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 the Prophet 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 Gaddafi
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 Gaddafi. Indeed, Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi was capable of mass murder was certainly
correct. The idea that Gaddafi 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
Gaddafi. 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 Gaddafi
tradition and Islamists. Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi'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 Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi. Gaddafi was ruthless in
suppressing radical 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: Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi 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 Gaddafi. 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 Gaddafi 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.
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