Filibuster CartoonsTitle: The world saves Libya (click to view)
Date: March 8, 2011
As the Libyan protests/revolution/civil war enter its fourth week, the more enlightened nations of the world don't seem to be getting any closer to deciding what, if anything, their response to the ever-worsening violence should be.
President Obama, eager to avoid the unilateral, shoot-first-ask-questions-later foreign policy reputation of his predecessor, has repeatedly declared that whatever action the US eventually decides to take, it will take with the support of as many allies and international institutions as possible. Trouble is, multi-lateral consensus on the Libyan situation is proving quite hard to reach. Though most world leaders seem to agree that Colonel Quadaffi should step down (and even
this point has its dissenters), no global body seems to possess the sort of unanimity needed to press forward with a consequential next step.
Britain, France, and Australia are all pressing for the United Nations Security Council to impose a so-called "no-fly zone" over Libya, which would give a UN military coalition authorization to shoot down any of Quadaffi's jets on missions to bomb his own people. It'd be similar to the no-fly zones imposed on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the aftermath of the first Gulf War — except, one hopes, slightly more destructive to the regime.
The proposal will never actually pass, however, since Security Council veto-wielders Russia and China are both Quadaffi-backers, and oppose any sort of outside intervention into "Libyan affairs," as they euphemistically phrase it. This, too, has echoes of Iraq, and may remind many of what inspired Bush-style unilateralism in the first place.
As a way of leapfrogging the intransigence of Putin and Hu, some pundits and politicians have suggested skipping the UN entirely, and imposing no-fly zones through NATO. As a western nations-only club, its an organization that has historically proven much more inclined to acting with a single mind and common purpose. When Slobodan Milsoevic's Serbian forces were bombed by the US, UK, Canada and others in the mid-90s, for instance, the deed was done entirely through NATO precisely to circumvent a threatened Russian veto at the UN.
But NATO also has Turkey, and the current Turkish government has been quite eager to assure its solidarity with the Muslim world in various obstinate ways. They've thus remained
very cold on the idea of any sort of military intervention into Libya, and though they don't hold veto power over the organization's decisions, a NATO mission carried out against the wishes of its only Muslim member would probably not provide the sort of favorable Islamic PR the west is looking for.
Of course, it's an open question if Turkey's pacifism is accurately reflecting global Muslim sentiment in the first place. The six member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) have supposedly been warming to the no-fly zone plan, and recently came out with a declaration of support for the idea (though they, it should be noted, also explicitly denounced the idea of any sort of more invasive "intervention"). On March 12, the much larger Arab League, which contains most Muslim nations in the Mid-East and has already suspended Libya from its ranks, will meet to clarify its own position,
which has some pro-intervention observers optimistic.
But regardless of what's decided, the question still remains: who's going to do it? It's clear that whatever intervention plan is eventually cobbled together, be it a no-fly zone or something more, will have at least
some opposition from
some important countries, and will have to be carried out in open spite of their opposition. What country has the guts to form and lead a coalition of that sort? Mr. Obama certainly hasn't given many signs that he's a man particularly excited to take on the job.
Regardless of what you think about the 2003 Iraq War, it at least represented a coherent, take-it-or-leave-it approach to dealing with a dictator. And it had a passionate leader, willing to steamroll ahead.
Quaddafi lacks an enemy as passionate as George W. Bush was towards Saddam, and perhaps international law will be the better for it. But will the Libyans?
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