying that the U.S. wants him gone creates the expectation that the U.S. will work to bring that about, which makes it that much harder to do the correct thing for U.S. interests, which is to avoid being pulled into a civil war that has nothing to do with us. So we can agree that Obama blundered by calling for an outcome that he has no intention of realizing. It doesn’t follow that Obama should compound an error of saying the wrong thing by doing something even more unwise.

Nick Kristof talked recently to Gen. McPeak, who assured him that a Libyan no-fly zone is very easy. Kristof quotes him:

“I can’t imagine an easier military problem,” he said. “If we can’t impose a no-fly zone over a not even third-rate military power like Libya, then we ought to take a hell of a lot of our military budget and spend it on something usable.”

Unlike a lot of other people (all of whom now happen to be in the “attack Libya now” camp), I have no problem with Gen. McPeak, and he can speak with some authority on this subject, but I can’t stand this line of argument. For the last week, I have seen some version of this “if we can’t impose a no-fly zone on Libya, we should get our money back” argument quite a few times, and it is just an updated version of Madeleine Albright’s question to Powell: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” It is usually the sort of thing that silly civilians say to military commanders. For their part, the commanders probably don’t think the armed forces exist to fulfill the passing whims of politicians, officials and pundits in response to the latest news cycle. If the U.S. has the ability to take military action somewhere, the claim seems to be, there is no argument against doing it.

In fairness to him, that isn’t what McPeak is saying. He is answering the technical question, “Can the U.S. military do this?” The answer to that has always been yes, but that has never been the question that mattered. McPeak is not assessing the policy implications, nor is Kristof asking him about the effect a Libya operation would have on other missions elsewhere. My guess is that Gen. McPeak would give Kristof less satisfying answers to those questions. It is Kristof who is using McPeak’s expertise to bolster a bad case for attacking another country, because this time it “feels different.” As Scoblete says, this is not much of an argument. Scoblete cites a more recent post from Mark Leon Goldberg from U.N. Dispatch, who made the point very early on that a no-fly zone is ultimately little more than a “gesture.” He argues the following now:

A no fly zone carries all the political risks of military intervention, but without the intended benefits.

Indeed, I suspect some no-fly zone advocates understand this, and want to make the U.S. commit to a no-fly zone as the first step in a series of escalations that would lead to a much larger, more destructive operation. So, yes, it is relatively easy to enforce a no-fly zone, but it won’t have that much of an effect on the civil war. It should tell us everything we need to know about how unwise intervening in Libya is that even the most hawkish interventionists aren’t proposing more significant military action right now. It may be that some hawks are trying to get the administration to accept a half-measure in the hope that committing to the half-measure will force the administration into taking additional military action later.

The overwhelming focus on the “easy” part is a warning sign that the people advocating intervention haven’t given the issue enough thought, or they don’t want to acknowledge publicly that agreeing to their “easy” and minimal military commitment will in all likelihood lead to a much more difficult, costly, dangerous, larger commitment once it begins. Tom Ricks detailed in Fiasco how there was no real “Phase IV” planning for what to do after the invasion of Iraq ended, and many others have made the same observation. This proved to be one of the more disastrous blunders of the war. From everything we have heard so far from war advocates (which is what they are), there doesn’t seem to have been any thought given to what the second phase of a Libyan intervention would be, much less anything after that.